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Found this for China MMO's

China’s most popular online games were named, with Netease’s Fantasy Westward Journey leading the pack at 1.8 million peak concurrent users, followed by Giant’s Zhengtu Online at 1.5 million.

        Tencent’s Dungeon and Fighter hit
  1.2 million concurrent users, while Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, operated in the region by The9, came in at 1 million users.

From http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/if-onling-gaming-is-growing-so-fast-why-are-the-companies-not-valued-more-highly/

Cause my guess was Zhengtu Online (ZT Online) before seeing that. Check out this article:

http://www.danwei.org/electronic_games/gambling_your_life_away_in_zt.php

But they dumped that in 2006, see: http://www.danwei.org/internet/google_dumps_baidu_shares.php

I think Danwei is a good place to start :
http://www.danwei.org/

Then you will have a lot of blogs on specialized topics, like for example :
http://www.chinalawblog.com/
http://www.cleanergreenerchina.com/
http://www.chinaenvironmentallaw.com/

Cuz increasingly that's all we have left. Especially now that money-printing business has hit the fan.

Yes, with so many of the other things the U.S. has exported having been replaced by goods from China, it really shouldn't be unexpected to see heavy protection of an industry that generates major export income.

It's interesting to note that the Chinese appear to be suppressing Avatar which, while extremely popular, is effectively being ordered off the screens after a short run to make way for a local production. They're doing it in a sneaky way by ordering that only the 3D version be shown, even though there's a very tiny percentage of theaters capable of showing in 3D. The local film set to start is not a 3D film.

http://www.danwei.org/rumors/avatar_ousted_for_confucius.php

Maybe we should stop trading with them until they let their currency reach the actual market value instead of what the Chinese Govn't pegs it as. RMB (now pegged against a basket of other currencies instead of just the $)

If you read the link you posted, you would see that Chinese evaluation of the RMB is more of a convenient scapegoat than an actual cause of manufacturing job loss.

In order for China to learn that we will no do business with them if they have human rights issues, it would have to be true. Fact is we do plenty of business with them while they have major human rights problems. Maybe its time WE learn not to do business with them until they improve.

Maybe we should stop pretending that China is a "developing nation" while turning a blind eye to the fact that it has the third largest GDP in the world. GDP by nation (no the EU isn't a nation).

Maybe we should stop trading with them until they let their currency reach the actual market value instead of what the Chinese Govn't pegs it as. RMB (now pegged against a basket of other currencies instead of just the $)

Problem is they own our debt.... Maybe we should tighten our belts instead of borrowing more and more money from China?

For those looking for proper english source. see Global Voices Advocacy and Danwei. This sort of news propogates quite a lot slower than straight "Human Right" news.

So I was hoping to announce this to my Chinese friends, but looks like on Xiaonei, you're not allowed to write http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/chinese_websites_under_mainten.php, äå½ç½'ç(TM)çæS, tiananmen, or the link to the spreadsheet. If you do, it gives you the following error: "èäè¦å'åfæ"æææYå...å®ãèæf...å...å®ãåäsåå'Sæ-å...ä-äæå½"å...å®" (no politically sensitive stuff, porn, or ads, etc.)

that is pretty lame. i stopped play MapleStory a long time ago (when they came out of beta and everyone lost their stats/items or whatever). i guess they sacrificed gameplay/fairness for profitability. i hope that this will hurt them in the long wrong as players realize it's complete BS to be able to buy power, as TFA warned against.

otherwise it just becomes another ZT Online, which is an thinly veiled attempt to disguise a virtual auction as an online video game.

Are you talking about these thieves? Good riddance, I say...

http://www.danwei.org/trends_and_buzz/beijing_cleans_up_its_sign_tra.php Farewell Racist Park, we hardly knew ye.

- Are you angry with the harsh questions posted on the forum?
- What do think of the 93% support rate for your government?
- What is your comment on the performance of the Chinese people in the face of disasters this year?

