chaintimes.com
Two of the biggest internet services in China, Baidu, and Weibo, appear to be taking coordinated censorship effort on keywords of the three major crypto exchanges that cater to Chinese investors. Searching either the Chinese or English names of Huobi, Binance, and OKEx on both the desktop and mobile versions of Google-like search giant Baidu now shows zero search results, as reported by The Block. This is the first known instance that the Chinese Internet website is censoring search results based on keywords relating to the cryptocurrency space.
Chinese major website censors three major crypto exchange searches.
It appears the censorship effort on Baidu is taking effect gradually as Baidu has not yet banned search results on keywords that contain the name of the three crypto exchanges. For instance, searching for “Huobi app download” instead of only “Huobi” in Chinese on Baidu still generates millions of results. Chinese social media platform Weibo is taking a similarly coordinated measure. Currently, searching for any keyword, or combination of keywords, containing either the English or Chinese names of Huobi, OKEx, and Binance, generates no search results.
China continues to crack down on cryptocurrencies.
China has been actively cracking down on the crypto market with a ban on bitcoin mining and trading. Now the two internet giants are targeting top-tier crypto exchanges that serve Chinese crypto traders at this point. Other crypto exchanges or terms like Bitcoin or Ethereum are not censored on Weibo and Baidu. Changji prefecture government in Xinjiang issued a notice to shut down bitcoin miners in the Zhundong Economic-Technological Development Park, a notable bitcoin mining hub in the region, earlier the same day. The People’s Bank of China is on the verge of issuing digital yuan to the general public.