Microsoft's search engine, Bing, is the latest website to be blocked under China's strict online censorship rules

• Bing, Microsoft's search engine, has been blocked in China.
• China heavily censors what information its citizens can access online, a system that has become known as the "great firewall."
• In the past, China has cut off the country's access to several prominent social media platforms and websites, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix.

Microsoft's search engine, Bing, has become the latest website blocked under China's strict rules regarding citizen access to online information. 

The Financial Times reports that the Chinese government blocked Bing for "illegal content," a policy that China has used before to explain away its censorship of online content.

Bing is the latest website to be blocked in China behind what has been nicknamed the "Great Firewall." The more recent major platform to be blocked was Facebook's WhatsApp in 2017.

China has blocked many of the popular social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Tumblr, and Reddit. China also restricts citizen access to several news outlets, including the New York Times, Bloomberg, BBC, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Time.

Read more: China's 'Great Firewall' is taller than ever under 'president-for-life' Xi Jinping

Google's search engine has been unavailable in China since 2011, according to censorship-tracking group Greatfire.org. For many, Bing was one of the last remaining foreign search engines accessible to Chinese citizens.

Google at one point was helping to build a censored search engine for China. However, the project - named Dragonfly - was reportedly shuttered after facing severe backlash from Google employees.

Under China's president Xi Jinping, the government has implemented several policies to increase online censorship. Censorship of online platforms has soared in the seven years since Xi took office, human rights organization PEN America wrote in a 2018 report on China's control over social media.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed Bing was "currently inaccessible in China" in a statement to the Financial Times. Microsoft did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. 

Social media users in China posted photos to Twitter showing that their access to Bing's China site, cn.bing.com, was blocked.

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