Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal has banned the words
"democracy" and "freedom" from parts of its website in an apparent
effort to avoid offending Beijing's political censors.

Users of the joint-venture portal, formally launched last month, have
been blocked from using a range of potentially sensitive words to
label personal websites they create using its free online blog
service, MSN Spaces.

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.

MSN this year became the first big international internet service to
win a licence to offer value-added telecoms services in China, a coup
that was possible in part because of its decision to team up in a
joint venture with Shanghai Alliance Investment (Sail). Sail is an
investment arm of the Shanghai city government. Microsoft has also
been careful to ensure that news and other content offered through the
Chinese MSN portal are provided by local partners who can work within
the informal and shifting boundaries set by China's unseen army of
internet censors.

The MSN Spaces service, however, is directly operated by the joint
venture, Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology, in which
Microsoft holds a 50 per cent stake.

MSN on Friday declined to comment directly on the ban on sensitive
words, but its China joint venture said users of MSN Spaces were
required to accept the service's code of conduct. "MSN abides by the
laws and regulations of each country in which it operates," the joint
venture said. The MSN Spaces code of conduct forbids the posting of
content that "violates any local and national laws".

But while China's ruling Communist Party deals harshly with political
dissenters, there is no Chinese law that bars the mere use of words
such as democracy.