Attempts to input words in Chinese such as "democracy" prompted an error message from the site: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Other phrases banned included the Chinese for "demonstration", "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence".
It was possible to enter such words within blogs created using MSN Spaces, but the move to block them from the more visible section of the site highlights the willingness of some foreign internet companies to tailor their services to avoid upseting China's Communist government.
Beijing has long sought to limit political debate on the internet and is in the throes of a campaign to force anybody who operates a website to register with the central government.
What does this have to do with Zimbabwe? Well, a week ago I noted that Mugabe was being helped by China to develop ways to monitor internet using and blogs...so does that mean that China is illegally taking the information that is given them by Microsoft and exporting it to other tyrannical governments? I have no idea, but Inquiring Minds Want to Know.....
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