Microsoft censored Bing results and played by China’s rules. On Wednesday, that didn’t prove enough for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government, and the last major English-language search engine was blocked, joining most other major Western platforms. For companies looking to enter China’s market, that should be a clear warning: No matter how hard you try to play by the rules, Beijing makes the final call.
Microsoft did what other companies wouldn’t: It engaged with Beijing, worked with local companies, developed new products, and helped train a new generation of Chinese experts. It even did what Google received so much criticism for last year and ran a censored search engine that returned what the Chinese government wanted its people see for searches like “Tiananmen Square” or “Dalai Lama.”
Microsoft further tried to ingratiate itself to the Chinese Communist Party by partnering with the state-run firm Chinese Electronics Technology Corporation in 2017 to develop a China-approved version of Windows 10.
For Microsoft, the price of more security in the Chinese market, however, was steep: The company it partnered with provides electronics for the Chinese military as well as state surveillance, of the same kind used to police, arrest, and intern Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang.
All of those concessions, however, apparently weren’t enough to buy stability for Microsoft in China. The company acknowledge the problem, saying: “We’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps.”
The move against Bing came after a viral article criticized domestic search engine Baidu, declaring it dead amid criticisms for poor search results that linked to its own products. Although it’s unclear if the block was directly in response to the popular article, the timing suggests that it was. That would be in keeping with a government preference for Chinese users to stay on domestic platforms.
Like recent censorship on LinkedIn, which also operates in China and complies with restrictive demands from the Chinese Communist Party, the latest block of Bing, an already-censored search engine, is a cautionary lesson for companies looking to do business in China. Ultimately, the rules are what Beijing makes them, and operations are dependent on the government’s continued approval.
For foreign companies, that makes giving in to CCP demands in exchange for market access a far less enticing proposition. After all, why should companies sacrifice their moral standing elsewhere when they could be booted from the country at any moment anyway?
China, for its part, seems to have decided that blocking Bing, a move that may well deter future partnerships, is worth the trade-off to make sure that its Internet remains carefully controlled and under the thumb of the government.
