Results tagged “chineseinternet”

The Business Insider recently published a bar graph comparing the internet activities of United States of users with those of Chinese users. While some activities, like pursuing an online education or watching online video (one in the same, really), were statistically similar between the two counties, other activities were far more common in one country than the other, revealing some fundamental differences in Chinese and American tendencies.

• Black Future: The coal bosses of Shanxi are tired of being the government's whipping boys [Forbes] "One of the most reviled and reclusive villains in the Chinese economy has been the coal mine boss. The archetypal robber baron of the Chinese Gilded Age, he has been caricatured as ruthless, greedy, corrupt and uncivilized. Now the coal mine boss is casting himself as a human rights case. The government of China's coal-rich Shanxi Province, southwest of Beijing, is trying to drive almost all private mine owners out of business, forcing more than 1,500 mines to shut down or sell out to state-owned enterprises at prices so low, coal bosses say, that some may go bankrupt."
• Google's Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years [Read Write Web] "Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time."
• The French Connection’s China Connection [WSJ] "A French court Tuesday sentenced two businessmen convicted in the arms-for-oil “Angolagate” scandal that implicated 42 defendants including top politicians, civil servants and even the son of late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand. One of the two, and a chief defendant in the case, is Pierre Falcone, who’s now in jail pending an appeal on the charges he helped arrange shipments of $790 million worth of weapons to Angola in the mid-1990s."

According to a presentation by MTV about youth and social networking in Asia, China is the only country where people actually have more ONLINE friends than offline friends. We guess that's not so surprising coming from the Land of 1,000 Internet Addiction Camps, but it still makes us want to go all Ogre on these kids. NERDS!!

• Taiwan to Allow Dalai Lama Visit [NY Times] "The president of Taiwan said Thursday that he would allow the Dalai Lama to visit the island next week, a move likely to infuriate China and jeopardize rapidly improving relations between Taipei and Beijing. The Tibetan spiritual leader is expected to arrive Monday for a six-day tour of southern Taiwan, which was ravaged by a typhoon three weeks ago that left at least 650 dead."
• Thousands of Myanmar refugees flowing into Yunnan [Go Kunming] "An attempt by Myanmar's ruling military junta to bring rebel ethnic fighters under its control has led to escalating tensions, reports of fighting and a looming specter of war, with thousands of refugees fleeing into southwestern Yunnan, according to a Reuters report. China- and Thailand-based media outlets have reported that on August 8 the Myanmar army sent hundreds of troops to the region of Kokang in the country's northeastern Shan State. Kokong, which has held to a 20-year ceasefire with the Myanmar government in Yangon, is home to many ethnic Chinese as well as other ethnic groups."
• Conrad Black: Much ado about China [National Post] "Overblown announcements heralding the supposed coming of the Age of China have become a staple of journalistic futurism in recent years. When Maclean's magazine banners across the top of its cover "When China Rules the World," as it did last month -- and it is not a Monty Python send-up of swarms of incomprehensible people in Mao suits -- I know it is time to raise a peep of dissent."

First, we found Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on Facebook. Then, there was the week-long China 2.0 Tour in November. And it looks like China's fascination with dominating the internet is showing no signs of slowing. Last week, the national campaign for the use of the new domain name, ".中国 (China)", finally took off in Beijing.

By Matt Doyle

Interested in learning about the man behind one of our favorite websites on China issues, Danwei? The Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club is bringing us the man responsible, Jeremy Goldkorn, to give a talk tomorrow on the internet in China. He will discuss his own experiences in the blogosphere, as well as topics ranging from the media industry and regulation and the impact of the net on China's society and people.

Avid Youtube watchers rejoice, the days you struggled against the slow crawl of the Chinese Internet may soon be a relic of the past! Shanghai's Science and Technology Commission announced that the city will be getting an Internet service 50 to 100 times faster than current speeds sometime this year.

It's been a month since the online internet porn crackdown, and now China is planning to expand its crusade to cellphone websites, chat rooms, video download services and instant messenger groups.

