Microsoft Playing The Mandarin's Game In China...

Or are they? [Via Instapundit] Roger Simon reports that Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal bans the use of such words as democracy and freedom from its site.

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".

I find Microsoft's business policy in China somewhat perplexing but from a different angle.

Estimates are that Microsoft Windows piracy rate is as high as 90% in China. This study says that software piracy in the Asia region is not as prevalent as in Eastern Europe but that 3 of the top four countries with the highest piracy rates are in Asia. I am sure that Japan is the one that brings the averages down in the region.

China............92%
Vietnam........91%
Ukraine..........89%
Indonesia.......88%

So, why does Microsoft take such a soft approach to both piracy in China and the rest of Asia and pander to the absurd needs of the Chinese propaganda machine by banning content and restricting the usage of certain words?

My theory is that Microsoft probably knows that the fight against piracy is futile. But if they get China and the rest of Asia addicted to the operating system, like the British use of opium to subdue China in the middle of the 19th century, they will have much more leverage in the future.

Newer operating systems may make it more difficult to pirate in the future. And, I imagine that they have done development work in the piracy area but choose not to make pirating a priority now. If, future new operating systems preclude piracy then nations like China will either be forced to buy the new systems, be stuck with the old ones, adopt linux on a wholesale basis or develop their own operating systems. In the future, being stuck with old operating systems may hinder these nation's development and productivity and the newest software many not run on the old systems.

Also, its just not reasonable to expect the people of developing nations to be able to pay for expensive software that may represent months of salary but if incomes rise, there will be a better opportunity to make money for the software vendors. Furthermore, with higher incomes, users may decide the potential problems with using pirated software may outweigh the savings.

So, the pandering to CCP propaganda may just be a short-term phenomenon and when Microsoft gains market based power in China, it will be more difficult for the propagandists to demand such silly things. But Microsoft has little leverage to fight the demands of mad-mandarins today.