Globalization: American President Hawks Chinese Website

Bubba Is Back.

Former United States president Bill Clinton has found a new job: promoting Accoona, a new Chineese-backed search engine.

[At the time of this writing, Accoona.com did not work, and the company could be found using the URL chinacom.com.]


In a Ross Fadner's recent MediaPost article, Clinton was blatantly honest about the changes to the U.S. and the world that the Internet brings:

"Our world has been made smaller," he said, but added that "this interdependence has so far been a mixed blessing." For example, he said, the Internet also played a crucial role in facilitating the attacks of September 11.

Wow. I bet Accoona was really happy he brought that up.

Accoona, a Hoboken, New Jersey-based company backed by the former head of Compaq Computer and China's state information agency, has the "richest database of Chinese businesses on Earth," according to China Communications President Stuart Kauder in a recent interview with Reuters' Eric Auchard.

To Americans old enough to remember the pre-Internet world of the Cold War, this is a shocking development. We were told as kids that the Chinese were Communist bad guys (not as bad as the Soviets, but bad enough). The thought of an American CEO and an American president promoting an "extensive database" with the Chinese is on the surface unsettling.

Even with Communism aside, there are those, specifically unions, that are concerned that globalization is putting us in an unfair position against countries like China, costing Americans jobs.

BusinessWeek just did a story on the "China Price," showing that the U.S. just can't compete against the Asian workforce.

But it's purely an emotional reaction. Jobs lost through the Internet is not a zero-sum game, with both the U.S. and China losing manufacturing positions.

Yet things are clearly changing too fast for the average American to grasp. With those changes come a lot of anxiety, and possibly some pain.

Yet all might not be so bad, as Clinton does see benefits coming from Web companies like Accoona, including:

"There's a larger social purpose here," he claimed. By facilitating commerce between nations, President Clinton said "you minimize your chances of 10 to 20 years of destructive conflict over things like water, oil, and territory, and you maximize your chances of peace and harmony."

Let's hope so. It seems as of late, things like NATO and the end of the Cold War have not made the Earth a more peaceful place.

We will not know until the dust settles if this was all a good thing. At the moment, we have to trust in our political and industrial leaders that things will work out for the best.

In the meantime, I'm going to be very nice to this new search engine, so that they send visitors my way.

Information on the company and its senior executives may be found here.

Forbes article here.

MSNBC article here.

ABC article here.