At a presentation last week at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, China’s premier business school, associate professor of marketing Meng Su predicted: “China will soon become world’s most important data market.” He advised job seekers in China and elsewhere to consider training for a new career path as “data scientists,” which he described as “one of the most valuable jobs in the next 10 years.” Interpreting big data seems poised to become big business.

[…] Professor Su warned, however, that the hype around big data in China may be a case of too much, too soon: “If everyone is talking about something, there is probably already a bubble,” at least of expectations, he said. “Most Chinese companies don’t own enough data, let alone know how to utilize, analyze, or monetize their data.” In other words, a select number of companies in China that do own large quantities of user-generated data—such as Alibaba and Baidu (BIDU)—hold the cards and may profitably sell that valuable information to other vendors. [Source]

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: alibaba, Baidu, data mining, information technology, IT industry, personal information
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

China’s censorship system is complex and multilayered. The outer layer is generally known as the “great firewall” of China, through which hundreds of thousands of websites are blocked from view on the Chinese Internet. What this system means in practice is that when one goes online from an ordinary commercial Internet connection inside China and tries to visit a website such as hrw.org, the website belonging to Human Rights Watch, the web browser shows an error message saying, “This page cannot be found.” This blocking is easily accomplished because the global Internet connects to the Chinese Internet through only eight “gateways,” which are easily “filtered.” At each gateway, as well as among all the different Internet service providers within China, Internet routers — the devices that move the data back and forth between different computer networks — are all configured to block long lists of website addresses and politically sensitive keywords.

These blocks can be circumvented by people who know how to use anti-censorship software tools. It is impossible to conduct accurate usage surveys, but it is believed likely that hundreds of thousands of Chinese Internet users deploy these tools to access Twitter and Facebook every day. Yet researchers estimate that out of China’s 500 million Internet users, only about 1% or so (a number somewhere in the single-digit millions — still a large number of people but not enough percentage-wise to shape majority public opinion) use these tools to get around censorship, either because most do not know how or because they lack sufficient interest in, or awareness of, what exists on the other side of the “great firewall.”

Fortunately for the government, there are plenty of social networking platforms and other delightfully entertaining and useful services on the Chinese Internet to keep people occupied, without much need to access sites and services based overseas — assuming they have no interest in politics, religion or human rights issues. Baidu, the homegrown search engine, enables people to locate all the content on the Chinese-language Internet that their government permits. The social networking platforms RenRen and Kaixinwang substitute for Facebook. People can blog on platforms run by Chinese companies like Sohu and Sina, which also runs a wildly popular Twitter-like microblogging service, Weibo. QQ, run by the company Tencent, offers instant messaging, gaming and all kinds of interactive services that work seamlessly across both PCs and mobile phones.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Great Firewall, Internet censorship, Internet culture, IT industry
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In the coming three to five years, three trends will determine the direction of innovation on the Internet.

The first is the competition among new media platforms. At the moment, the composite direction of Facebook’s software platform, Apple’s hardware platform, and Amazon’s hardware/software platform represent a possible route of development. New media platforms with large market shares have teamed up with content providers to become a major force.

The second is competition for video service. In other words, how will online video services affect traditional television? And how can traditional television fight back? As of now, television is the only traditional media outlet left that has maintained robust growth in the battle with online media.

[...]

The third trend is the competition for transformation among traditional media. In other words, can traditional media stubbornly resist to the last, or die out completely? Or will they transform themselves into an organic component of the new media environment?

[...]

At the end of the day, no matter how much attention these three trends for innovation stir up, in the coming three to five years the only innovation that will matter will be centered on one focus: giving users stronger, simpler, more convenient and cheaper software and hardware platforms — in other words, an online service that the users like. To this end, the Chinese Internet will continue to be a follower. In the best case scenario, we won’t be left too far behind.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: innovation, it companies, IT industry
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Mr. Lee said in an interview Thursday that the nine companies raised an average of $8 million each and have an average valuation of $40 million. “The Chinese Internet will undoubtedly grow in usage, mobility, monetization, e-commerce—all faster than the U.S. market, so this is clearly one of the best investment opportunities,” he said.

