"If it is "internet services" they are providing, someone see if our US China thread comes up there. If it is regime control services they are providing, time to cancel them here."
Flesh this out please.
a. China allows only censored internet, no exceptions.
b. Microsoft provides internet services in China with 10 major sites, including four new ones, in full compliance with the regime.
From Wikipedia with sources, Internet Censorship in China:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_ChinaForeign content providers must abide by Chinese government wishes, including having internal content monitors, to be able to operate within mainland China. Also, per mainland Chinese laws, Microsoft began to censor the content of its blog service Windows Live Spaces, arguing that continuing to provide Internet services is more beneficial to the Chinese.[162] Chinese journalist Michael Anti's blog on Windows Live Spaces was censored by Microsoft. In an April 2006 e-mail panel discussion Rebecca MacKinnon, who reported from China for nine years as a Beijing bureau chief for CNN, said: "... many bloggers said he [Anti] was a necessary sacrifice so that the majority of Chinese can continue to have an online space to express themselves as they choose. So the point is, compromises are being made at every level of society
because nobody expects political freedom anyway."[163]
[162] "Congressional Testimony: "The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?"". Microsoft.com. Archived from the original on 28 November 2006. Retrieved 30 August 2006.
https://web.archive.org/web/20061128145545/http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/krumholtz/02-15WrittenTestimony.mspx[163] "Roundtable: The Struggle to Control Information". Frontline (PBS.org). 11 April 2005. Archived from the original on 3 June 2011. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/internet/-----------------------------------------------
[I didn't know Microsoft owns LinkedIn. Add them to the list of social media giants collecting all our information.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/technology/china-linkedin-censorship.htmlMar 18, 2021LinkedIn has been the lone major American social network allowed to operate in China. To do so, the
Microsoft-owned service for professionals
censors the posts made by its millions of Chinese..
[I can't bring up the rest of the article, but 3 months later Microsoft is announcing MAJOR expansion in China meaning they operate in full compliance with the regime.]
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Microsoft’s Bing search engine is back online in China [2019]
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/23/18195200/microsoft-bing-search-engine-blocked-in-china-internet-censorshipMicrosoft still won’t disclose the cause of the outage, but
says the search engine is back up and running. “We can confirm that Bing was inaccessible in China, but service is now restored,” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge.
It’s wouldn’t have been particularly unusual to see a Western website blocked from China’s increasingly restrictive internet...
Microsoft’s Bing is one of the few services developed by a US company to remain available in the country, despite competing with local government-connected services. Of course,
Bing’s survival is largely due to Microsoft’s willingness to comply with the Chinese government’s censorship policies, but now even that has proved not enough for China. Under President Xi Jinping, who has solidified his power by abolishing term limits last year,
China has grown more stringent with its control over the internet.
[Microsoft resolved its differences with the totalitarian censorship regime. More stringent means Xi Jinping did not back down or compromise over censorship.]
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Recall from these pages the
Google executive who resigned when Google policy switched from 'do no evil' to do evil for money (in China and elsewhere) if the market is big enough.
https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=2685.msg122110#msg122110https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-international-relations-here-s-why-i-left-49313d23065------------------------------------------
You don't negotiate what is right with the regime of China. You comply, leave the market, or disappear.
Voluntarily complicit in evil is evil.
The universally accepted exception to free trade, at least when I was in the export business, is that you don't get to empower America's enemies and adversaries, no matter the profit.
