US technology giant has abruptly suspended some services for a number of clients in mainland China, fuelling speculation about accelerating technological decoupling between the world’s two largest economies.
美国科技巨头微软已突然暂停对中国大陆部分客户的某些服务，引发了关于世界两大经济体之间加速技术脱钩的猜测。
Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University sent a notice to faculty and students on Tuesday night stating that Microsoft 365 services – including OneDrive, OneNote, and SharePoint – will cease operations on Thursday afternoon. “Please log in to Microsoft 365 as soon as possible to retrieve personal data and files,” the university’s network and information centre said in its email, which was seen by the South China Morning Post.
位于广州的中山大学在周二晚上向教职员工发送通知，称微软 365 服务——包括 OneDrive、OneNote 和 SharePoint——将在周四下午停止运营。“请尽快登录微软 365 以检索个人数据和文件，”该大学的网络与信息中心在其电子邮件中表示，该邮件被《南华早报》看到。
A staff member on the university’s IT help desk said it was Microsoft’s choice to terminate the school’s business account.
大学 IT 帮助台的一名工作人员表示，终止学校商业账户是微软的选择。
The move comes just days after BGI Group, a leading Chinese genomics company, suddenly lost access to its own Microsoft services, including the Outlook email system and OneDrive cloud storage platform. Two employees of the company noted that the company was caught off guard by the sudden service suspension, which forced it to scramble for alternatives, including the emergency use of the WPS Office suite, from Beijing-based Kingsoft. The termination of service was first reported by Nikkei Asia.
此举发生在 BGI 集团，一家领先的中国基因组公司，突然失去对其微软服务的访问权，包括 Outlook 电子邮件系统和 OneDrive 云存储平台的几天后。该公司的两名员工指出，公司对突如其来的服务暂停感到措手不及，这迫使他们寻找替代方案，包括紧急使用北京金山软件公司的 WPS Office 套件。服务终止的消息最早由《日经亚洲》报道。
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. It has not made any public statements explaining the reason for the suspensions.
微软未立即回应周三的评论请求。它尚未发表任何公开声明解释暂停的原因。
BGI Group has been a target of US authorities. Several of its subsidiaries have been added to the US Commerce Department’s trade blacklist in recent years.
BGI 集团一直是美国当局的目标。近年来，其多个子公司已被列入美国商务部的贸易黑名单。
Microsoft has recently made other moves to pull back from China. On Monday, Wicresoft, a Microsoft joint venture primarily engaged in providing advisory, solutions and product support, notified hundreds of employees that they were being laid off. In an email to staff, the company attributed the lay-offs to “geopolitical shifts and changes in the global business environment”.
微软最近采取了其他措施以减少在中国的业务。周一，微软的合资企业 Wicresoft，主要从事提供咨询、解决方案和产品支持，通知数百名员工他们将被裁员。在给员工的电子邮件中，公司将裁员归因于“地缘政治变化和全球商业环境的变化”。
In response to the Wicresoft news, a Microsoft representative said that “reports that we may be ceasing operations in China are inaccurate”.
针对 Wicresoft 的消息，微软的一位代表表示：“关于我们可能在中国停止运营的报道是不准确的。”
Earlier this year, Microsoft also closed its AI Lab in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park. The project was once touted as an example of collaboration between a US technology company and Pudong district’s innovation hub.
今年早些时候，微软还关闭了位于上海张江高科技园区的人工智能实验室。该项目曾被誉为美国科技公司与浦东新区创新中心合作的典范。
Meanwhile, the Chinese government has been pushing to reduce its use of Microsoft systems. An outage last July of Microsoft’s Windows system, caused by Texas-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, left China relatively unscathed, in part because the country’s key infrastructure providers – from airlines to banks – had reduced reliance on foreign services.
与此同时，中国政府一直在推动减少对微软系统的使用。去年七月，由于总部位于德克萨斯州的网络安全公司 CrowdStrike 导致的微软 Windows 系统故障，使中国相对未受影响，部分原因是该国的关键基础设施提供商——从航空公司到银行——已减少对外国服务的依赖。
Advertisement