Baidu, Inc.
Headquartered in China, Baidu provides a wide range of internet services, including a social media platform, cloud storage, and Baidu Search, its flagship service, which dominates the Chinese search engine market. The company has been actively developing AI and autonomous driving in recent years.
Baidu ranked ninth this year, tying with its Chinese peer Alibaba. The company made notable progress in its overall performance, thanks to particularly important improvements to its governance procedure.
Although China's crackdown on the tech industry, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic, officially ended in 2023, the government has maintained tight control over online information. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s national internet regulator, continued to launch frequent internet “clean-up” campaigns. One of its most recent initiatives targeted algorithm-related issues, including filter bubbles, big data discrimination, and targeted advertising. Despite heavily relying on recommendation algorithms across its services— including Baidu Search, China’s dominant search engine—Baidu lacked sufficient transparency regarding its use of algorithms. While it clearly disclosed how algorithms flagged prohibited content and briefly explained content recommendation systems, it did not clearly detail how its targeted advertising system worked or indicate how user information fed into the development of algorithmic systems.
Given China’s strict regulatory environment and Baidu’s notorious track record in governing ads on its platforms, content moderation remained another challenge for the company. In April 2023, Baidu—along with several social media platforms— received a warning from China’s internet regulator for failing to take down harmful content, including pornography and gambling information.
Baidu also faced scrutiny internationally. Sustainalytics, a U.S.-based ESG rating agency, downgraded Baidu and its Chinese peer Tencent due to their role in helping expand China’s system of internet control. Despite this, Baidu failed to regularly disclose detailed data on restricted content and accounts, whether such actions were taken to enforce company policies or comply with government demands.
Baidu was relatively more transparent about its privacy policies and practices than about freedom of expression. However, the company did not clarify the types of encryption it provided to users and disclosed limited details on how it manages its vulnerability reporting program. A 2024 Citizen Lab report echoed RDR’s findings on Baidu’s user data encryption and raised concerns over vulnerabilities in Chinese cloud-based keyboard apps, including Baidu’s. The research found critical security flaws that could expose user data during transmission due to improper encryption. Baidu addressed the most severe vulnerabilities, but left some issues unresolved.
The 2025 RDR Index: Big Tech Edition covers policies that were active on August 1, 2024. Policies that came into effect after August 1, 2024, were not evaluated for this benchmark.
Scores reflect the average score across the services we evaluated, with each service weighted equally.
We rank companies on their governance, and on their policies and practices affecting freedom of expression and privacy.
Baidu remained the most transparent Chinese company among those assessed in terms of governance procedures, yet there was still significant room for improvement in its overall transparency. In addition to its commitment to respecting users’ human rights (G1), the company established a governance oversight mechanism extending from its board to its management to address human rights concerns, including those related to freedom of expression and privacy (G2). However, Baidu provided limited disclosure on its human rights due diligence. While it conducted a regular human rights impact assessment (G4a), the company did not disclose further details about the scope or findings of this assessment. It remained unclear whether Baidu evaluates risks associated with new business activities (G4a), policy enforcement (G4b), targeted advertising (G4c), or its algorithmic systems (G4d).
Baidu remained one of the least transparent companies regarding how it safeguards users' freedom of expression. While it disclosed some figures on what content it restricted to enforce company policies across its major services (F4a, F4b), the data lacked detail and was not published consistently. Additionally, Baidu did not provide any data on ad restrictions (F4c) or content and account removals in response to external requests (F6, F7). Baidu did, however, outline how advanced technologies, such as AI and large models, were used to detect prohibited content (F3a). The company also offered some insight into how its algorithmic systems recommended content to users and elaborated on key principles behind these systems. However, its explanations lacked clarity in certain areas, such as how variables affect recommendation results (F12).
Despite major improvements to its public disclosures on privacy protections, Baidu’s overall transparency remained low in this category, largely due to its persistent lack of disclosure regarding government demands for user information (P10a, P11a). While Baidu provided clarity on how it directly collects user data (P3a), it was far less forthcoming about how it infers user information (P3b) and reported only fragmented details on data collection through third-party tools like cookies (P9). Additionally, although the company now offers users the opportunity to obtain a copy of their personal data (P8), it remained silent on how long it retains user information (P6).