internet - Looking for Chinese eyes

We have started to link up to the international wage indicator project and that means we have to make all kind of choices. The project uses a homepage where two eyes look at you. Now, we had two sets of 'eyes', here and here, where we could pick from.
None of them looked really that Chinese, but we decided to pick number 223, since we thought that came closest. What do you think? Have we picked really Chinese eyes, or should we make a new set?

telecom - China Mobile defers agreement content providers

China's largest mobile phone company, China Mobile, has deferred ongoing agreements with some of their larger content partners, writes TMC Net. Partners involved are QQ's Tencent, Tom.com, Netease, Sina, Yahoo and others.
Suggestions in the market say China Mobile would rather offer these services themselves in stead of working through third parties. For some of the companies involved, most of their revenue would come from their agreement with China Mobile, so a certain panic would be in place.
The move seems to be related to the upcoming 3G-licenses that might change the mobile playing field in China profoundly.

telecom - China Mobile buys into Phoenix TV

China Mobile is moving heavily into content as a preparation for the roll out of 3G mobile phones later this year. Hong Kong media report it has will buy this week a major stake in Phoenix TV, a Chinese language station owned by News Corp of Rupert Murdoch. Costs are estimated to be US$ 180 million.
While the 3G licenses still have to be issued, different parties are trying to secure enough content to offer to the consumers when they have to roll out the system.

internet - Google blocked or disrupted

At least the Financial Times has it more correct than others: it says access to Google seems to be disrupted, while RSF from Paris earlier this week called it a block of the search engine, earlier this week. When you cannot get the service it might only be semantics, but it does differ.
Last week the internet filters seem to have made overtime again, suffered from a regular shortage of capacity and caused problems not only for Google.com but als for Gmail. That is unfortunately a regular feature. Andrew Lih documented the process and actually blames China Netcom (CNC) for the failing service. Quite different from the block RSF is talking about.

Update: Asiapundit summerizes the problems in getting access to Google-services:

There are problems with Google’s service but these are being massively overstated by RSF.

media - Reporter seeks 'disclosure' by law

The China Media Project from Hong Kong University writes about a reporter who is suing the Shanghai government based on a regulation on the "openess of information". Chinese media seem to have been debating the issue already, but only now the issue shows up at my radar. (tipped by the China Digital Times.)

Southern Metropolis Daily, one of the country's top newspapers, called the pending lawsuit "historic". "We salute this reporter's courage, and even more we hope people pay attention to this new topic of discussion", the paper said.

Shanghai reporter Ma Cheng is suing the City Planning Bureau after the Bureau repeatedly avoided his requests for interviews. The court has accepted the case.
It is the first time a reporter challenges the government in court and other media are speculating that this might be the beginning of a radical change in China's media.

Update: It is now one week later and the China Digital Times reports that Ma Cheng has suddenly dropped the suit, without giving any reason.

internet - The added value of a book publisher

This morning I have send this message to the Tidbits-list of the Poynter Institute, hoping for some smart input. Maybe here my readers have also their thoughts:

My already longstanding plan is to write a book on how the internet is causing a communication revolution in China, targeting an often ignorant outside world. Last year the plan did not work out. Too busy, no decent sponsorships and actually I was so familiar with the subject i feared it
would bore me to death.
Now, the situation is changing. I'm getting involved in Chinese plans to double the number of internet users from 115 million now to 230 million in five to ten years time using 3G mobile connections. That is a too big story not to write up.
The plan is to write my book on "The second communication revolution in
China"partly with the help of the audience of my weblog I explained that this morning to the
publisher who agreed last year to publish my original book and he came this morning with a rather frank assessment. "What is our added value for your book," he asked. A fair question in this digital age.
Mostly my gmail account does a good job in removing spam, but last week a messages from www.lulu.com made it to my inbox. The offer: DIY-publishing at virtually no costs. Now, I'm pondering: should I take up that offer, or do you think publishing houses still have added value? Any experiences out there? Can we do it all without publishers?

Sergey Brin

internet - Google-founder admits mistakes in China

The news has been all over the internet, I saw when I woke up this morning, but is too important not to repeat here. In a kind of surprise statement Google-founder Sergey Brin admitted yesterday the company had compromised its corporate principles by giving in to the Chinese censorship.
Google started last year its news search service in Chinese by only allowing government-approved sources on the service. It then launched another censored search engine www.google.cn although its general search engine www.google.com was mostly available to the Chinese users.
According to AP Brin said Google would try to improve its censored version, but might also reverse its course by withdrawing the service. Most customers preferred the non-censored service anyway.
Well, that is not really a surprise, is it?

internet - Microsoft might kill millions of PC's

Panic is hitting Chinese users of Microsoft's Windows. I just received a message from people in China who claim that a change in Microsoft's updating policy might kill millions of PC's that are using illegal software. Unlike in the past, Microsoft is pushing you to their website for updates and recognizes whether you have a legitimate key to the system or not.
Engineers have founds a growing number of PC's is stopping functioning and they actually advise people to buy a legal copy of Windows. And next year they can buy a copy of the new platform Vista of course.

Update I: I got some feedback from Microsoft. They have never hear about it; most likely an urban myth. Or a smart way of some Chinese engineers to increase their turnover.
Update II: From reactions I understand that PC's are in fact being disabled and consumers are being forced to reinstall systems with a legal copy. From Microsoft I understand that they have been playing with the idea but realized it would cause an adverse reaction from the public who often has non-legal copies for private use. But even if it is not the intention of Microsoft to block the usage of illegal software that seems in quite some cases the nett effect.

