Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Hey Ryan, hiwan, how
Speaker 1: are you.
Speaker 2: I'm good? Thanks. So what are we doing this morning?
Speaker 1: We're going to take a look at the Chinese version
Speaker 1: of BING and assess the censorship that Microsoft has built
Speaker 1: into it.
Speaker 2: Ryan Gallagher is Bloomberg's investigative reporter on cybersecurity. He's asking
Speaker 2: me to do an experiment on Microsoft's search engine BING.
Speaker 2: So let's start. What do we have to do?
Speaker 1: First of all, we're going to go to the Chinese
Speaker 1: version of BING, So you're going to need to load
Speaker 1: up your VPN and you can simulate a Chinese Internet
Speaker 1: connection and then you go to cn dot bing dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, got that search.
Speaker 1: For Tianaman Square massacre.
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: And I will search on my end and I'm in
Speaker 1: the UK, so I get an international version of BING
Speaker 1: that doesn't have this censorship integrated within it. So we
Speaker 1: can compare the results that both of us are seeing.
Speaker 2: Ooh, this will be interesting. So what do you see there?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, I see the top link here as to
Speaker 1: Wikipedia and it's an article in nineteen eighty Ninetyanamen Square
Speaker 1: protests and massacres the title of it. I can also
Speaker 1: see images and links to videos on YouTube and other
Speaker 1: websites showing footage from the protests and the incidents at
Speaker 1: Tianamen Square.
Speaker 2: The Tienamen Square massacre was a student led protest that
Speaker 2: was brutally repressed in Beijing in nineteen eighty nine. Demonstrators
Speaker 2: called for economic and political reform peacefully for weeks, but
Speaker 2: in the end, the Chinese military was brought in and
Speaker 2: killed the protesters in mass It is one of the
Speaker 2: most sensitive and heavily censored topics in China, one that
Speaker 2: the Chinese government wants nobody to remember. Just to be clear,
Speaker 2: on my page, there's nothing that alludes to massacre or violence,
Speaker 2: or student protests or certainly deaths. And the top search
Speaker 2: that shows up on being in China is the ballast
Speaker 2: for the arc of world peace and justice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is what you find is very very
Speaker 1: striking difference between the version that I could see in
Speaker 1: the version that you can see. What's actually happened with
Speaker 1: the version of being in China, according to the sources
Speaker 1: that we've talked to, is a deliberate censorship system that
Speaker 1: has been created in compliance with what the Chinese government wants.
Speaker 2: Today. On our show, Microsoft's decade long compliance with China's
Speaker 2: censorship regulations and an inside account of the system the
Speaker 2: companies built. This is the big take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 2: I'm wan ha. To be clear, Microsoft's Bing is not
Speaker 2: the Google of China. The market is dominated by a
Speaker 2: Chinese search engine called bay Do, but Bing has been
Speaker 2: gradually growing its market share.
Speaker 1: According to the statistics that we have, you know is
Speaker 1: now the second most popular search engine, even if it
Speaker 1: has a much smaller market share than buy Do. So
Speaker 1: that's significant.
Speaker 2: And while other Western search engines such as Google are
Speaker 2: completely blocked by China, Microsoft's Being stands out because it's
Speaker 2: still accessible on the mainland.
Speaker 1: Being is the only Western search engine that's available in China.
Speaker 1: So that there is an American search engine operating in
Speaker 1: China and complying with Chinese censorship in this way just
Speaker 1: as really significant, especially in the currency of political environment.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of tension between China and the
Speaker 1: United States.
Speaker 2: Microsoft's compliance in China has been known for years, but
Speaker 2: Ryan's reporting in BusinessWeek is one of the first comprehensive
Speaker 2: inside accounts of the sophisticated censorship system the company has
Speaker 2: in place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the story is based on years of reporting and
Speaker 1: cultivating all kinds of sources to current informer people who
Speaker 1: work from Microsoft right up to the executive level.
Speaker 2: Throughout Ryan's reporting, he found that censorship on being China
Speaker 2: covers an array of topics way beyond politics.
Speaker 1: Almost every facet of society is touched by this human
Speaker 1: rights or climate change or you know Nobel Peace Prize winners,
Speaker 1: or corruption within the Communist Party, or some political scandal
Speaker 1: or even about the Dalai Lama or you know, it's
Speaker 1: very broad censorship.
