Why Microsoft Is Quietly Abandoning China | China Decode
Scott Galloway, Ed Elson, Alice Han, and James Kynge examine Microsoft's quiet pullback from mainland China, covering piracy, cloud strategy, economic data, and extreme weather.
The gist
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Microsoft never really won China: over 90% of Chinese PCs ran pirated software in the 1990s and 2000s, gutting any real revenue.
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The retreat is not a full exit. ByteDance and Tencent still use Microsoft Azure to reach Western AI models and run global operations.
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Fixed asset investment in China fell 6.7% year-over-year in the first seven months of 2026, with real estate down 19.2%, signaling a deeper slowdown.
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Typhoon Dolphin traveled 6,000km and lasted 16 days, about three times the typical lifespan, pointing to a new pattern of more extreme storms in coastal Asia.
The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway and This Week in Startups agree on 3 things
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1:50
Azure
· "A small but important sliver of Microsoft remains in China. That's the ability to sell Azure cloud and AI..."
4:07
The China Dream
· "There was an author Joe Studwell who wrote a wonderful book about this phenomenon just over 20 years ago."
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