China today is like the promised land for internet companies, with its large and increasingly tech savvy population. The country is simply begging to be brought into the fold of the world wide web, and that seems to be exactly what Microsoft's latest strategy is aiming at.

However it's not as easy to implement as in other countries, with the Chinese government enforcing internet censorship laws of their own. Google themselves had a large fallout with the government over censored search results, resulting in the Google.cn page now redirecting users to its Hong Kong search portal.

According to PCWorld, Microsoft is taking a less direct approach in its offensive, going into an agreement with Baidu, China's largest search engine, to provide English-language search results for the site.

Financial details of the agreement between the two companies haven't been revealed, but the deal is sure to be valuable, seeing as Baidu controls some 80% of the Chinese search engine market.

Through the inclusion of Microsoft's Bing results, the site is hoping to attract an even larger following thanks to coherent English search functions.

A Baidu representative told the New York Times, “More and more people here are searching for English terms... but Baidu hasn't done a good job. So here's a way for us to do it.”

The deal will no doubt bring Microsoft's Bing search engine to many millions of Chinese users, something the company desperately needs. Microsoft is severely lagging behind Google in the search engine race, with the Big G controlling some 91.07% of the worldwide market according to Statcounter's GlobalStats site.

Time will tell how Microsoft will deal with the censoring of certain results, but at this stage it looks like moral choice will be taking a backseat to business.