Speaker 2: Back in nineteen ninety two, Microsoft was one of the
Speaker 2: first American companies to set up such a big business
Speaker 2: operation in China.
Speaker 1: They really went all in, and Bell Gates, the co founder,
Speaker 1: has always been a very big proponent of investing in
Speaker 1: China and growing his business in China.
Speaker 2: The company spent years cultivating and building connections and finally
Speaker 2: one government approval to run the search engine. But the
Speaker 2: timing of Bing's China launch was peculiar. It went live
Speaker 2: on June first, two thousand and nine, just three days
Speaker 2: before the twentieth anniversary of the Tienaman Square massacre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty bad time. And because every year when the
Speaker 1: anniversary happens, the government has a tendency to try to
Speaker 1: suppress any kind of outpouring of support for what happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, so tensions always ramp up.
Speaker 2: At this period, the Chinese government was on high alert
Speaker 2: for anything on the internet related to the Tieneman Square protests. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: at Microsoft, they.
Speaker 1: Have everything set up. They've got all the the approvals
Speaker 1: in place, they have all the infrastructure, a really big infrastructure,
Speaker 1: all the servers. It's already to go online. And when they,
Speaker 1: you know, finally pushed the button to make it go
Speaker 1: live so that people in China can finally access this
Speaker 1: heavily anticipated new search engine. Quite quickly, it's suddenly just gone.
Speaker 1: Anyone trying to visit the site is getting an error page,
Speaker 1: you know that, It's like it vanishes.
Speaker 2: Microsoft was dumbfounded. Initially, they thought there was a technical
Speaker 2: problem on their site, maybe the server had crashed, maybe
Speaker 2: there was too much traffic, but everything was running fine.
Speaker 2: And after floria phone calls between Microsoft's lawyers and Chinese
Speaker 2: government officials and explanation emerged.
Speaker 1: The Chinese government was feeling so worried about the launch
Speaker 1: of this search engine. Just before the anniversary of the
Speaker 1: Turnament Square massacred that they actually just blocked the traffic
Speaker 1: to Bing, so they pulled it offline before it really
Speaker 1: got a chance, and then Microsoft had to renegotiate with
Speaker 1: the government to get it back up again.
Speaker 2: And the blocking of being wasn't just about sensitivities around
Speaker 2: the Tieneman Square massacre.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it was probably a very deliberate strategy
Speaker 1: by the Chinese government to kind of show who was
Speaker 1: boss in a way, and they were, you know, they
Speaker 1: were trying to say it, we're in control here, not you.
Speaker 2: That message was heard loud and clear at Microsoft. Ryan
Speaker 2: says the tech company had already planned to integrate the
Speaker 2: censorship requested by the Chinese government, but his sources told
Speaker 2: him that the company went above and beyond.
Speaker 1: A lot of the censorship that we see on Being
Speaker 1: China is self censorship, is Microsoft choosing which topics to remove.
Speaker 1: What I was told was that their possession was that
Speaker 1: they would just over censor, they would overfilter because that
Speaker 1: was the easier thing to do, rather than having been
Speaker 1: pulled offline again.
Speaker 2: In response to Ryan's story, Microsoft said in a statement
Speaker 2: quote Bing is the least censored search engine in China
Speaker 2: and is often the only accessible source for volumes of
Speaker 2: information there. The statement goes on to say Microsoft only
Speaker 2: censors results in response to a narrow legal order and
Speaker 2: regularly pushes back. And just as Microsoft was getting used
Speaker 2: to operating under China's restrictions, Google was giving up. In
Speaker 2: twenty ten, following an attack on its infrastructure, Google decided
Speaker 2: to quit China, citing the censorship and cybersecurity concerns.
Speaker 1: And it was a really massive cyber attack that Google
Speaker 1: said was intended to gather information from Google servers about
Speaker 1: certain Chinese dissidents who were using like Gmail and other
Speaker 1: Google services. And also later they said the censorship that
Speaker 1: they were being forced to comply with on Chinese version
Speaker 1: of Google was just increasing exponentially and they couldn't tolerate that.
