It is one of the positives of my largely happy life that I never found myself in the field of public relations with a client like Beijing. It's not that there aren't many wondrously good stories about China — hundreds of millions of otherwise dirt-poor people moving up into a better economic life, etcetera — and others we still have to learn about. But as long as old geezers in Beijing are still calling the biggest shots for the globe's most populated nation, China remains an account no one would want.

How many times have they been warned not to remind people of horrible Tiananmen Square? OK, the Chinese hacking of Google's e-mail accounts in China reaches not quite the same order of malevolence as the bloody head-cracking that took place in China's capital in June 1989. But, symbolically, the two cases are too close for comfort: Both are examples of dealing with dissent and uncertainty with force. In the end, the people with egg — if not blood — on their face are those that pull the trigger or encourage the repressive hacking of "dissident" e-mail accounts.

To be sure, having to work on the side of U.S. corporate public relations would exactly not be my cup of sake, either. But if I had to do it, there are clients far worse to have than Google. By the simple gesture of protesting the Chinese hacking, Google wound up atop the moral high ground — almost by default.