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The House of Commons' Foreign Affairs Committee said that 'the collaboration of Western Internet companies in the censorship and policing of the Internet for political purposes is morally unacceptable', following a six-month enquiry into East Asia.

The committee devoted a large part of its 150-page report to human rights. It called on the UK government to put pressure on its Chinese counterpart 'to relax its censorship of the Internet and its requirement for foreign companies to restrict the political content of their pages', not least because of the damage done to economic growth by the restriction of the free flow of information.

The report notes that the system for filtering, censoring and controlling the Internet - for what it estimates is 110 to 200 million Chinese users - is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world.

Regulations ban using the Internet to harm the 'honour or the interests of the nation', to disrupt national policies on religion, 'propagating evil cults and feudal superstitions' and to incite illegal assemblies, associations, marches, demonstrations, or gatherings that disturb social order.

The MPs note that human rights organisation such as Amnesty have condemned several firms for colluding with these censorship rules, notably Microsoft, which has blocked the used of words

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such as 'freedom' in the text of blogs; Yahoo!, for identifying pro-democracy campaigners at the request of the Chinese authorities; and Google, for launching a self-censoring version of its search engine.

In evidence submitted to the enquiry, the three companies argued that the choice faced by foreign companies in China was either to comply with domestic legislation or to leave the country. They told the MPs that remaining in the country benefits Chinese Internet users with increased access to information and services. The report notes that Sergey Brin, one of Google's founders, later accepted that the company has violated its own principles as a consequence of complying with China's demands.

Nonetheless, the companies' willingness to comply with the restrictions has encouraged other repressive regimes to follow suit, the report notes.

Human Rights Watch told the enquiry that: 'China is already exporting technology for monitoring the Internet to other repressive governments, Zimbabwe, for example.'

The report adds: 'The companies which submitted evidence to us advised that China was not the only country in which their product was modified according to the requests of government, but did not give specific details of the nature of such regulation.'

The complete report is available as HTML or PDF at publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmfaff.htm. Its criticisms echo those made by US legislators earlier this year.