Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer defended the company's presence in China yesterday, saying it was more helpful in easing censorship than the tougher approach of rival Google.

Mr Ballmer said that while he respected Google's decision not to bow to censorship in China, Microsoft believed it was more productive to engage Beijing in dialogue rather than take on a country's legal system.

Human rights groups and members of the US Congress have accused technology giants including Microsoft and Yahoo! of abetting China's web censorship machine, dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".

Mr Ballmer, visiting Singapore on an Asian tour, told journalists: "Google made another choice, I respect that they made another choice.

"We think we are trying to help reduce the possibility of censorship by being there. I think our choice will do more to help promote free speech than the choice they've chosen."

He said that in the event of a formal directive by China's government to remove information on its site, Microsoft's policy was to comply, out of consideration for its workers' safety.

"If we get a proper request from the Chinese government, we take the information down, otherwise we put our 2,000 employees in China at risk," said Mr Ballmer. "But we also put up a big notice that says we took something down in China and we leave it outside of China."