REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

China's Internet population reaches 538 million

China's Internet users totalled 538 million at the end of June, with mobile phones become the most popular way for users to access the Internet, according to a non-profit research group in the country

China's Internet users totalled 538 million at the end of June, with mobile phones become the most popular way for users to access the Internet, according to a non-profit research group in the country.

The new figure, which comes from the government-linked China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), means Internet penetration in the country is at 39.9 percent. In contrast, the U.S. has 77.3 percent Internet penetration rate, according to Internet World Stats.

Read more at COMPUTERWORLD

iPad grabs more than 70 percent of China's tablet users

Apple's tablet captured a 72 percent chunk of China's tablet market in the second quarter, says a new market report.

by Lance Whitney

August 8, 2012 7:10 AM PDT

(Credit: Apple)

Though Apple has faced legal issues in China, theiPad is by far the most populartablet among Chinese consumers.

The iPad's market share jumped to 72.6 percent in the second quarter, according to market research firm Analysys International. As reported by China Daily, that number proved to be a 20 percent rise over the first quarter of the year.

Read more at CNET

Happy Chinese workers spell the end of affordable tech

By Jason Perlow | February 2, 2012, 12:41pm PST

Summary: Human and worker rights reforms in China would have serious negative consequences for the efficiency and cost of the gadget supply chain.

Recent coverage in the media over worker conditions in the Chinese factories which manufacture Apple’s products have “exposed” much of what all of us in the technology industry already knew but were unwilling to accept — that China is the most powerful engine of production for the technology industry, and that the blood, sweat and tears of Chinese workers is what fuels that hungry engine, at a tremendous cost to human rights.

Also See: The dark side of shiny Apple products (CBS News)

I really don’t want to focus on the Apple side of this problem because the concern is an industry-wide problem. Apple was targeted because they are the largest and most powerful consumer electronics company in the world, but their situation is not unique.

The outsourced manufacturing subcontractors that Apple uses such as Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn) are used industry-wide, by some of the largest players in technology.

Foxconn’s clientele reads like a celebrity tech roster that includes Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel, Lenovo, IBM, Cisco/Linksys, Netgear, Microsoft, Sharp, Sony, Motorola, Asus, Acer and Vizio.

And on Foxconn’s celebrity clientele list I will also include the second and third place tablet runners and e-reader champions Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Yes, your Kindles and Nooks are also made by the very same companies with the same awful working conditions.

As much as I think the Android crowd would love to claim moral superiority to Apple as it relates to the production of their toys, it can’t.

So we should cut to the chase that Apple is absolutely not unique in having products made by workers which are paid far below that of Americans, that work unbelievably long hours in sweatshops using child labor under conditions that rival that of the worst factories during the industrial revolution in America and Europe of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Read more at ZDNet

Where an Internet Joke Is Not Just a Joke

Wen Yunchao at his apartment in Hong Kong.                       By BROOK LARMER

Published: October 26, 2011

The cellphone vibrated softly, insistently, echoing off the whitewashed walls of the artist’s studio. It was a Sunday morning in early April, and Wang Bo — an Internet animator better known to his legions of online fans by his nickname, Pi San — ignored the call at first. He wanted no intrusions. A compact 40-year-old with short-cropped hair and arched eyebrows that give him a look of permanent bemusement, Pi San is most famous for creating a mischievous cartoon character named Kuang Kuang, but he earns money by making animations for corporations, and he was on a deadline. Pi San had bicycled to his studio in a defunct factory building on the outskirts of Beijing that morning, hoping to finish up some work in peace. But the buzzing of the phone didn’t stop.

The moment Pi San picked up, the caller blurted out the news: State security agents had just detained Ai Weiwei, China’s most famous contemporary artist and a government critic. Pi San spat out a profanity. Over the previous six weeks, hundreds of bloggers — lawyers, activists, journalists — had vanished into police custody in one of the harshest assaults on social activism in decades. Now they had Ai — fat, brilliant, bombastic and internationally renowned. If Ai could be arrested, was any independent thinker in China safe?

Pi San had reason to be scared. He and Ai were friends. A few weeks earlier, over lunch, the two artists talked about collaborating on a satirical Internet animation. Though a bit wary of Ai’s Web activism, Pi San admired his daring solo exhibitions in New York, Berlin and London. The most recent show had consisted of 100 million sunflower seeds made of porcelain, laid out across the floor of the Tate Modern, which visitors were invited to walk upon. Some considered the seeds to be symbols of the downtrodden Chinese people.

Despite his fear, Pi San quickly posted the news about Ai’s detention on Sina Weibo, China’s closely monitored equivalent of Twitter and the fastest-growing Internet platform in the world. An invisible censor deleted the message in seconds. He then tried posting, without comment, a cartoon drawing of Ai, the better to evade China’s word-sensitive filtering software. But the image disappeared, too — a sign that a human being, not computer software, had deleted the drawing. Pi San told his Weibo followers: “Again I was ‘harmonized.’ It’s just a picture!”

Read more at The New York Times

Lin Yutang

Lin Yutang was the next to last of twelve children of a Chinese Presbyterian minister in a small town in the mountains, sixty miles inland from Amoy. He was educated in English at St John's in Shanghai. He studied at Tsinghua University from 1916 to 1919, during which time he encountered his Chinese heritage at its most concentrated.

His later education began in America, specifically at Harvard, where he worked under Bliss Perry and Milton Babbitt in the Comparative Literature Department. His third-person description of himself at Harvard reminds one of Thomas Wolfe's experience in that same library:

Things became financially tight. Lin's half tuition scholarship had been cut off, he was subsisting on personal loans from back home, and his wife had required surgery for acute appendicitis. The two of them left for France (he received his MA in absentia, in 1920) and Lin went to work for the YMCA, teaching basic literacy to the Chinese workers who had been brought to France during WW1. He discovered in the process the difficulties of mass education, of which in his own way he was to become a master. In 1921, assisted by the devaluation of the mark, he shifted to Leipzig, where he earned a PhD in linguistics in 1923, under Conrady (whose grasp of modern Chinese he found deficient). He returned to China, now fully accredited, as a professor at Peking National University (1923-1926) and Dean of Women's Normal College (1926).

And he wrote. He wrote effectively. His particular blend of sophistication and casualness found a wide audience, and he became a major humorous and critical presence in warlord China. Of the two literary factions in Peking, he headed one, and the other, slightly less opposed to the government, was led by his previous benefactor Hu Shr. He annoyed the warlords. One of them, whom he had ridiculed as the Dogmeat General, put him on a target list of intellectuals. Lin left, taking with him Lu Sywn, one of the writers in his faction, to Amoy University, where Lin became Dean of Arts. Notwithstanding his earlier criticism of the government, he briefly joined the Nationalist Government at Wuhan in 1927 as Secretary to the Foreign Ministry, but, as he later put it,"liked the revolution but got tired of the revolutionists." From the summer of 1927, he abandoned politics and devoted himself to writing for the popular press and editing three literary fortnightlies in Shanghai between 1929 and 1935. His linguistic studies were also done during this relatively quiet period in his life. As a journalist, chiefly in his column The Little Critic from 1930 on, he became famous as the principal voice of independent criticism in China. He further polished an intimate style, "the secret of which is, take your reader into confidence," that was sensationally effective. Pearl Buck became interested, and encouraged him to write a book explaining China to the West. To do this, he retired to the mountains in the summer of 1934. What he brought back from the mountains was the publishing sensation My Country and My People (1935), which hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Following this new path, Lin and his family moved back to America, where he produced a stream of articles for the New York Times and various magazines, and another book, The Importance of Living, in 1937. It was Lin's major statement of personal philosophy, a subject with he had wrestled all his life, and which had come to a focus with his study of Emerson under Emerson expert Bliss Perry. However abrasive Lin might be in advocacy, Lin greatly esteemed charm, and he was sensitive to charm in his own tradition. He thus rendered a Li Yw paragraph on the rules for an ideal home:

"Inside the gate there is a footpath, and the footpath must be winding. At the turning of the footpath there is an outdoor screen, and the screen must be small. Behind the screen, there is a terrace, and the terrace must be level. On the banks of the terrace there are flowers, and the flowers must be fresh. Beyond the flowers is a wall, and the wall must be low. By the side of the wall there is a pine tree, and the pine tree must be old. At the foot of the pine tree there are rocks, and the rocks must be quaint. Over the rocks there is a pavilion, and the pavilion must be simple. Behind the pavilion are bamboos, and the bamboos must be thin and sparse. At the end of the bamboos there is a house, and the house must be secluded. By the side of the house there is a road, and the road must branch off. At the point where the several roads come together there is a bridge, and the bridge must be tantalizing to cross. At the end of the bridge there are trees, and the trees must be tall. In the shade of the trees there is grass, and the grass must be green. Above the grass plot there is a ditch, and the ditch must be slender. At the top of the ditch there is a spring, and the spring must gurgle. Above the spring there is a hill, and the hill must be deep. Below the hill there is a hall, and the hall must be square. At the corner of the hall there is a vegetable garden, and the vegetable garden must be big. In the vegetable garden there is a stork, and the stork must dance. The stork announces that there is a guest, and the guest must not be vulgar. When the guest arrives, there is wine, and wine must not be declined. During the service of the wine, there is drunkenness, and the drunken guest must not want to go home." (p267-268)

It will emerge that the purpose of the home is not for the owner, but for the guest. This fresh way of looking at things, not merely exotic but sophisticated in an unfamiliar way, and formatted as an example of ancient but applicable wisdom, was a revelation to the English general reader. The poet Carolyn Kizer, who was given a copy of The Importance of Living in June 1938, by which time it was in its eleventh printing, not only marked certain passages in the margin, but made her own index of other passages in the back inside cover. Such was its impact on the already literate portion of the public.

WW2 began for China in July 1937, and Lin's subsequent publications sought to increase American support for China. His novel Moment in Peking (1939) gives a searing portrait of the Japanese invaders. With the American entry into the war in 1941, and foreseeing a Western victory, he became a critic of the West as the inevitable architect of the postwar world. This new posture did not sit well with his previous fans. The New York Times, long his friend and principal media channel, found Between Tears and Laughter (1943) to be "shrill, abusive, and vituperative." A return to China, intended to be for the duration of the war, ended after a month when his house in Chungking was destroyed by Japanese bombs. A second visit in late 1943 and early 1944 led to the book Vigil of a Nation, a tour of China at war, and a prediction that communism on the Russian model could never take root in China.

The book did not produce a negative reaction. It produced an uproar. It alienated everyone. It led to a break with Pearl Buck which in turn resulted in Lin's departure from his longtime publisher John Day (a firm owned by Buck's husband, Richard Walsh). For the period of the Chinese civil war that followed the end of WW2, Lin retreated from politics to the past.

In this new emphasis, he still remained a transmitter of the Chinese world to the West, a role which Lin shared with his contemporary Arthur Waley. Like Waley, he passed from extracts (including extracts from Confucius in 1938, plus Laudz and Jwangdz, which had made up several of his previous books) to full-length studies. He began with a biography of the brilliant and insouciant poet Su Dungpwo in 1947, a poet who was continually getting into trouble, in part through criticizing the government, and thus a congenial figure for Lin. He followed this, building on his earlier Laudz and Jwangdz extracts, with a complete Dau/Dv Jing in 1948, adding to its 81 chapters extracts from Jwangdz by way of commentary. Here for the first time he directly confronted Waley, whose complete DDJ had come out in 1934. Lin kept his independence, but he also kept his judgement. In a footnote to a line in DDJ 29, he says "I follow Waley's rendering, which conveys the meaning perfectly." And the first six lines of DDJ 30 conclude with this footnote:

These six lines are by Waley, for they cannot be improved upon.

