Crackdown

A massive new crackdown on the Internet in China has started and it is targeting some of the major websites including Baidu, which has much of the search engine market, and runner-up Google.

State television reported that China’s Ministry of Public Security and six other government agencies announced the campaign at a meeting on Monday. That report was accompanied by videos of officials hauling digital equipment away from one unidentified office.

The meeting ‘decided to launch a nationwide campaign to clean up a vulgar current on the Internet and named and exposed a large number of violating public morality and harming the physical and mental health of youth and young people.’

It further said that 19 Internet operators and websites named had failed to swiftly cut ‘vulgar’ content and had not heeded warnings from censors.

Interesting that both Baidu and Google, when contacted, said they knew nothing about it.

According to a report on an official website, Cai Mingzhao, a deputy chief of the State Council Information Office, who chaired the meeting, said, ‘Some websites have exploited loopholes in laws and regulations. They have used all kinds of ways to distribute content that is low-class, crude and even vulgar, gravely damaging mores on the Internet.’

He told officials to ‘fully grasp the gravity and threat of the vulgar current infesting the Internet’ and said law-breakers face ’stern punishment.’
Source: Reuters

China will expand subsidies for farmers’ purchase of home appliances nationwide. This according to the General Office of the State Council which said it will start February 1.

At present, subsidies only apply to rural residents in 12 provinces, or less than half of the total.

The General Office of the State Council said the range has been extended. Farmers goods including computers will be eligible for  the subsidies.

The Office said local governments must clamp down on sales of substandard appliances to farmers and ensure good quality and after-sales service to stimulate rural consumption.
Source: China View

       3G. Always the
             bridesmaid,
         never the bride

China’s state council said it has approved licenses for higher-speed 3G mobile networks, a move expected to help bring higher-end services to phone users in the country. Important that no exact official date has been declared.

This is a major step forward but it is not, as has been generally reported, the automatic start of the 3G mobile network in China this month. For that we need wait for another announcement which should be, say, before the end of January.

China Mobile is set to receive approval for a network using TD-SCDMA technology, a standard backed by Beijing.
China Unicom will geta WCDMA license.
China Telecom will get a CDMA 2000 license.

WCDMA and CDMA 2000 standards are mature and globally accepted but come with quite steep royalties the Chinese government has sought to avoid.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry of Information, which expects Chinese telecommunications companies to spend about $41 billion on the next-generation phone equipment, has said the licenses are due to be issued by early 2009.

Which you can, if you like, interpret as meaning 3G will start in January or, perhaps, that it will happen before June 30. Understand there is no suggestion that the systems are ready to go. We are talking about permissions and network building her.

The mobile operators, though, may not be ready just yet to launch their 3G services.

        TD-SCDMA

China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou said the acceptance of TD-SCDMA among consumers is still limited. The Beijing Times quoted Wang Jianzhou as saying more than 40% of complaints from trial customers concern the quality of phones available, and also on call handover when a user moves out of a 3G coverage area into a 2G zone.

And to make matters worse, according to Wang Jianzhou the frequency of technical glitches on the core network equipment is still high.

Thus it would be wrong to read the announcement of approval of 3G as being an indication it will be immediately available. When it is up and running it will be the time to run headlines which say: ‘China gets 3G.’ China will get 3G. It has not got it yet.
Source: CNET News and The Standard

      China internet users

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) has reported that more than 20 million Chinese, or 68.6% of the country’s Internet users, are using the web to get their main source of news.

CASS, a top academic institution, released the figure in the Blue Book of China’s Economy (2009.

Zhu Huaxin, author of the report, said that disasters such as snow storms during the Lunar New Year holiday, the massive earthquake that struck the southwestern Sichuan province in May as well as the Olympics stimulated the growth of the online news population.

He  said, ‘The year 2008 saw rapid development and wide application of the Internet in China.’

At the end of June, Chinese Internet users hit 253 million, the most in the world. The latest official figures put users at 290 million. That’s 80 million more Internet users than in 2007 according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
Source: China.com

        Donghua University

Despite the global financial crisis, Shanghai’s  software industry grew 25.1% in the first nine months of this year.

The government is strongly backing the software industry. Shanghai will adopt locally designed software in its Metro systems and Chinese-designed aircraft and aims to encourage the software industry’s development in the current tough environment.