But the sector has been confronted recently by growing concerns about a possible bubble in Chinese tech stocks, worries about the regulatory environment in China, and broader concerns over corporate governance practices at smaller Chinese companies.

A string of new Chinese Internet listings in the past year have performed badly. Shares in social-networking site operator Renren Inc. are now trading on the New York Stock Exchange around half their initial public offering price in May, and NYSE-listed stock in online-video company Youku.com Inc., which more than doubled on their first day of trading in December, are now back below their IPO price. Shares in Nasdaq-listed Tudou Holdings Ltd., a Youku competitor that listed last month, closed on Wednesday 10% below their offering price.

These companies, as well as China’s top Internet companies including Baidu Inc., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Sina Corp., have multi-billion dollar valuations comparable to some U.S. Internet companies, despite competing for significantly less market revenue. Total revenue from online ads in China reached $4.3 billion last year, according to research firm Analysys International. The U.S. online ad market last year reached $26 billion, according to research firm eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal blog points out that Lee’s success in raising investment is all the more remarkable considering widespread concern that China’s Internet sector is experiencing a bubble:

Mr. Lee said in an interview Thursday that the nine companies raised an average of $8 million each and have an average valuation of $40 million. “The Chinese Internet will undoubtedly grow in usage, mobility, monetization, e-commerce—all faster than the U.S. market, so this is clearly one of the best investment opportunities,” he said.

But the sector has been confronted recently by growing concerns about a possible bubble in Chinese tech stocks, worries about the regulatory environment in China, and broader concerns over corporate governance practices at smaller Chinese companies.

A string of new Chinese Internet listings in the past year have performed badly. Shares in social-networking site operator Renren Inc. are now trading on the New York Stock Exchange around half their initial public offering price in May, and NYSE-listed stock in online-video company Youku.com Inc., which more than doubled on their first day of trading in December, are now back below their IPO price. Shares in Nasdaq-listed Tudou Holdings Ltd., a Youku competitor that listed last month, closed on Wednesday 10% below their offering price.

These companies, as well as China’s top Internet companies including Baidu Inc., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Sina Corp., have multi-billion dollar valuations comparable to some U.S. Internet companies, despite competing for significantly less market revenue. Total revenue from online ads in China reached $4.3 billion last year, according to research firm Analysys International. The U.S. online ad market last year reached $26 billion, according to research firm eMarketer.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Googlecn, IT industry, kai-fu lee, lee kai-fu
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

On Feb. 18 some Alibaba board members held a videoconference. The internal task force had uncovered a “systemic” problem. The damage was small, with a total take of maybe $2 million. But it involved more than 2,300 fake storefronts. Moreover, “the company was at risk of developing a culture of pursuing short-term financial gain at all cost,” said Savio Kwan, the lead investigator. Senior management had to take the rap. That weekend Ma called for the heads of Alibaba.com’s CEO, David Wei, and Elvis Lee, its COO, even though neither was charged with any wrongdoing. Ma, who is 46, felt he had to send a message to protect his company’s reputation.

“We are probably the only company in China that senior management takes responsibility,” Ma says, sitting in the seventh-floor VIP reception area overlooking the vast (1.5 million square feet) Alibaba.com campus of seven interlocked buildings. “People think, ‘Jack, you do too much.’ I mean, too drastic. But I believe China needs this.”

That’s because Alibaba’s problems are, in a very real sense, China’s problems. What his country needs, Ma says, is a company the world can believe in–that values people over profits. His goal this next decade is to help 10 million small companies get a boost online, create 100 million new jobs and serve a billion consumers worldwide. Hoping to change the world might register on the cliché meters of Silicon Valley. But it’s sincere enough in China to make Ma something of a rare species. The scandal headlines played to the cynics in a nation steeped in corruption.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: alibaba, e-commerce, IT industry, jack ma
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The Chinese born after 1980 are among the most privileged generation in China’s long history. Living after the communist government gave up the radical politics that tossed their parents and grandparents between chaos and penury, they have known only ever-rising levels of prosperity.

