Results tagged “netizens”

The number of China's Internet users have reached 360 million, says ChinaTechNews - a pretty darn sizable market that has attracted considerable attention (and you know, a thousand internet-addiction camp proprietors).

After more than 70 years a large rare fungus collection has been returned to China from Cornell University. Curator Shu Chun Teng smuggled the collection out of the country at the start of World War II just as the Japanese were invading to keep it safe. He later suffered during the Cultural Revolution for "selling China's history." [New York Times]

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!!

Turned off by the stories of falling signs and failing rides at Happy Valley? Maybe the problem is that they let people in when they haven't officially opened yet! The real opening is this Saturday, apparently. [Shanghai Daily]

It's been a while since we've seen any netizen Chinese character creations - the last instance was in May during that whole Grass Mud Horse fiasco - so we're liking this new Hecaitou post (translated by the unfortunately blocked China Digital Times).

• 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."

• China's founding legend may not be true [USA TODAY] "China's founding dynasty may just be a myth, say archaeologists. In a news report in the current Science, writer Andrew Lawler surveys a decade's worth of discoveries suggesting ancient China sprang from distinct regions, rather than possessing a single national culture some 4,300 years ago. "How China became China is no mere academic topic; it goes to the very heart of how the world’s most populous and economically vibrant nation sees itself and its role in the world," Lawler writes."
• Beijing puts giant media marriage on the rocks [Reuters] "China's leading Internet portal, Sina Corp is likely to call off its planned $1.4 billion purchase of Focus Media's core assets if the government fails to bless the marriage by a September deadline. Since Sina unveiled the deal in December — the largest in China's opaque media sector — China's commerce ministry has repeatedly put off reviewing the deal, asking for additional documents, frustrating both Nasdaq-listed companies."
• China: U.S. and Chinese Generals Clash [NYT] "A meeting on Thursday in Beijing between a Chinese military leader and a visiting American army general turned rancorous as the Chinese leader gave a sharp lecture on the failure of the United States to respect China’s interests, according to a witness at the meeting and a report by Xinhua, the state news agency. The argument took place when Gen. Ge Zhenfeng, deputy chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, met with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the chief of staff of the United States Army. "

Who knew that there was enough good will on the Chinese internet to help a beggar afford an automobile? Meet Wang Hao (王昊). By day, he's a mild-mannered, Shanghainese office worker, but upon logging onto the web by night, he becomes Gloomy Hao (郁闷昊), the world's most powerful online beggar.

Hurrah! China has decided to delay indefinitely its plans to force manufacturers to include that Green Dam Youth Escort software on new computers, just hours before the policy was supposed to start. Their reasoning: "Some businesses pointed out the heavy amount of work, time pressures and lack of preparation." The news comes days after various international organizations petitioned the Party, begging for it to rethink the regulations, and PC makers have said that they can't make the deadline. The plan had also engendered threats of violence towards the company responsible for the Green Dam software and huge Chinese netizen backlash. Its indefinite postponement is not only a victory for free speech, but also a victory for anyone who doesn't really want malware on their brand new computer.

Floating around on the Chinese interwebs right now is the very creative Declaration of the Anonymous Netizens 2009. It is an apt description of our mood right now following the mysterious disappearance of all Google apps in China [h/t Rick Martin, @mranti @fumi]

• China's state broadcaster under fire: The pathetic fallacy [The Economist] "ITS charred hulk looms over Beijing’s central business district, a monument to recklessness. The building is part of a colossal, architecturally extravagant complex being built for the state broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV). A fire gutted it three months ago, creating an embarrassing eyesore, for which a senior head has now rolled."
• chinese digital love [56minus1] "Meeting people online is not hard: online acquaintances can be made in general-interest BBS forums, through SNS websites, or over IM software. But finding love in these online relationships might be a little awkward, so a wide range of websites have sprung up to help Chinese netizens meet a special someone to spend the rest of their life with, or just to get together for a quick roll in the hay."
• A Peek Into China's Tech Sector (Long Circle) [Web Newswire] "A look at why western companies are seeking support from China's high technology sector companies. Brian Schwartz, a western journalist granted rare access to one of China's offshore development centres in the eastern city of Shanghai shares his impressions. Seizing on the growing outsourcing trend, China has built a number of offshore development centers (ODC). “As a western business journalist, ODCs seemed mysterious. Questions filled my head, such as how an ODC actually operates and how two teams of engineers on opposite sides of the globe can be able to work together to create a successful product.”"

The scorned Shanghai boyfriend who posted pornographic pictures of his ex after she dumped him has now been detained by the police - for charges of "insulting behavior," according to Shanghai Daily.

"Over the course of time, received feedback from advertisers and readers that they cannot find copies of the newspaper. Then they heard that China Post was shipping the newspapers directly to recycling centers. The newspaper found out that the newspapers were trucked everyday from the post office branches to warehouses and then resold to recycling plants or stations. What is the economic basis? There are 50,000 copies shipped to China Post each day, 312 days per year. China Post pays 32 RMB per copy to the newspaper. Thus, each copy of the newspaper costs China Post only 32 RMB / 312 = 0.10 RMB. Meanwhile, the price for recycled paper is higher than that. So, there you have it." (From ESWN)

The Germans and their notoriously risque advertisements may have bitten off more than they can chew with Doc Morris Pharmaceuticals' most recent condom ads.

• NBA, Tsingtao team for cheerleading show [Hollywood Reporter] "Seven months after inking a multiyear partnership, the NBA and China's Tsingtao Brewery have something to cheer about. The U.S. basketball league and Chinese beer giant are poised to launch a cheerleading competition show next month on China Central Television's sports channel. Winners will travel to the U.S. to train with an NBA dance squad."
• Clocks square off in China's far west [Los Angeles Times] "In Xinjiang province, the Muslim Uighur minority makes a point of observing its own time, not that of local Han Chinese, who adhere to Beijing's imposition of a single time for all of China."
• China Web users turn keen eye back on government [Reuters] "A pair of receipts from an upscale karaoke club sparked the latest Internet-led furor over government corruption earlier this month, ending the career of a mid-level bureaucrat from Liuyang, in southern Hunan province. Scanned and uploaded by a nameless surfer, the dockets listed 47,000 yuan (nearly $7,000) worth of dining, massage and other services, prompting Internet users to ask how a public servant in a local media watchdog could stretch his meager government salary so far. The Liuyang scandal followed a string of similar media storms in recent months, triggered by the Internet exposures of officials enjoying luxury overseas holidays in the name of "study" trips, or photographed wearing expensive-looking watches."

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.

       

From the Netease forums comes the story of 皖怀希望小学 (Anhui Hope Elementary School), a grade school for migrant workers in Shanghai that was mysteriously vandalized and then shut down earlier this year.

• B.C. model's killer sentenced to die in China [CTV British Columbia] "He has two years to show good behaviour and if he proves this his sentence could be lowered to a life sentence to be served in jail or even lighter depending on his performance," CTV's Beijing Bureau Chief Steve Chao reported Friday.
• China's last eunuch spills sex secrets [Reuters] "Only two memories brought tears to Sun Yaoting's eyes in old age -- the day his father cut off his genitals, and the day his family threw away the pickled remains that should have made him a whole man again at death...This turbulent life has been recorded in the "The Last Eunuch of China" by amateur historian Jia Yinghua, who over years of friendship drew out of Sun the secrets that were too painful or intimate to spill to prying journalists or state archivists."
• Lonely Boys and Losers: Are we overstating the fenqing phenomenon? [Jottings from the Granite Studio] "I don’t think that fenqing can be defined by a particular perspective or viewpoint. Certainly adopting the CCP or Han nationalist worldview doesn’t make one a fenqing... For me, the defining characteristic of a fenqing is not strong belief in a particular view, but rather an inability to accept that other valid perspectives might exist."

Looks like it's not just the Yunnan government that's recognized the power of the internet. Today, Premier Wen Jia Bao went online to talk to netizens in a chat jointly hosted by Xinhua and the central government. According to Xinhua, Grandpa Wen began internetting with the country at 3pm and responded to questions about the financial crisis, unemployed migrant workers, Sino-U.S. Relations and - surprisingly - free speech.

The local government in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province has just passed what looks like a wide-reaching law making it illegal for people to publish someone else's 'private information' on the Internet. Offenders can be fined up to 5,000 yuan and could be barred from using the Internet for half a year! The news comes one month after a district housing bureau chief in Nanjing was dismissed after netizens posted photos of him wearing a RMB100,000 watch and smoking a RMB150 a pack cigarettes. The pictures spread like wildfire on the web because those items were seen to be beyond the means of someone living on a civil servant's modest wages.

Of the 22.6% of the country that now has access to the Internet, 162 million blog, while 234 million log on to read up on the news.

Kaiser Kuo, digital guru of Ogilvy China and the man behind the Ogilvy China Digital Watch, throws an interesting light on the growing divide between the anglophone and the Chinese internets. Link to the full video here. [h/t to China Herald]

Following on from the story of a straight couple's clinch on the metro in January, the latest video doing the Chinese internet rounds is an all-girl couple getting frisky on line 2.

     

While yet more versions of the Weng'an, Guizhou riot have surfaced on the internet, the Guizhou provincial government has also finally given its version — which, believe it or not, has sparked off a new pop phrase on the Chinese internet — "I'm here to do push-ups" (我来做俯卧撑的). Netizens are now suddenly flooding the forums with pictures of TV host Ou Zhihang (区志航) doing push-ups in his birthday suit by famous Chinese landmarks such as the Tiananmen in Beijing, Lujiazui in Shanghai and the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Guangzhou.

By Hilary Faxon and Adrienne Wong

Unrequited love has led a young Chinese woman to create a website, and publish all the photos of her ex-boyfriend Li Pengfei (李鹏飞) in the most compromising positions (wanking in bed, performing cunnilingus on her, etc.) in a last ditch attempt to get back at him. The sexy pictures were published along with all the sordid details of how the little casanova was supposed to have tricked her out of her money and love in a website on April 17, and in just two months, the site has attracted over 2 million unique visitors.

Two recent cases have shown that the Chinese Internet is probably more alive than you ever thought it to be...

Right after the earthquake struck, Olympic officials maintained that the torch relay would go on as planned as "the epicenter is not along the route of the torch relay". In fact, one day after the earthquake, China Daily was still offering this really happy and harmonious image of the torch relay. That, unfortunately, did not go down well with people, and after a huge outcry on the Internet which saw Olympic organisers roundly lambasted for being "inhuman", BOCOG , to their credit, has taken a complete about-turn. Apart from this one minute's silence that you see in the video marking the start of the relay, "elaborate ceremonies surrounding the event would be scaled back, procedures simplified and the number of staff reduced".

Since we told you about the MSN (L) China campaign yesterday, the mainstream media in China has lapped it all up. Shanghai's Dragon TV today claimed a whopping 5 million MSN users. And just as you're wondering where the hell they plucked that figure from, Xinhua today quoted a paltry 2.3 million MSN Messenger users, and even has a very authoritative source to back that up:

MSN China spokesman Feng Guangshun released the figure on Thursday. Many more people have opened their MSN accounts to find a message which asked them to add the "red heart" and "China" in front of their signatures.

Continue reading "Dragon TV claims 5 million MSN Messenger users "heart" China"

Jianshuo notes a similar flower bloom on MSN in 2004 and observes:

I just want to share with my friends on this blog about the reality, or to be more exact, about the reaction/perception of what happened in London and Paris. People may evaluate about the result of the protest. It is the time to find a way to communicate a message that is acceptable by the Chinese people. I heard a lot of criticism about the perception, but I only see "different", not right or wrong.