Google’s Choice: Washington, D.C. or Beijing

While the tech industry was fixated on Washington D.C. this week, I was thinking about a country 12 time zones away.

China wasn’t the subject of the Senate Committee on Intelligence hearings where Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey dutifully said little of note. President Trump didn’t bring it up when attacking Google over Twitter. Neither did U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he said that he and the states would investigate the tech platforms, censorship and competition.

But you can’t understand this growing wave of U.S. regulatory scrutiny on tech without recognizing the part that China plays.