In their lifetimes, gleaming new office towers have remade China’s cities. Hundreds of millions have been lifted from poverty. Travel abroad, private cars and apartments and a university education – all once the preserve of the elite – are increasingly common.

Vibrant megacities such as Beijing and Shanghai are the epitome of this good life. So the ant generation comes, bringing its aspirations.

But their very abundance keeps entry-level salaries low, while housing and other costs rise. Real estate prices have doubled in just three years in major cities, outpacing a 40 percent increase in urban wages from 2005 to 2009.

“This is the biggest struggle for China’s young generation today,” says Liu Neng, a sociology professor at Beijing University. “People in their 40s and 50s, now leaders in society, have already experienced hardships, but it’s the younger generation’s turn to face challenges before they become part of the country’s elite.”

Read more about the Ant Tribe via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ant Tribe, graduates, IT industry, job market
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The number of college graduates in China is growing far faster than the number of white-collar jobs in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Young people who thought higher education would lead to high-paying jobs and chic apartments are instead cramming by the tens-of-thousands into slums near the IT districts where they seek jobs in computing and programming. The new aspiring professionals are known as “ants” because of both their eagerness to work and a willingness to cram together in poor living conditions. China’s new white-collar underclass is developing an intimate connections as they share struggles and seek to adapt to their nation’s changing society.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ant Tribe, IT industry, job market, photos, white collar
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

When Google pulled out of China back in March, it must have hoped that other Western technology heavyweights would show a little solidarity. Not that it expected others to follow suit, but at least some declaration of support. It didn’t happen. In fact, Bill Gates suggested that Google’s move was nothing more than a publicity stunt: “They’ve done nothing and gotten a lot of credit for it,” he said.

Mr Gates’ reaction is partly to be explained by Microsoft’s rivalry with Google. But his attitude—and that of most other IT executives—can largely be explained by the fact that the industry’s centre of gravity continues to move east (or west, seen from Silicon Valley): in IT, China is hard to ignore. The country is not just the sector’s biggest factory floor: Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer, which made headlines after a series of suicides in its factory city in Shenzhen, employs 800,000 workers, most of them in China. It is also home to two of the largest telecoms equipment makers, Huawei and ZTE. And China is now even more important as an IT market after its government started promoting domestic demand in the wake of the financial crisis.

China’s power in IT will only grow. It is pushing its own set of technical standards, not least by co-operating with Taiwanese firms (such as MediaTek, which makes most chips for handsets that are built in China). And at a conference of high-level representatives from both countries it emerged that they may promote Google’s Andoid as the operating system of choice.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: IT industry
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

China on Tuesday released an official white paper on the country’s Internet industry. It reviews the history of China’s Internet, from its first connection in 1994, a single 64-kilobit line in Beijing’s Zhongguancun district, to the present day, when China boasts more Internet users than any other country. (See full text of the white paper in English here and in Chinese here)

At the end of 2009, the number of Chinese Internet users reached 384 million, or 28.9% of the population, a higher penetration rate than the world average, the paper notes. The paper states that China aims to raise the Internet penetration rate to 45% of the population within five years.

…The paper contains an entire section on “guaranteeing citizen’s freedom of speech on the Internet.” But it adds all the usual caveats that leave ample room for the government’s extensive censorship: “While exercising such freedom and rights, citizens are not allowed to infringe upon state, social and collective interests or the legitimate freedom and rights and other citizens.”

Ironically, the English-language version of the paper cites Twitter, the social networking service blocked by Beijing, as a positive development for China’s Internet and evidence of Internet freedom. “The newly-emerging online services, including blog, Twitter, video-sharing and social networking websites, are developing rapidly in China, and provide greater convenience for Chinese citizens to communicate online.”

The article does point out that the reference to Twitter may be a mistranslation as the Chinese version only refers to “micro-blogs” in general.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet development, IT industry, Twitter
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

…The recent case brought by The Beijing News against Zhejiang Online in the Hangzhou Intermediate Court should make people turn their heads. Two years after The Beijing News brought its case, the Hangzhou court has still not rendered a verdict, but instead demands that The Beijing News bring a separate lawsuit for each of the 7,706 articles [for which copyright was allegedly violated]. The Beijing News has said it cannot agree to this, and so the Hangzhou Intermediate Court has rejected the suit outright.