Hong Huang

media - "Print media might die like the analog phone"

Prolific media mogul Hong Huang, the daughter of Mao Zedong's English teacher, appears in the first part of Danwei's next TV-production.
She describes the trouble is running a media company in China and started on Valentines day a weblog, that has hit already a 15 million visitors, so I hope the guys of Technorati are still following up in getting more Chinese webloggers on their top-100.
Hong has many nice observations and I do share her analysis of the unavoidable downturn of the print media in China. "They will die like the analog telephone in China".
Expect part II soon.

Can China have a Silicon Valley? – the WTO column

(later at Chinabiz)
Let’s start with the bad news: the answer is no. The slightly better news is that nobody can repeat Silicon Valley anywhere else, not in China, but also not elsewhere in the US. Programmer and VC Paul Graham gave in a recent speech ten criteria that have made Silicon Valley what it is now.

But we can use his ten arguments reversely: what might be stopping China from developing a Silicon Valley? Taking away all barriers might be hard, but it makes a nice start of a discussion.

1. A generous immigration policy. China has been very successful in recent year in getting Chinese to return, but has a very poor record in getting non-Chinese academics and entrepreneurs in. A necessary mix of cultures is lacking.
2. Being rich. China is obvious becoming richer, but has still a long way to go compared to the US; policies to get capital from rich people to the universities would help though, like it does now in the US.
3. Be not a police state. Graham mentions here China as a bad example, but he might be mistaken here. What might be restraining Chinese universities is not a repressive government, but the terror of commerce. Universities have to focus on applied science and cannot really develop science as such.
4. American universities are better. It might take a while to develop universities that play worldwide a leading role. But without a good mixture of people (1) and money (2) it might never develop.
5. You can fire people in the US. Both Europe and China have a problem here. Very hard to solve at this stage, as it is even a sensation when a professor is being fired for being a fraud.
6. Work or employment. Compared to Europe in the US people tend to look at work less in terms of life-long employment with all rights and benefits attached. In China the picture is very mixed: strong protection for state-related employment – including universities – and no real protection at private companies. Those extremes still have to find an acceptable middle-ground.
7. Not being too fussy. Dealing with situations that might be technically illegal China might actually be leading the not-too-fussy Americans. There is a high level of unpredictability when you are forced into not-so-legal situations, but in most cases they tend to be solvable.
8. Having a large domestic market. Well, on this point China might be the only country that can match the US at least in size. Earnings of the average Chinese consumer might still restrain its real force, but that seems a matter of time.
9. Availability of venture funding. A very weak point in China: most startups rely on friends and family bringing seed capital together and even when a startup starts to grow up, getting capital is a tough struggle. While the government has been encouraging incubators, its sophistication in providing capitals is still troublesome.
10. Changing your career. In the larger cities many white collar workers decide often each six months about their career and that flexibility might be a bit too much, even in a fast developing economy. Short-term earning capacities might still be a larger draw than a long-term career strategy.

China is still a mixed bag, when you take these ten criteria into account. Performing very well at some, troublesome at others. Creating an attractive, culturally diverse climate for both academics and entrepreneurs still seems the largest challenge at this stage.

Fons Tuinstra

media - China Daily, IPR and incompetence

Danwei has another look at the problems the website of the China Daily is suffering from and republishes a comment by what is called an insider of the operation:

The web-editors are arrogant bastards who know nothing about journalistic standards.
The CD website is an absolute joke, no editorial control and no communication with the print edition. Working at the print edition, I'm totally embarrassed by the idiots who work there ... the paper has its problems, no secrets there, but the website ... does nothing but drag the name of the paper down even further. Mistakes occur in every paper, but if you trawl through a list of China Daily errors of the past couple of years, the majority and the most serious (eg plagiarism) are all on the website, totally beyond the control of the print edition.
There are people at this organization who are progressive and are making changes, but the problem is that nobody will notice the vast improvements in the paper in the past couple of years because the idiots at the website continue to act with utter abandon.

Danwei actually ends up defending this sloppy operation at the core of this English-language flagship, holding the viewpoint that the Chinese internet users are better served by the current anarchy at the internet than an effort of actually controlling it. Although there are some drawbacks:

it difficult [makes it] to find authoritative sources, muddies the waters of Internet media business, and results in flagrant violations of intellectual property rights.

That is where we come in, in trying to get sime clarity in these muddie waters.

Song Zude

internet - More top-spots wanted for Chinese bloggers

Last month actress and director Xu Jinglei replaced BoingBoing at the top-100 of most popular weblogs at Technorati. Virtual China is now pointing at some webloggers like Song Zude who are much higher on the Sohu.com raking than Xu Jinglei.

Song Zude 宋祖德 is a wealthy mainland Chinese TV and film producer/director. He's also the writer of Sohu's No. 1 blog, which has received over 8 million hits since he started writing it in February of this year (as in, 4 months ago). He describes himself as 18 years old "at heart," and loves nothing more than composing vicious critiques of popular Chinese stars (including Taiwan and Hong Kong). His posts are funny, mean, and full of juicy opinionated gossip.

Being nasty is for sure becoming a trade mark of successful blogger in China.