It is the nod of one master to another. The rest of us get to stand by and watch

Read more here Sinologists

Chinese Typewriter

June 30, 2009 @ 6:51 pm · Filed by Victor Mair

This (the machine invented by the famous Chinese author, Lin Yutang, and described on the first page [first four paragraphs] of the Wikipedia article here) is probably the closest the Chinese ever got to decomposing their script into an "alphabet" consisting of "letters" (recurrent graphemic elements that can be combined in a principled way to form all of the characters / morphemes in their writing system).  You'll note that it didn't really work during their presentation to the Remington Typewriter Company executives.  The press conference demonstration they had the next day was probably of the carefully rehearsed, staged, orchestrated sort designers of Chinese information processing / technology software and hardware often present (the kind documented by Li-ching Chang in her film made at a vocational high school in Beijing), not one prepared to respond spontaneously to tasks posed by the audience.  Judging from my own experience with Chinese software and information processing / technology developers over more than a quarter of a century, this may have been what went wrong when Lin presented his typewriter to the Remington executives:  they asked him (or his operator) to type something impromptu.  Incidentally, the development of this fatally flawed typing machine left Lin — whose books were bestsellers in America — bankrupt.

 The "typewriter" described on the second page (fifth paragraph:  "Another kind of Chinese typewriter") section of the Wikipedia article cited above is the only kind of machine for writing Chinese that achieved fairly widespread use.  (Most of the typewriters shown here are of this sort.)  It was basically a limited font of about two to three thousand of the most common characters, with hundreds or thousands of more obscure characters kept in boxes nearby, to be laboriously sought out when needed (most typists just wrote such characters in by hand [if they knew them; but usually they were simply copying from a printed page or somebody's handwritten draft anyway — even now, except with pinyin-inputting systems, Chinese have not benefited very much from touch-typing] rather than try to find them in the boxes).  The Wikipedia article claims that "good operators were able to type around 70 words per minute."  First of all, this probably means "characters," not "words" (which are largely disyllabic).  Secondly, this could only have been true of a highly skilled operator presenting a carefully prepared and practiced text without any unusual characters (i.e., beyond those in the main tray).  The typists I observed using these machines in Taiwan, China, and at the UN back in the 70s and early 80s — all professionals, not casual typists — seldom exceeded about 10-12 characters per minute under the best circumstances (only common characters found in the main tray, and working from clean drafts or copying from printed materials).

Many of the difficulties outlined above have continued even into the computer age, which accounts for the (should I avoid using "literally"?) thousands of different inputting systems that have been devised during the past three decades.  The vast majority of individuals, both for short text messaging and for word processing with computers, now use various types of romanized inputting, with those methods that take advantage of word segmentation being the most efficient.

Thanks to Michael Carr for the first Wikipedia reference.

Language Log

Narrow Gauge Industrial and Forestry Railways of Guangdong and Jiangxi Provinces, Southern China

In the mid 1980's I was fortunate enough to be assigned to work in Guangzhou in southern China. Before I arrived I knew there was lots of steam to be seen, but not being in the mainstream enthusiast I had not even given a thought to the possibility of narrow gauge steam. I knew about Datong and managed to swing a visit there on the back of a business trip. On the return trip to Beijing I met a group of enthusiast who gave me all the information I needed to make a two week trip around Heilongjang to see both standard and narrow gauge. This trip rekindled my enthusiasm for steam and It occurred to me that there might be other narrow gauge lines nearer to home in Guangdong Province and I set about locating them with the use of various maps a managed to acquire.

Altogether I located six lines each with active steam belonging to four classes. It was only later that I learned that some of these had previously been visited by "westerners". These were first documented by me in "The Narrow Gauge" volume 118. Subsequently, a number of articles have provided accounts of some of these lines and engines. This website gives me the opportunity to publish some of my photographs from 1986/87 in colour for the first time. I have also included information and pictures of several "non-steam" lines which I encountered on my travels in Guangdong Province.