Commentators have already pointed out that in this case the Hangzhou court has stepped way beyond the maximum trial period of one year. As to the Hangzhou Intermediate Court breaking this case into 7,706 separate cases, the former head of the intellectual property office of the Supreme Court, Jiang Zhipei (蒋志培), has said that “judicial organs should not commit such errors of common sense.” For Zhejiang Online’s part, their grounds of opposition have run as follows: all of the articles were “reasonably used,” and they are part of the “national team” (国家队), [in other words, state media], and “an important priority website of Zhejiang Province.”

When the local court decision has been infected by local protectionism even as these instances of widespread intellectual property violation are so plain to see, this means, I’m afraid, that Zhejiang Online, which refuses to acknowledge its own illegal activities but is now on a list of 10 websites preparing to go public, must deal with the problem of “credibility” before it can hope for a successful market listing.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet companies, IT industry, online news
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Baidu posted first-quarter net profit of 481 million renminbi, or $70.4 million, up from 181 million renminbi a year ago. Analysts expected profit of 366 million renminbi, according to Thomson Reuters data.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, but over time Google’s traffic will decline gradually, and over time we expect one-third of the advertising dollar to shift to Baidu,” said Elinor Leung, an analyst for CLSA in Hong Kong, who said that could take two or three years.

Baidu captured more than 64 percent of China’s Internet search market in the first quarter, up from 58.4 percent in the fourth quarter, while Google’s share fell to 31 percent from 35.6 percent, according to the research company Analysys International.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baidu, Googlecn, IT industry, search engines
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Following is a talk he gave at a summit for leaders in the IT industry, held in Shenzhen in March. For more on the summit, read this CDT post.

Translated by Luke Habberstad:

Tian Suning: Wu Ning gave me a most difficult to answer question. I was just speaking of the liberation of thought, so here I need to speak truthfully. At the same time, I must consider China’s actual characteristics, and see if the political arts that I have learned over the last few years can respond to your question.

First, I will make clear that this is my own perspective. I do not represent any other, and I do not now have any representative capacity. The Google affair, from my perspective, truly represents two different cultures, two different value systems, and the resolution methods and conflicts of two different approaches to problems.

In this conflict, it is still too early for us today to evaluate who is good and who is bad, who is right and who is wrong, since many things need time for examination. I will give an example. Many newspapers have noted that the planning and premeditation of the Google incident was formed under the sway of Western anti-China forces. I have met the two leaders of Google, and had frequent contact with companies such as theirs of this size and scope. I do not believe that one company can cooperate in an organized and premeditated manner with the government to do this sort of thing. It is possible that this incident would be taken advantage of by governments, particularly Western governments. However, as to if the incident was planned in a small dark room, discussing implementation with the US military, I think that that it was not necessarily thought through in such a complicated manner. Therefore, I say that when you have the difference of two different value systems and two different judgments of an incident, from your very approach you will naturally have two different resolutions. You ask: who is the winner? Is Li Yanhong (co-founder of Baidu) the winner? This is hard to say. After Google left, many angry youth in our country said this was good. However, Google is also China’s best tool for understanding the West. In order to make the West understand the achievements of China’s reform and opening, many have to search through Google. Baidu maybe needs 10 or 20 more years before it can be acceptable to the Internet users of the West. It is possible that our reform and opening has lost a great tool for external publicity. We have to consider a question from two sides.

The second problem. Google is not just for searching. Google represents the future of information technology, since the Google search engine and Google cloud computing [support IT technology] behind the scenes. When we make this sort of company such a big rival, are we not also rejecting these technologies? Let us consider the accomplishments we have now achieved with a modernized core attitude. They came precisely from having an open mind. We brought over the Western invention of mobile communication and the Western invention of photo-communication, and took the title of being the nation with the largest telecommunications company in the world (China Mobile), thus achieving a leap in development. In the future, software technology might emerge in a form that uses Google services. Can we simply follow one sentence from Comrade Lenin and then throw the baby out with the bath water? We need to consider these questions.

