Author: Paul Mozur and Karen Weise / Source: New York Times
Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
SHANGHAI — Under China’s president, Xi Jinping, the last vestiges of the global internet have slowly disappeared from an online world that had already shut out Twitter, Google and Facebook.
Now one of the last survivors, Microsoft’s Bing search engine, appears to have joined them — even though the American company already censors its results in China.
The Chinese government appeared to block the search engine on Wednesday, in what would be a startling renunciation of more than a decade of efforts by Microsoft to engage with Beijing to make its products available. If the block proves to be permanent, it would suggest that Western companies can do little to persuade China to give them access to what has become the world’s largest internet market by users, especially at a time of increased trade and economic tensions with the United States.
The Redmond, Wash., company has cooperated with local companies to provide its Windows and cloud services to win acceptance by the Chinese government. Its long-established research and development center has turned out valuable products and launched the careers of a generation of artificial-intelligence experts who have started important new companies in China.
Beijing has carried out several waves of increasingly intense crackdowns on internet freedoms as the Communist Party has cemented its control over more aspects of Chinese life. That includes cracking down on foreign internet products, including blocks on Instagram and WhatsApp in recent years.
Lately, the Chinese authorities have questioned or detained activists for posting on Twitter, even though the vast majority of people in China can’t access the microblogging service. (The activists generally posted on Twitter via special software that can circumvent China’s censors.)
Chinese officials disclose few specifics about their censorship practices, and Bing’s status as of Thursday was not entirely clear. The Cyberspace Administration of China did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, Microsoft said, “We’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps.”
Greatfire.org, a group that tracks what sites are blocked in China, said the site appeared to be inaccessible in parts of the country but reachable in others. China’s blockages often take time to spread nationwide, though in the past some services have been blocked in some places only to be restored later.
With Bing, Microsoft tried to play by China’s rules. For example, a search for the Dalai Lama, the religious leader, would turn up state media accounts within China that accused him of stirring up hatred and separatism. Outside the country, it would point to sites like Wikipedia.
Other searches, like for Tiananmen Square or the Falun Gong religious group, were similarly scrubbed, though over the years users reported that using coded language could help turn up posts about some topics that were generally controlled.
Blocking Bing would brick over one of the last holes in a wall of online filters that has isolated China’s internet from…
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