The Shanghai Municipal Economy and Informatization Commission said that, in the first three quarters, the revenue for the local software industry was RMB73.88 billion ($10.82 billion), a 25.1% growth year-on-year,

Software enterprises, academic institutions and related industry clients have established an alliance in Shanghai to boost home-grown software. The alliance consists of 20 organizations, including China Standard Software  and Donghua University.

The commission said Shanghai’s Metro system has adopted locally designed software at a third of the cost of the previous system.
Source: Shanghai Daily

                 TongTech

CCID Consulting, a leading research, consulting and IT outsourcing service provider, recently released its report on China’s middleware market.

It said that it is the market with the most rapid development in China’s software industry.

In 2008, the size of China’s middleware product market reached RMB1.546 billion, up 19.2% year-on-year.

The market is mainly dominated by IBM, Oracle (BEA) and TongTech. IBM’s position seems impregnable.

Although Oracle acquired BEA, its market share is still behind after IBM.

As for market segments, middleware is expanding in finance, telecom, enterprise-grade markets. The top three middleware manufacturers in China have different industry bases: IBM. the finance industry; Oracle (BEA) the telecom industry; TongTech has made breakthroughs in enterprise-grade market and e- government fields.
Much more HERE.
Source: Presswire

       Inspur logo

Chinese PC and server maker Inspur is developing fault-tolerant computers with assistance from the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The company said that it will invest as much as RMB1 billion in the development.

Fault-tolerant design, also known as fail-safe design, is a design that enables a system to continue operation, possibly at a reduced level (also known as graceful degradation), rather than failing completely, when some part of the system fails.

The term is most commonly used to describe computer-based systems designed to continue more or less fully operational with, perhaps, a reduction in throughput or an increase in response time in the event of some partial failure.

Fault-tolerant computer research is one of the key research projects of China. It is crucial for national information safety and has been widely used by clients in finance, telecom, taxation, as well as by governments.

For a long time, the fault-tolerant computer market in China has been dominated by foreign brands.

Inspur has made much headway in research and development of high-end computers and servers. Now it is trying to push forward on fault tolerant computers.
Source: Stock Market Info and Research

                    Tencent

Tencent, China’s biggest instant message service provider under the name QQ, aims to expand its business scope in the online music sector.

The Shenzhen-based firm reported QQ Music has already attracted 100 million users, and its peak concurrent user base has reached 2.5 million.

QQ Music’s advantage includes its huge user base, specially designed music player tool and other functions.

China’s online music industry revenue is expected to reach RMB200 million ($29.4 million) this year, and the figure should hit RMB450 million in 2009, according to research firm ChinaNZX.com.

Tencent has brands like Li Ning and LG advertising on its music web pages and is pursuing other firms.
Source: China.org.cn

     Other images from
          Daqi.com

A Chinese Web site and a netizen were ordered by the People’s Court in Beijing to compensate the plaintiff.

The case was about an user of Renrou Search Engine who launched a ‘virtual lynching’ by encouraging users to search for and reveal the targets’ private information.

The defendants, Daqi.com, Tianya.com and a netizen named Zhang Leyi, who established orionchris.cn, were sued by Wang Fei for posting his deceased wife’s blog.

His wife, Jiang Yan, killed herself after discovering her husband was having an affair.

The personal blog recorded the two-months preceding Jiang Yan’s suicide.

The blog revealed the real name and addresses of Wang Fei. This caused many netizens to publicly harass Wang and his family.
Source: China Digital Times

     Always wear a tie when
     doing your tax returns

A survey conducted by China Youth Daily and Sina.com suugests a large number of the country’s Internet users are not satisfied with government websites and want them to be more ‘interactive’ and ‘helpful’.

Less than 7% of respondents thought them ’satisfactory’.

China has the world’s largest Internet population.

Analyze the mission statements of the various e-government initiatives it appears increasingly the role of government is being framed to incorporate service delivery, adopting a business model and terminology to refer to its function and duties towards the nation.

For China, which has only just celebrated its 30th anniversary regarding opening up and reform towards a more market orientation, the present global momentum leading towards an online interactive climate is a challenge.

E-government is a signal that the old way of doing things will need to be refined.

A constraint for China today, a nation so diverse, is that there are many markets within one greater market. We  live in interesting times.
Source: China Daily