Speaker 1: So Google ended up leaving and Bang was left there.
Speaker 2: The leaders at Microsoft took a completely different view from Google.
Speaker 2: Here's co founder Bill Gates on ABC News responding to
Speaker 2: Google's departure from China. Listen to how he frames China's
Speaker 2: censorship of being Well.
Speaker 3: It's a complex issue. The role of the Internet in
Speaker 3: every country has been very positive, letting people speak out
Speaker 3: in new ways, and fortunately the Chinese efforts to censor
Speaker 3: the Internet have been very limited. You know, it's easy
Speaker 3: to go around it, and so I think keeping the
Speaker 3: Internet thriving there is very important.
Speaker 2: A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC said
Speaker 2: in a statement that China's Internet is quote free, open,
Speaker 2: and orderly, and that it welcomed foreign companies to operate
Speaker 2: in the country. It added that foreign invested enterprises in
Speaker 2: China should quote abide by China's laws and regulations, respect
Speaker 2: the interests, culture, and traditions of the general public, and
Speaker 2: assume the corresponding social responsibilities. Ryan, why is China so
Speaker 2: obsessed with censoring the Internet.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's authoritarian government is run by the
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party, so it's just about you know, they
Speaker 1: want their version of events to be the only version
Speaker 1: of events. The bigger picture, of course, is that they
Speaker 1: don't want a challenge to their power. They don't want
Speaker 1: people to have information that might lead them to question authority.
Speaker 1: So it's fundamentally about control, and it's about power.
Speaker 2: And really giving people access to only a slice of reality, right,
Speaker 2: not everything that's out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and beyond I think beyond a slice of reality,
Speaker 1: it's like an alternative reality as a reality that is
Speaker 1: filtered through Chinese Communist party glasses if you like, you know,
Speaker 1: is their worldview which they create for themselves. It's oftentimes
Speaker 1: a completely false impression of the truth. And so what
Speaker 1: bing is doing here is helping to reinforce that alternative
Speaker 1: reality through its version of being in China.
Speaker 2: After the break, how Microsoft helps feed an alternative reality
Speaker 2: on the Chinese web and why now? The technology that
Speaker 2: enables web censorship in China is generic and neutral. It's
Speaker 2: the same technology that filters out child pornography or copyrighted
Speaker 2: music in searches.
Speaker 1: So the technology behind the filtering system we were told
Speaker 1: involves a combination of machine learning, so kind of automated
Speaker 1: systems that will be able to assess different content and
Speaker 1: stop it from getting through to the search engine, and
Speaker 1: also human reviewers, so just people who will actually review
Speaker 1: the content on the search and flag anything that they
Speaker 1: think shouldn't be there.
Speaker 2: Over the years, censorship in China has increased exponentially and
Speaker 2: the blacklist has only gotten longer. And with that, scrutiny
Speaker 2: and criticism of Microsoft's operation in China has gotten louder.
Speaker 1: Independent groups like the Citizen lab and they've possessed upwards
Speaker 1: of one hundred thousand different phrases and terms, and they're
Speaker 1: seeing those removed from Bing. And actually, the researchers said
Speaker 1: that in some cases, on political issues in particular, Bing
Speaker 1: was actually more aggressive in its censorship than the domestic
Speaker 1: Chinese search engines like Baydu, which I found extraordinary. You
Speaker 1: know that in an American search engine would be censoring
Speaker 1: more than the domestic Chinese ones.
Speaker 2: Even inside Microsoft, Bloomberg's reporting found that employees had become
Speaker 2: disturbed with how far reaching Bing's censorship was. They raised
Speaker 2: red flags over the company's practice in China and called
Speaker 2: out Microsoft for acting against its own stated principles. On
Speaker 2: some occasions, Microsoft did push back on government censorship. In
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, it stopped operating a blacklist that blocked people
Speaker 2: from using certain words in its Chinese version of Skype
Speaker 2: that prompted China to ban the service, And in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, Microsoft shut down the Chinese version of LinkedIn
Speaker 2: after criticism that it blocked reporters' profiles. Ryan, is it
Speaker 2: plausible that Microsoft would ever shut down Bing?
