Now, as the very thought of a U.S. company partnering in tech projects in China draws scrutiny from lawmakers, national security hawks, and human rights advocates, Microsoft could be forced to grapple with tough decisions surrounding the thriving AI ecosystem it fostered there.It was three years before China joined the World Trade Organization, a time when President Bill Clinton actively pushed for closer trade ties with the country, and when AI was mostly the stuff of sci-fi pipe dreams.There are more than 300 scientists and engineers working at its MSRA labs in Beijing and Shanghai, but Microsoft has a much larger research and development group consisting of 6,000 scientists and engineers in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Suzhou as well as in Taiwan and Japan.Before the Trump administration launched its China initiative in 2018, “MSRA’s China government links would have been viewed as a major positive,” Triolo said.Diversity of thought When Microsoft opened an AI Innovation Center in Shanghai in conjunction with the Xuhui District government and a state-owned enterprise group there in 2018, the mayor of the district, Fang Shizhong, praised other “successful” collaborations with Microsoft, such as a startup accelerator program called Microsoft ScaleUp Shanghai."