China is *hugely* inefficient, which is mostly masked by their huge growth. One thing that you have to remember is that the Chinese economy has *never* gone down in living memory. It's all up, up, up since Mao died and the national nightmare ended. This results in things like people opening businesses with no idea what they're doing, and the business succeeds anyway due to runaway demand. I see small shops open and close all the time, and it's the same story - no plan, no strategy, no marketing. It's just 'I'll open the doors and people will flood in.' The Chinese are geniunely shocked when they don't, and can't figure out what they did wrong. Really. Massive inefficiency is a hallmark of a prolonged boom (more annoying facts again - don't worry, I won't include any math) and China has been a boom (14%+ growth) for 30 years.

The Chinese don't invent new things, which is going to really start hurting in a few years when all their low-cost manufacturing isn't low-cost any more. I see it every day, a lot of people really don't know how to solve problems except for copying someone else, even to the point of investing huge efforts into it. Just think of how much better off China would be if they had developed their own indigenous computer systems instead of just pirating Windows. And no, I have yet to see a single installation of this "Red Flag" linux that someone always spouts off about. China does in fact have IPR laws, and they do work, but you have to actually follow them. Speaking of laws, there is a new anti-monopoly law in effect this year, and it's going to be used by the government as a club to bash foreign enterprises. Of course, Chinese monopolies are safe. Remember, cheating foreigners is patriotic.

Anyway, that's just my personal experience. Feel free to keep wishing hard for America to fall and China to rise. For further reading, for those of you who made it this far, check here (true today as when it was written) and Danwei and China Law Blog. Sorry to inject facts into the fantasy exercise - I realize it's a downer.

Your argument against the validity of the word "stealing" is missing the point. Even if you don't mean it as such (and I think you do), it looks is as if an act being "not quite stealing" justifies the act — it does not. Whatever quibbles may exist about "rational" copyright law and/or "rational" approach to violations, the violations are wrong.

How wrong? In our modern society, where actually making physical things (be they CDs, books, medicines, or designer purses) is much easier than designing them, it is just as wrong as stealing. The effects are the same, and the immorality is the same — hence my (and *AA's) insistence on the term "theft". Single download — petty theft. Massive reproduction — major heist...

Stealing food by a hungry person may be explained away by their hunger. Theft of music by a bored teenager (hi, modder) is unjustifiable. Especially if the stolen stuff is subsequently derided for "poor quality", as happens on Slashdot all the time (to moderators' cheer), completely ignoring the absurdity of stealing something, that sucks.

I'm guessing that the RIAA could think of a better way to curb piracy

None of our business.

Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,
the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time
handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now
restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:
bread and circuses

Many expatriates here in China think it has something to do with this:

Xiamen demonstration today - live reporting on blogs and video sites
EVENING UPDATE 18:30:
The link to the Flickr.com photos of the demonstration that Feng 37 posted below in the comments has been
blocked by the Net Nanny. The rest of Flickr.com seems to be unaffected.

A Guess: The shit hit the fan last week when one of their servers went offline and they started to forward to farm1 which seems to be blocked here.

Well, considering a quick Google search turned up that over US$34 billion were spent in advertising in China last year alone... and that the Bush administration spent US$1.6 billion on advertising since 2003. In the US, there is over US$2.4 Billion spent on advertising deodorant! It seems that you're mistaken in your assumption.

Advertising appears to be more of a world-wide expenditure.

"Regulating the Internet according to law is international practice," Liu told reporters. "After studying Internet legislation in the West, I've found we basically have identical legislative objectives and principles."

For example, The New York Times website says: "We reserve the right to delete, move or edit messages that we deem abusive, defamatory, obscene, in violation of copyright or trademark laws, or otherwise unacceptable We reserve the right to remove the posting privileges of users who violate these standards of Forum behaviour at any time."

Liu said "it is unfair and smacks of double standards when (they) criticize China for deleting illegal and harmful messages while it is legal for US websites for doing so."...

They're just ticked off because The Onion keeps fooling them.

They're just ticked off because The Onion keeps fooling them.

Examples...and believe me, I know of where I speak, since I'm living at ground zero for where this stuff originates.

Sony branded ni-cads - might hold a charge ok for the first few uses...rapidly downhill from there. Who knows what is inside. Use your imagination, but remember to only consider materials that are easy to obtain, with low cost up front.