The locomotives

At three locations I found C2 class engines. These 0-8-0's were domestic products of the Harbin and Shijiazhuang works in the early 1960's and are the same class familiar to those who have visited the forestry lines in Northeast China.

One line had two surviving Px48 class locos built at the Chrzanow works, Poland in 1952. Locally these are known as BL class (Bo Lan = pinyin transliteration of Poland in Mandarin). These locos were at one time thought to have been re-exported to Albania in 1957. For further information refer to an article by Keith Chester in "East European Narrow Gauge".

I found C4 class locos on two lines. These 0-8-0's were constructed during the early 1970's in Guangzhou and Sanshui in Guangdong Province. This class is reminiscent of the Px48's and its design is probably based on this class. For further information refer to an article by Keith Chester in "East European Narrow Gauge".

A few examples of class SY (not to be confused with the Standard gauge SY) were found lingering on two lines. SY (Shanyou) or "Aiming High" class 0-8-0TT locos were manufactured in Guangzhou in the late 1950's and early 1960's. These engines appear to be based on engines designed by Orenstein & Koppel, four of which were reportedly exported to China in 1937.

               (Table of trains at John Athersuch

The lines

The lines I visited were all functioning when I visited in 1986 and 1987 although with the exception of the Meixian Coal line they all appeared to be on their last legs with engines in poor condition and cannibalism much in evidence.

Read (see fabulous photos - engines) more at John Athersuch

Life Behind the Great Firewall of China

HONG KONG—Here in Hong Kong, the Internet is global. But just over the border in the Chinese boom town of Shenzhen, major international websites get shut down behind the famed "Great Firewall of China."

Watching the vibrant economic ferment in Shenzhen, it's hard to remember that you're in a totalitarian state. The Chinese folks I encountered were generally pretty blase about politics. Then again, Shenzhen is one of the richest cities in China, and the people I spoke to came from the relatively well-off professional classes.

So it was shocking to pull up a chair at Coco Park—a shopping mall in Shenzhen that's so expensive that I couldn't afford most of the things sold there—and be unable to access my Facebook page. Here in Hong Kong, Facebook is everywhere: ads on the subway regularly include companies' Facebook fan pages. Just next door in Shenzhen, Facebook is silent.

China's firewall (which is really called the "Golden Shield") is more subtle than you might imagine at first glance. I didn't have trouble accessing English-language news sites that were critical of the Chinese government—for instance, a BBC article about artist Ai Weiwei being freed from jail, or various articles about the Taiwanese presidential elections. News sites tend to become blocked or unblocked around major news events, according to frequent reports.

Some foreign-based social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare are blocked. This doesn't seem to be merely about preventing Chinese people from discussing controversial topics. It's also a way to nurture Chinese alternatives which both feed the Chinese economy and which the government can control, as the Telegraph explains. For instance, Sina Weibo is basically the Chinese Twitter.

MySpace is fast, easy, and permitted, but nobody seems to use it. MySpace owner Rupert Murdoch bent over backwards to make his global site into a "local" Chinese Internet property, but it's widely considered a failure when put up against other social-networking sites that are actually Chinese.

China's relationship with Google is very uneasy. Google isn't blocked—not exactly. But access to Google services is hideously slow, to the point where you wouldn't want to use them.

Various phrases also get blocked in Web searches. The government hates the meditation/exercise group Falun Gong, for instance. When I searched for "Falun Gong," not only did my computer return no results, it actually shut down my access to Google for about ten minutes.

The Great Firewall has plenty of holes. Smart Chinese netizens tend to use proxy servers or VPNs to get around restrictions. Aforementioned artist Ai Weiwei has more than 89,000 Twitter followers. The government shuts down access to various proxies from time to time, but it's clear the firewall is about making certain choices inconvenient rather than totally inaccessible.

The government has also allowed some businesses to use the unrestricted Internet; at the JW Marriott, my hotel in Shenzhen, the Internet was routed through Hong Kong. This week, Engadget reported an office park in Chongqing is getting the full-scale Net as well.