Of no surprise to most people, the Baidu scandal has caused the search engine to lose some of its massive lead over Google in the Chinese market. While the company says its taken steps to correct the problems underscored by a CCTV expose, and U.S. investors are confident that Google won't ever win the race in this country, the numbers are still enough to make Baidu sweat a little. Google's share of the local online ad market rose 4.4% to 27.8% from the prior year. Baidu's rise was smaller, at 2.9% during the same period. Meanwhile, 4Q Internet traffic levels shrunk at Baidu, but gained at Google. Source: Bloomberg

By Kenneth Tan and David Feng

China currently has no privacy laws, but that may change, if lawyer Yu Guofu from the Beijing-based Internet Society of China has his way. In an interview with the China Youth Daily 《中国青年报》, Yu made the following comments:

There is no privacy protection law in China so far, nor is there a single item in any laws and regulations that covers privacy protection... The only mention of privacy is in a judicial explanation by the Supreme Court of China that focused on the protection of the right of reputation... Moreover, there had been scarcely any research on the right of privacy for a long time in China...

"And let's not forget the bad influence those pictures have exerted on Chinese Internet users which include not only adults but children too," he said, saying that the picture would do "unredeemable damage" to children...

Continue reading "Someday, China may look back at the Edison Chen scandal and thank the man for its privacy laws"

People’s Daily reports that Tianjin-based China National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre warns Chinese Internet users of a Valentine’s ‘virus’ which may spread through emails and on-line chat services (such as QQ and MSN): watch out for "Vbs_Valentin.A" in “attachments disguised with Valentine blessings for February 14.” Now who would like to mislead us naïve lovers on such a day like February 14?

Ready for the great big leap over the 200M marker?

If you have been reading Shanghaiist for a while now, you will realise that a major focus of our work is to bring to the attention of the English-language reader stuff that is happening on the Chinese Internet. Some time ago, we told you about how the Chinese internet rarely links to foreign websites. In fact, only six percent of the Chinese Internet’s hyperlinks leave China’s webspace. Like it or not, the Chinese Internet will become the largest segment of the Internet very soon, and we think there is a great need to bridge the huge chasm between it and the rest of the web.

So both Myspace and Friendster have their own China versions. Now Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy Digital China Watch points us to a report on China Business News (第一财经日报) which cites an “industry insider” who says that Facebook plans to release additional language interfaces and intends to enter the China market as early as December this year. The paper also claims that "Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site like MySpace has done with MySpace.cn, but will instead acquire an existing SNS in China."

In other Shanghaiist news, our favourite media blog Danwei has offered your correspondent a very special Toilet Bowl Award as part of their recent Model Worker's Awards for "posting regularly about news that no one else is finding, and translating some of the more interesting stuff on the Chinese Internet". We have also been singled out for our "excellent contribution to the toilet sector, for the posts Shanghai artist's Nike poo, and especially for the video displayed at this page: New bidet that doubles as enema and colon cleanser." We wish we could take all the credit for it but the first story came in as a tip while the second one was a quite a boo-boo on our part. We've actually since unpublished the post (but somehow it still appears), reason being, one of our colleagues already wrote about it earlier this year. Anyhow, we shall graciously accept our toilet bowl and promise to polish it religiously.

Shanghaiist was surprised today to see well over 7,000 visitors coming in via this post today, and we were curious to know why so many people were Googling Hairong Tiantian, who caused a storm last year by not only posting saucy images of herself on her blog but also soliciting photos of limp penises.

ChinaTechNews.com directed us to this press release about a publicly traded company named Admax Resources, Inc., and why it is changing its name to China YouTV Corp. The reason is simple, really: Admax has decided to follow the well worn path many companies take — the one where they go from mining minerals in Canada to online video sharing in China.

The previous week's hits and misses

Give me a platform, and I will show you the miracle that takes place from virtuality to reality. I want to be on stage, and you will see that I am more than just an "Internet celeb". You will see a talented individual rise from an Internet celeb to a real-life star. I will not disappoint you.

Last year, we told you about some self-obsessed Chinese netizens who became online celebrities. Just this last week, a few new additions to this Chinese pantheon of Internet idols have emerged that threaten to put Muzimei and Furong Jiejie to shame. We will introduce them to you over the next few days.

Photo by idogu taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos page, use Flickr and tag your photos "shanghaiist". Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site.

Image of internet police from ESWN.