Sony branded 1gb USB microdrive - after one week...corrupted data. On and on...blank CDs, DVDs, SD cards....no end. If you get in with the shop vendors, they know what to avoid, and they won't sell you the bad stuff. I've learned how to spot most if it, but the odds are more than 50/50 you'll be buying fake, regardless of the outlet. Fake cosmetics, deodorants, medicines, shoes, clothes, watches...a small percentage are acutally high quality, just made after hours. But for the most part, the fakes are of lower quality than the originals.

How good are they at doing this? No joke, I've seen fake raw eggs. Shell, egg white and yolk. No protein or edible matter whatsoever. Mostly off the shelf building materials. What kind of profit is there, when there is a market for a fake fresh chicken eggs?

Why is this so prevalent? Believe it or not, being able to copy an original is considered a test of ability. It is routine for one generation in China to test itself by attempting to duplicate something done by their ancestors. From fabrics to porcelin, it shows respect and skill by being able to reliably copy something that was first done over two thousand years ago.

Where is this headed? What better craftsmen, to really be the first to clone a human.

On censorship:

The beauty of the censorship is that the government doesn't need to watch everything, and indeed, it doesn't have to. The regulations and the fear of consequences do most of the work for them. Yes, the government watches the most volatile subjects and censors a lot of it through keyword matching and IP blocking, and yes, they do monitor who gets online where to make sure that we're not doing anything so subversive (for example, I have to register with the authorities here when I signed up for internet), but they're not watching everything, we're doing it for them.

danwei.org posted this article a while back (http://www.danwei.org/archives/001505.html) about self-censorship on television. This applies also to everyday speech and also to the internet. I'm studying in Beijing for the year - and while I'm an expat and supposedly am protected against most wrongs - I still watch what I say, online and off. Why? Because I have friends here, because I have family here, and because I'm getting a Ph.D. on the region and it would really suck if the Public Security Bureau decides to never allow me back into the country again.

On the plus side, the Chinese (at the risk of generalizing. sorry.) are remarkably adept at reading between the lines. I've seen people read the People's Daily and came up with astoundingly penetrating conclusions about something simply by using the placement of a photo or the wording of the article. And news here travels fast - even without newspapers and television.

On the internet in general:

100 million people use the internet in China, but what percentage of those ventures into sensitive topics and participate in BBS discussions? Not that many. Internet access here is rather expensive too. Go to Starbucks to get coffee and free wireless, you say? Let's look at Starbucks prices in China and decide - let's not, I can put three more meals on the table for the price of one frappaccino.

The problem with China and censorship and democracy is - as several someone elses pointed out - is that the country isn't developed enough for full blown democracy. This isn't possible when the population is clearly divided into a relatively small group of those people who actually earn enough to enjoy the luxuries of life in the cities, a bigger group of people who are struggling to eke out a living in service to the above group, and the biggest group even farther out in the countryside still farming their lands. Not enough people have gotten to the point of having a comfortable enough existence (or used to having one) that they can worry about censorship and human rights at leisure. Hell, a lot of the subsistence farmers here struggle with sending their kids to a single year of elementary school. Internet? What's that? Sounds expensive.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that while this decree sucks - we're doing most of the moaning and the screaming for the people affected. The people inside don't think that they're all that affected by this new decree. There are always ways around it for me (i.e. bribing, going through proxies), and as long as I can get what I want, why should I care about your access and your rights? In the meantime, everyone else just finds some other way of talking around the topic, and life goes on.

There are *plenty* of blogs and blog hosting services in China e.g. http://blog.sina.com.cn/

Of course, the majority of these blogs are in Chinese. Just because you can't read it, doesn't mean they don't exist.

There're a handful of Chinese who blog in English:

http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives.htm
http://ming.weblogs.us/

Imo, the best English language blogs on what's happening in China are :

ESWN
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htm

and

Danwei
http://www.danwei.org/

From: Someone living in China

It may not be for the PS, but here's a complete cybersex USB that lets you remotely control your partners vibrating gizmo....

Hopefully your can get this thingy to shoot back ;)