Microsoft Corp’s Bing search engine was inaccessible in China yesterday, with social media users fearing it could be the latest foreign Web site to be blocked by censors.
Attempts to open cn.bing.com has since Wednesday resulted in an error message for users, taking away the most prominent foreign search engine available in China.
“We’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a brief statement, hours after saying the company was investigating the matter.
China’s communist authorities operate an online censorship apparatus known as the “Great Firewall,” which blocks a slew of Web sites, including Facebook, Twitter and several foreign media outlets.
However, it was not clear whether Bing had joined the list of prohibited Web sites, or if its China service was experiencing technical difficulties. The search engine had been censoring searches in China.
The wording of the US company’s statement “means Microsoft received no government order, but clearly China has the power to block a URL and that may be what happened,” said independent US tech analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group.
“China has been aggressive in terms of controlling the media, ‘censorship’ is kind of their middle name. If there were searches going on providing results the Chinese government didn’t like, it wouldn’t surprise me if they blocked the site,” Enderle said.
However, the analyst said it could also be a “hack gone wrong.”
China’s cyberspace administration did not immediately return a request for comment.
China’s Great Firewall can be circumvented by using a virtual private network (VPN), which can hide a user’s IP address.
While its rival Google shut down its search engine in China in 2010 after rows over censorship and hacking, Bing has continued to operate in the country along with Microsoft-owned Skype.
People complained on microblogging sites about the lack of access, with some speculating that Bing too had been “walled off.”
Others aired their dissatisfaction about having to use Baidu, China’s largest domestic search service.
“Even Bing requires a VPN now, how exhausting,” one user wrote.
“Our country is amazing, even the obedient Bing has been walled off, while Baidu flourishes,” said another. “Thank you wise party leaders!”
China has tightened policing of the Internet in recent years, shuttering 26,000 “illegal” Web sites last year alone and deleting six million online posts containing vulgar content, Xinhua news agency said earlier this month.
Bing complies with Chinese censorship rules, but its link to US tech giant Microsoft might have put it in the government’s crosshairs as Beijing and Washington spar over trade and tech issues.
“The fact that Bing is run by Microsoft, which is not a Chinese company, means that Beijing has less leverage over the company, compared to say Baidu,” said Lokman Tsui (徐洛?), an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The block is also “mostly symbolic,” given Bing’s tiny market share in China, he said.
There is also growing concern over China’s slowing economy, and June will see the highly sensitive 30th anniversary of the violent suppression of democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, Tsui said.
“Beijing needs to look like they are in charge and in power,” he added.
The US and China are locked in a bruising trade dispute, with US accusations that China steals technological know-how among the core disagreements.
Washington has also led efforts to blacklist Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co (華為) internationally over security concerns, and the company’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) was arrested in Canada last month over fraud allegations on a US request.
The two sides are scheduled for new trade negotiations next week.
“Given Washington’s bid to contain Huawei, China is sharpening its moves against the American tech industry, especially those affiliated with Silicon Valley,” said Tom Fowdy, an independent Beijing-based political analyst.
“So in some ways, it could be tit-for-tat. You contain our leading technology and software companies, we will contain yours,’” Fowdy said.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
RSS