On the one hand, the Internet is a beneficial, extremely advanced tool. However, on the other hand, it represents the reform of our ideas. So, as to the question of why, when dealing with new issues we require new thinking, new methods, and a new ideology in order to solve the problems of the Internet age, I think that the Google incident does not provide a resolution. I think that it is the beginning of many similar sorts of incidents. It is not only one Internet company, and it does not only represent technology. Behind it all are values and consciousness, and these values and consciousness have a close relationship with the core technologies of future economic expansion in China. At this time, no matter if we are policy makers, policy advisors, industry insiders, or even one of the many users of the Internet, we have to consider these questions. If they are not resolved, conflicts will become increasingly complicated. We won’t have harmony or mutual benefit, but defeat and injury.

In the past we studied Deng Xiaoping’s works and Chairman Mao’s works, in order to see how we could unify their opposing points and via a dialectical method get to their core, inner elements. This issue of how we can solve the problems posed by opposing viewpoints requires a higher wisdom, but the history of our Party, and the history of our reform and opening, actually gives us this kind of wisdom. It offers us an inexhaustible source of thought and method of problem-solving.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Edward Tian, Googlecn, IT industry
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

If you are grassroots, if you don’t have a backstage supporter like China Pingan Insurance and Tsinghua Tongfang do, if you have strong confidence in the Chinese Internet, if you want to rely on your own efforts to accomplish something in the Internet business, do remember this:

Don’t touch BBS. Don’t touch microblogs. Don’t touch SNS. Don’t touch news. Don’t touch IDC. Don’t touch online photo albums. Don’t touch video. Don’t touch music. Don’t touch search engines. Don’t touch blogs. Don’t touch fiction.

Websites as listed above might bring you charges by the society or the state on such issues as copyright, pornography, censorship, subversion, instigation, etc..

If you remain hopeful, I would recommend you do business on “online shopping” websites.

However, judging from the perspective of the crackdown on pornography, cultural censorship, food safety and Internet: you can’t do business on sex products, foreign publication, dairy products, or online virtual products.

Well, if you still hold a slice of hope, I have nothing to say.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet censorship, IT industry, notable quotes
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The US and the European Union are pushing China to soften or drop plans for compulsory certification of a range of technology products, as foreign IT companies warn that Beijing’s regulatory requirements are pushing them out of the market.

The complaints come after Google’s announcement last month that it was reviewing the feasibility of operations in China, saying it had been attacked by hackers based there. This highlighted a broadening conflict between Beijing and foreign businesses over information security and intellectual property.

Rules set to take effect on May 1 will exclude suppliers of encryption-related products such as firewalls, secure routers or smart cards, from government tenders unless they undergo testing and certification to meet Chinese standards. In some cases, this will require submitting software source codes and other confidential information.

Foreign businesses fear the authorities could pass information on to their state-owned competitors. They also argue that their products could become unsafe if Beijing used its knowledge of software architecture to install “back doors” for surveillance.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: foreign IT companies, IT industry
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Now investors are betting that Baidu will reap the benefits if Google ends up exiting China over its dispute with the government about alleged cyberattacks on Google e-mail and source code. Since Tuesday, when Google announced that it would stop censoring its search engine even if that meant losing its Chinese business license, Baidu’s stock on the Nasdaq has surged 21 percent to a new high, adding $2.8 billion to the company’s market value in just three days.

Although investors are happy, China watchers are worried about the political consequences of Chinese Internet users depending too heavily on Baidu for news and information.

The company has been accused of altering search results for advertisers, by either deleting content or pushing firms’ sites higher up on the search result lists in return for payments. The charge has prompted the company to launch an overhaul of its listings.

Moreover, as a Chinese company, Baidu has little choice but to comply with government demands for censorship. An industry source familiar with the firm said officials from the Ministry of Industries and Information Technology are stationed at its offices.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baidu, Googlecn, IT industry, search engines
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall