The Weibo accounts hosted by Sina, Sohu, NetEase and Tencent will require real name and ID number registration from all users by March 16th, with unregistered users to be denied posting and forwarding capabilities. The announcement was made at the Beijing Weibo Development Management Regulations Seminar held today in Beijing. more ›

A few links to start off your day: China claims that all government agencies will be using legitimate software by the end of 2012. Uh-huh. If they're for real, Microsoft is going to have a pretty sweet year. In an Op-Ed for the NY Times, Georgetown professor Victor Cha predicts that China will move towards effectively adopting North Korea as a province to prevent any possibility of growing US influence. A piece by Damien Ma in the Atlantic this week covers the rise of social media in China, and whether or not it can become a force for making the government more open and accountable: more ›

Who needs articles when pretty charts like this will do? A helpful infographic from G+ gives you the lowdown on the social media situation in China, and how it operates under the yoke of government control. more ›

Barcamp, the "un-conference" where anyone and everyone with a passion for technology can make a 5-minute presentation in front of like-minded geeks, is back in Shanghai for the 9th time. The organisers at Techyizu are expecting around 300 attendees this time, so this will be a fabulous opportunity for you to share your earth-shattering idea, or just to get to know the local tech community. more ›

The new US ambassador to China Gary Locke made his first public appearance this weekend in Beijing, using the opportunity to assure China that its investment in the US dollar is safe. With headlines in Chinese state media like "Locke to rebuild US reputation" and "New US ambassador faces a tough job", the tone in Beijing seems at the very least welcoming, if not optimistic over the arrival of the former US Secretary of Commerce. After burning up the Chinese internets last weekend because he buys his own coffee and carries his own backpack, Locke was asked whether he plans to use social media to speak directly with Chinese citizens, and responded "We look forward to using all forms of communications, including blogging and the electronic media." In the mean time, you can follow him on Twitter at @AmbLocke. Surprisingly, we still can't find a verified account for him on Weibo! But you can follow the U.S. Embassy in Beijing here. more ›

Time for the CNNIC (China Internet Information Network Center - 中国互联网信息中心) 28th edition biannual Chinese internet review! According to CNNIC, an estimated 485 million people in China are believed to be using the internet (almost twice that of the US), as well as 317.68 million mobile internet users. The CNNIC believes that the total number of Chinese internet users can break the 500 million mark by the end of 2011. more ›

How appropriate that Ai Weiwei should choose to end his social media silence by joining the hottest new thing to be blocked on the Chinese internet: Google Plus. He posted his first message yesterday, saying "来了，问候" ("Greetings, I'm here") and has since been added/friended/fanned/whatever-ed by over 7000 people. more ›

Radiohead is now the latest in a growing (if slowly) trend of Western celebs opening Sina weibo accounts to reach out to their Chinese followers. Last Friday, the English mega-stars made their inaugural "tweet", which was a rather lifeless "testing the weibo." Either they didn't expect the resulting response, or they simply didn't care to draft an initial message with any feeling to the Chinese weibo universe. That intial post has, in four days, been forwarded almost 11,000 times and received 4,100 comments, and they have received over 60,000 followers. more ›

This neat little infographic from Endelman Digital maps out the social media habits of internet users all across Asia. The data used comes from PC-based internet users only, leaving out the very substantial chunk of Asians staring at the internet through their phone or at an internet cafe. But anyway, it's pretty to look at, and gives a nice clear peak at user habits, as well as Facebook's slow and steady world domination. (Penn Olson points out that Facebook actually does surpass Wretch in Taiwan, with 58% online penetration.) more ›

To get rich from the internet is glorious: China's biggest social network Renren Inc., is aiming towards a valuation of $743.4 million U.S. dollars for their American initial public offering. According to Bloomberg, at nearly three quarters of a billion, the amount is twice as much as Facebook's future IPO, as valued by Goldman Sachs: more ›

In light of the rumors raging over a Facebook China partnership with Baidu, we decided to check in on the recent China numbers from SocialBakers (a site that monitors Facebook users by country.) Back in February, we saw users more than double following Mark Zuckerberg's visit in December. This month, the numbers are way, way down. Not a gradual drop off, mind you. On April 5, about 40% of Chinese Facebookers disappeared. more ›

Wow. All that speculation, the flirtation, the obsession, but we never thought it would actually happen. Could it be true? According to Sohu and others, yes it could, and probably is. Following all the rumors and Mark Zuckerberg's recent trip to China, Facebook has now reportedly signed a deal with Baidu. more ›

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese government has censored much of the material available online about the uprising. more ›

Just in time for Mark Zuckerberg's rumored China visit (he and his gf travel 2gthr every Dec!!1 ZOMG! lol so romantic) Tech Rice brings us a look at just how Facebook might fare against the local competitors IF (and it's a big if) the market were free from intervention and there was no censorship or invasive meddling among the internetz by the government. Still, they make some interesting points worth noting, considering most have approached Facebook's China rumblings with reactions mostly fluctuating between dismissal or disbelief. Boiled down, here's what Tech Rice has to say: more ›

"The only difference is English-speaking countries treat the internet as technology, while Chinese-speaking countries treat the internet as medicine." more ›

It has not been looking up these past few days for bloggers or twitterers. First there was the bad news on Cheng Jianping being sentenced to a labor camp earlier and then a blogger conference due to convene in Shanghai over the weekend has been forced to cancel. more ›

Twitter may be blocked in China, but it's not like that ever stopped anyone who was genuinely determined to jump over the great firewall. Many of you follow us on our Twitter and while we always knew the Twitter community here is active and growing, we recently stumbled onto a website that gave us some hard proof of it. more ›

Thomas Crampton's blog drew our attention today to a report released back in June by the Data Center of China Internet (DCCI) on the amount of online user-generated content in China. As it turns out, there is a lot of it. more ›

Journalist-turned-digital-media-man Thomas Crampton speaks to Ai Weiwei, one of the most outspoken critics of the Chinese government in the art world, about social media and the impact that it's having on contemporary China. Ai Weiwei is the son of Chinese poet Ai Qing (艾青) who was denounced during the Cultural Revolution and sent to a Xinjiang labour camp. He is known most recently for the investigation of the Sichuan earthquake student casualities.
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Three bloggers from Fujian who spread information online relating to the alleged rape and murder of Yan Xiaoling were found guilty of slander on Friday. AP reported that self-taught legal expert Fan Yanqiong received a two year sentence, whilst two others, You Jingyou and Wu Huaying, will each spend one year in prison. more ›

China spends a significant amount of its online time gaming: each and every of the many internet cafes around the country are filled around the clock with gamers desperately clicking their mice at fantastical MMORPG opponents, or mashing their keyboards in an attempt to master the latest Dance Dance Revolution spin off. But some games are more popular than others, especially the ones that have spawned from social media sites: pretty much everyone in China either plays Happy Farm (or has a Happy Farm in reality), or knows about it. But what other games have become popular over the past year? more ›

• Despite Banning Twitter, 92% of China Netizens Use Social Media [Read Write Web] "According to a recent report, Chinese netizens are twice as likely to use chat and three times more likely to micro-blog, blog and use video conference than American users. The Netpop Research study shows that mainland Chinese citizens are "more likely to share information broadly and openly." This comes as a surprise as the country's censorship has been such a topic of contention. Nevertheless, the study estimates that up to 92% of Chinese netizens use social media, meanwhile, only 76% of US netizens do the same."
• Xinjiang Crackdown and Changing Perceptions of China in the Islamic World? [The Jamestown Foundation] "While it is clearly in China’s interest to resolve the crisis in Xinjiang on terms that promote long-term reconciliation and stability and address the legitimate grievances of the Uighur community, the recent violence will have little impact on Beijing’s relations with the Middle East and wider Islamic world. Turkish and Iranian criticism of China, which at this point has amounted to little more than rhetoric in the first place, will likely prove to be an exception rather than a precursor of future trends. In the long run, China’s diplomatic and economic clout is too important to ignore."
• Beijing Softens Stand on Emissions Cap [Wall Street Journal] "China and the U.S. are still miles apart. China, driven by a historically unprecedented wave of urbanization and industrialization, has recently surpassed the U.S. as the top emitter of greenhouse gasses. But Beijing insists that rich industrialized countries have a responsibility to clean up first. On the other side, countries like the U.S. say big countries like China and India are growing so fast that, unless they accept absolute limits on their greenhouse gasses, the extra pollution from all of their new factories obliterate gains made elsewhere, gutting the value of any deal."

Neocha, a social networking site dedicated to 'connecting China's creative communites', has just released the fifth edition of their webzine Blow Up. The 'zine, a flash-enabled interactive venture, operates under only one tenet: that the webzine can only be composed of "100% original creative works put together specifically for Blow Up". more ›

Rebecca MacKinnon, formerly CNN's Beijing bureau chief and now Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong, writes an open letter to President Barack Obama in the Huffington Post, In Talking to China, Remember its People. She encourages the president to adopt a more nuanced view of the Chinese citizenry:

The point is that while these people are not citizens of a democracy, they are by no means an undifferentiated mass of brainwashed drones. Despite often crude censorship of the Internet and state-run media, despite manipulation, intimidation of dissidents and political astro-turfing of the blogosphere by paid commentators, there is no unity of thought in China today. Civic minded citizens manage to hold wide-ranging debates on the Chinese Internet, in living rooms, dormitories, office break rooms, and classrooms about many public issues. Reading the Chinese blogs I've found all kinds of views about you and your new administration. Many are inspired by your personal story and the idea of truly equal opportunity that you represent. Others hope that you will be more forthright and principled on human rights issues than the Bush administration was. Others are very concerned that you will be protectionist in order to help the American people in the short run, and that this will hurt the Chinese people economically. Others lament cynically that no matter what happens, the rich and powerful in both countries will be the relationship's main beneficiaries.

Just as you have used new technology to engage with the American electorate, your China policy can be greatly strengthened if you conduct a real conversation with the Chinese people. Listen as much as you talk; provide a much-needed platform for open discussion. The U.S. embassy in Beijing should build a Chinese-language website modeled after change.gov, focused not just on U.S.-China relations, but on the range of concerns and interests - from environment, to food safety, to factory safety standards, to education and real estate law -- shared by ordinary Chinese and Americans. Some linguistically talented State Department employees should start blogging in Chinese. Open up the comments sections, see how the Chinese blogosphere responds, then respond to them in turn. Translate some of the Chinese conversation into English for Americans to read and react, then translate it back. Sure there will be censorship problems on the Chinese side, but if enough Chinese find the conversation important and relevant to their lives, the censors ultimately won't be able to stop it. Nor should they want to if they're wise - because the resulting conversation would help both governments build a more stable and rational relationship that would truly benefit the people of both countries.