Speaker 1: It's such a good question, and really I've been scratching
Speaker 1: my head trying to figure this out, and I've talked
Speaker 1: to a lot of people about it, and you know,
Speaker 1: the general consensus form my sources is that the reason
Speaker 1: they're still operating it is simply because BING is heavily
Speaker 1: integrated into other Microsoft products like Windows and also the
Speaker 1: Microsoft Edge Internet browser in China. You know, Bing is
Speaker 1: the default search engine on that, so it's like it's
Speaker 1: baked into other products that it makes it more complicated
Speaker 1: for them to just get rid of it.
Speaker 2: And then there's the issue of labor.
Speaker 1: Also, another reason that cited to me from our sources
Speaker 1: was that actually a surprising number of the sort of
Speaker 1: core engineering team that the key people in Microsoft who
Speaker 1: are developing being that's actually being done by people in China.
Speaker 1: So they're not just working on the Chinese version, they're
Speaker 1: working on the international version. So if you get rid
Speaker 1: of being in China, it would leave them in this
Speaker 1: really difficult situation because the key people who are working
Speaker 1: on it are all still in China.
Speaker 2: Outside of China, Microsoft's Chinese model has set a precedent
Speaker 2: for other governments that want to control access to information online.
Speaker 2: In recent years, the Russian government has asked Microsoft to
Speaker 2: remove thousands of pieces of content from Bing, including links
Speaker 2: to political, opposition and news websites, and according to what
Speaker 2: the employees told Bloomberg, the company has often complied, and
Speaker 2: as that censorship intensifies, it's also left room for mistakes.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, shortly before the anniversary of the
Speaker 2: Tieneman Square massacre, Microsoft accidentally applied the Chinese censorship filter globally.
Speaker 2: So when someone, no matter where they were in the world,
Speaker 2: tried to search for the quote tank man on Bing,
Speaker 2: that's the iconic image of the loan protester blocking a
Speaker 2: row of tanks, they were unable to find anything.
Speaker 1: It shows how difficult it can be for them to
Speaker 1: kind of have this dual system where they have this
Speaker 1: really heavily censored version in China and then the rest
Speaker 1: of the world trying to operate a more open search
Speaker 1: engine that isn't filtered. It's difficult to do both because
Speaker 1: it seems like the censorship can sometimes pollute the nonsensored versions,
Speaker 1: whether accidentally or otherwise.
Speaker 2: Ran If Microsoft wants to stay in China, does it
Speaker 2: really have any better options? I mean, do they absolutely
Speaker 2: have to censor and even over sensor.
Speaker 1: This is the type rope that Microsoft has been trying
Speaker 1: to walk. You know, this is the dilemma that they've
Speaker 1: been trying to navigate. I don't believe for a second
Speaker 1: that in an ideal world, Microsoft would want to be
Speaker 1: doing this, but they're choosing to do it because they
Speaker 1: want to be in China. And the question is has
Speaker 1: it gone too far? And a lot of people, certainly
Speaker 1: in the human rights community, think that has gone far
Speaker 1: too far. You know, you just have to look at
Speaker 1: the extent of the censorship and it's actually shocking. So
Speaker 1: the question of you know, is it possible to have
Speaker 1: a more moderated version of it, I think the answer
Speaker 1: is probably no, because that's what has been tried. Google
Speaker 1: tried to do it. Being that they've tried to do it,
Speaker 1: and what you would really need is for a fundamental
Speaker 1: change in the government itself, because really the root of
Speaker 1: this is is the government, and Microsoft isn't in control
Speaker 1: of what the Chinese government is doing.
Speaker 2: And for now they seem to be okay with it.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean they're still there, they're still doing it,
Speaker 1: they're still defending it. So, you know, I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people in Microsoft, frankly, who are deeply
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with it, but you know, the powers that be
Speaker 1: within the company want to be there, and so as
Speaker 1: long as that is the case, they're going to be there.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm oneh
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Young Young and Naomi Ryan
Speaker 2: Gallagher part of the story. It was mixed by Young
Speaker 2: Young and Rishi but Jay Gold. Our senior producers are
Speaker 2: Naomi Shaven and Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beemster Bower is our
Speaker 2: executive producer, and Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Big Take. We'll be back tomorrow.