Do you have a gmail account and a customized U.S. google news page (news.google.com)? I wonder if that's the workaround, and you can use the search feature from the news page (gives you the option of searching news or web pages). I was in Beijing for 10 days and don't recall getting a China-based search engine, and it surely would have jumped out. Why don't you try that and see if it's a workaround?