A second U.S. Senator has attacked Microsoft’s operations in China, adding to a wave of criticism from human rights groups following a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation about the way it censors its Bing search engine in the country.
Sen. Marco Rubio, Republican from Florida, said in an emailed statement that there’s "no defending” such compliance from any U.S. company. Bloomberg’s story found that Bing in China is removing an increasing amount of information about human rights, democracy, climate change and other topics to satisfy Beijing.
"Every company doing business in China makes concessions to a genocidal, authoritarian regime,” Rubio said. "American companies try to rationalize their choices to U.S. lawmakers and regulators, but there is no defending censorship at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party. It comes down to this: every American company that chooses to work in China gives the Chinese Communist Party another opportunity to achieve its goal of overpowering the United States. It really is that simple.”