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China's Internet Boom
morn writes "BBC News is reporting that China's 'online population' is booming, with 20 million people expected to be 'connected' by the end of the year, each spending an average of 17 hours [per week] online. This is despite surveys showing that Beijing residents account for more than 20% of users, with just 14% of mainland Chinese knowing what the Internet is. Read the full story here. "
I love corporations when they do things like this.
Cisco don't care why...as long as theres a check with it. Lets build a vast firewall so the same idiots that crushed hundreds in Tianiman (I spelled that wrong I know it) Square can keep proping Maoism/Communism up through isolation and censorship.
Wonderful. Whats next...Microsoft or Oracle going to bid on the software for tracking political prisoners and suppling the spreadsheets so the can bill the families of executed prisoners in a timly manner?
the need for adopting IPv6/ng
The Scarlet Pimpernel
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
20 million people expected to be 'connected' by the end of the year, each spending an average of 17 hours online.
:)
17 hours...per what? Year? Month? Day? (God save 'em!)
Well, I guess I'll go read the article now, and find out.
So pretty soon I'll be seeing email like this:
SHARE THE WEALTH FAST
I was a decadent capitalist and then I got this email. It changed my life. Now I work with my comrades in the rice fields....
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Apparently they are pretty successful. AFAIK, proxy scans from china are common, since open proxies are the only way people can get access to uncensored documents. Of course, once Big Brother finds the proxy being used, they block it too.
It's going to hurt AOL badly
AOL's not allowed into China, nor is any other ISP. China tightly controls Internet access in there and there are only two main competing ISPs, both run by government ministries. All the other sub-ISPs have to link to the two main boys.
It'll be a few years before a giant ISP rises in China to challenge AOL. That's assuming AOL doesn't eventually find a way to get into the country before then.
Of course, after the WTO, there's the chance that AOL could get into China as an ICP instead, providing content instead of access. That'd be a a smart way to go.
Addresses really aren't too much of a problem for the average Chinese surfer at the moment. Most surfers know some smattering of English to remember the URLs. Who said that a URL has to mean something for people to remember it? Two of the more popular search engines/destinations are sohu.com and 163.net. No meaning in either English or Chinese.
However, if you really, really, wanted to put Chinese into the URL, you can either:
In short, I doubt it matters. URLs aren't a problem. Displaying Chinese script is very well established. The issues are no longer technical. They have everything to do with infrastructure now.
How much is this going to help AOL?
I know they have been trying to increase their Asian representation, but what are the other ISP's being used?
On my two visits to China, I was plesantly suprised by the general interest in the West and Western Ideas. Many of the Chinese I meet were intellegent and had interesting views about life in China and around the world.
My God, Man! You really are generous, aren't you. To think that there were actually intellignet and free thinking people in China... What a revelation!
Seriously, though, the Chinese will have a hard time getting connected for a while. Telephone wires are still few and far between in many parts of the country, so they may all go wireless. In the cities on the coast right now it's still hard to get your own connection, and many people spend a good deal of money to sit in an internet cafe for a bit.
Yeah, but stop thinking in terms of percentages: that is twice the population of Belgium, four times the poulation of Ireland, Norway, and about a third of the population of the UK.
Think about it, if the same percentage of Chinese got on line as Americans, all of a sudden the Americans would be in the minority, and then the focus of e-commerce would quickly shift, of course, assuming they had the same buying power.
And if it continued at the same rate, that wouldn't take too long too happen... Although I suppose this unlikely to happen unless the system for the non-English speaking is workable. Does anyone know how this would translate website address's cause IIRC chinese script is by word rather than letter?
I wonder if that "Hi, I kiss you web site" would translate in to Chinese....?
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The article fails to mention if the statistics include Hong Kong and Macau. The comment "Beijing residents accounted for more than 20% of users" seems to indicate that the SARs don't factor in.
I was interested to note that the CIA World Factbook has no stats on Internet usage at all.
I do not understand why should "20 M chinese on net" be a "big news", unless it is meant as: Look, there are still ONLY 20 M chinese with internet access!
This is less than 2 percent of the chinese population, and my first thought was "this estimate is much too low". However, after taking a look at the CIA-factbook, I am ready to believe it. Their 1998 estimate for China is: 105 milions of telephones (compare this with US, with 180M telephones and 1/4-th of the chinese population)! Adding the Hong-Kong does not change the situation much: 1998 estimate for HK is 4.5M telephones.
Lets see...20 million of 1.3 billion is...
About 1.5 percent of the population.
Thats a boom alright.
Not really. Last time I was there (last year) I could pretty much get any content I wanted. There are tons of proxies and resourceful people always find new ways to get whatever information they want. For that matter, I once walked into one of the cyber cafes there and by default, they were already configured to go through proxies.
I used the same proxy for the 2 years I was there without it ever being blocked. I don't think they're quite that vigilant.
The gov't blocks using IP numbers I believe, since I could always resolve URLs but not connect to them. That makes it really difficult to block things if you constantly move your site around. It was only really useful for blocking the big, well-known sites like cnn.com or WSJ. Course, things might have changed since the Falungong stuff.