China’s internet censorship has gotten so bad that it can be explained in one single word – BING!

This week, while traveling in mainland China, I confirmed the report that Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, is the ONLY foreign search engine allowed to operate in the country and it is not good. Bing is so bad as a search engine, that many of the readers of this article will have never heard of it. Most people are used to search engines such as Google or DuckDuckGo, but these are not allowed to operate in China.

In the early 2000s, Yahoo was a major search engine used by many online users, but no longer. At of 2021, Yahoo was also black listed.  I took this screen shot of the Yahoo page while on the internet traveling in the western Chinese city of Guilin.

Before 2020, I was able to use a VPN to get around China’s infamous Firewall, but no longer. The best VPNs on the market are no longer working. China has found a way to defeat them and beat them back. I personally use PrivateVPN and ExpressVPN – both are known as the top VPNs for China, but they no longer work inside. I contacted the technical staff and the company’s online tech support team basically told me that this is a problem they have yet to find a solution for.

Internet censorship in China is more comprehensive and sophisticated than any other country in the world. Amnesty International states that China has “the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world,” and Reporters Without Borders stated in 2010 and 2012 that “China is the world’s biggest prison for netizens.”

The result is that China’s economy is suffering. The education of their citizens is suffering.

The worst part is China is exporting their censorship abilities. Tyrannical governments all over the world are begging China to help them implement the same system in their countries. Some western countries are also starting to look to China’s censorship and see it as the solution to their problems of shutting down opposing thoughts and ideas.

The unthinkable result of such an outcome is that the entire world could be forced to use Bing.