Well, it looks as though the authorities may have been aware of this whole milk scandal as early as last year. And there are some pretty serious allegations floating around that Baidu might have been paid 3 million yuan to keep the scandal out of its search results.

Update 9/26 (Sorry, the length of this Baidu update is even longer than the original post!): Baidu's PR company denies any involvement with Sanlu, saying:

Baidu was approached by Sanlu but refused to screen out negative news. Baidu respects the truth and their search results reflect that commitment. Suggestion of Baidu's involvement in the larger issue of melamine contaminated milk products came from a forged letter from Sanlu's supposed PR company, advising Sanlu to approach Baidu, that surfaced on the internet. Several reputable news services have written about the issue and dismissed the letter as forged.

Update 9/29: On Sept 26 I emailed back Baidu's PR company, Ogilvy,  to ask specifically which news services called the letter a fake.  I have yet to receive any reply.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal stated that there "is no proof that Baidu played a part in concealing the discovery" but also drew attention to the fact that Baidu "integrates paid advertisements into its regular search listings to a greater extent than most search engines, though it started adding a small two-character tag to identify the ads after users complained. . . For a popular search term such as 'mobile phone,' paid results take up almost the entire first page." The search results that led internet users to believe that a payment was made are summed up on ChinaSmack.com. On September 12, a search for the popular blog post "Sanlu, please do not make excuses in the face of children’s lives and health" (in Chinese, 三鹿,在小朋友的生命健康面前请不要表演) yielded the following: Google 11400 results (screenshot), and Baidu had 11 results (screenshot). On September 13, Google had 11800 (screenshot), and Baidu had 54 (screenshot).  My own search just now (9/26) from within China shows these numbers: Google.com 16300, Google.cn 122000, Baidu.com 3930. On a somewhat related note, the Register recently conducted an investigation of Baidu mp3 search and found searching for ""Blue and White Porcelain 9Sky" gives a blank result on Baidu (Blue and White Porcelin being a song from Jay Zhou, and 9sky being a legal Chinese music site), while Google's first results points towards 9sky, Baidu's mp3 competitor.


Some Perspective

One local TV host posed a question that puts the Government's handling of this whole milk mess into perspective:

Films "don't injure people or take their lives," he wrote. "Why can't
officials inspect baby formula as strictly as they censor films?" LA Times

54 000 Chinese families are certainly wondering the same thing.

Meanwhile, Chinese censorship keep working round the clock to ensure that this scandal is kept low-key. See the following screen demo to watch how YouTube search results for "china + milk" are being blocked out in the Mainland:

 

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