Yahoo's Lashing Highlights Risks Of China Market

YAHOO'S LASHING HIGHLIGHTS RISKS OF CHINA MARKET
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Corey Boles corey.boles@dowjones.com, Don Clark, Pui-Wing Tam]
An unusually dramatic congressional hearing on Yahoo Inc.'s role in the imprisonment of at least two dissidents in China exposed the company to withering criticism and underscored the risks for Western companies seeking to expand there. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who called the hearing on Capitol Hill, told Yahoo's co-founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan. "This testimony has been an appallingly disappointing performance." Yang apologized to the mother of journalist Shi Tao, who was jailed after Yahoo China, then a unit of the company, handed information about him to Chinese authorities in 2004. She was at the hearing, sitting directly behind Callahan and Yang. Addressing the families of the dissidents, Yang said: "I want to say we are committed to doing what we can to secure their freedom. And I want to personally apologize for what they are going through."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119436469294284018.html?mod=djemTECH
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* Democratic leader to Yahoo CEO: China policy is 'spineless'
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9811889-7.html