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THE GAMBLE paid off. After Google changed its Chinese home page into a "landing page" with music and translation services that linked searches to the uncensored Google.com.hk, China renewed Google's Internet content provider license. For now, this decision by China marks the conclusion of the dance between the world's largest country and one of the Internet's largest companies that began in January with Chinese cyberattacks on the accounts of human rights activists and resulted in Google's decision to cease cooperating with Chinese censorship demands. Other businesses must take heed: It is possible to cling to principle while continuing to do business in China.

Increasingly, China outsources Internet censorship to the private sector. The Chinese government could not...