Read more at PC MAG

China, Russia Could Make U.S. Stealth Tech Obsolete

 

It’s been a pillar of the U.S. military’s approach to high-tech warfare for decades. And now, it could become obsolete in just a few years.

Stealth technology — which today gives U.S. jets the nearly unparalleled ability to slip past hostile radar — may soon be unable to keep American aircraft cloaked. That’s the potentially startling conclusion of a new report from Barry Watts, a former member of the Pentagon’s crystal-ball-gazing Office of Net Assessment and current analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

“The advantages of stealth … may be eroded by advances in sensors and surface-to-air missile systems, especially for manned strike platforms operating inside defended airspace,” Watts cautions in his 43-page report The Maturing Revolution in Military Affairs (.pdf), published last week.

That could come as a big shock to the U.S. Air Force, which has bet its future on radar-dodging technology, to the tune of half-a-trillion dollars over the next 30 years. The Navy, on the other hand, might have reason to say, “I told you so.”

That is, if Watts’ prediction comes true — and that’s a big “if,” the analyst admits.

 “In recent years there has been speculation that ongoing advances in radar detection and tracking will, in the near future, obviate the ability of all-aspect, low-observable aircraft such as the B-2, F-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, aka JSF, to survive inside denied airspace,” Watts writes, referring to America’s stealth bombers and fighter jets.

Read more at WIRED

Google Losing Ground in China

BEIJING—A year after Google Inc. moved its search services out of China, the Internet giant is struggling to maintain traction on a range of businesses in the country despite its executives' desire to keep growing in the wake of a feud with the Chinese government.

Bloomberg News

Baidu and Google websites display a map of Beijing.

BEIJING—A year after Google Inc. moved its search services out of China, the Internet giant is struggling to maintain traction on a range of businesses in the country despite its executives' desire to keep growing in the wake of a feud with the Chinese government.

BEIJING—A year after Google Inc. moved its search services out of China, the Internet giant is struggling to maintain traction on a range of businesses in the country despite its executives' desire to keep growing in the wake of a feud with the Chinese government.

Chinese online media company Sina Corp. said this week that it dropped Google's Web search service from its popular portal site, marking an end to one of its most important remaining partnerships in the market.

At the same time, Google's Gmail free email service has become difficult to use in China; the company blames stepped up efforts by censors to disrupt Gmail access.

Meanwhile, new regulations to tighten oversight of online map providers make the future of Google's map service in China unclear. On Thursday—the deadline for applying for new online mapping licenses—Google said it was in discussions with the government on how it can continue operating the service. It wouldn't comment on the likely outcome of those talks.

The developments are the latest signs that significant parts of Google's business in China, home to more than 450 million Internet users, have been unraveling since last March. It was then that Google replaced its self-censored China search service with an unfiltered version based in Hong Kong, citing censorship and cyberattacks that the company said were traced to Chinese hackers.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704530204576234693138486996.html#ixzz1ICmv5Oqc

Chinese online media company Sina Corp. said this week that it dropped Google's Web search service from its popular portal site, marking an end to one of its most important remaining partnerships in the markeAt the same time, Google's Gmail free email service has become difficult to use in China; the company blames stepped up efforts by censors to disrupt Gmail acceMeanwhile, new regulations to tighten oversight of online map providers make the future of Google's map service in China unclear. On Thursday—the deadline for applying for new online mapping licenses—Google said it was in discussions with the government on how it can continue operating the service. It wouldn't comment on the likely outcome of those talks.

Report: U.S. falls behind China, Germany in clean energy

The United States slipped one spot to third place in clean-energy investment last year despite President Obama's push to promote non-p0lluting sources of power, says a report Tuesday.

Until 2008, the U.S. had held the top spot, but it has since been eclipsed by China, which ranks no. 1, and Germany, which has taken over the no. 2 spot, according to the report "Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race" by the Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent, nonprofit group.

"The United States' position as a leading destination for clean energy investment is declining because its policy framework is weak and uncertain," Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew's Clean Energy Program, said in announcing the findings. She warns the U.S. could fall further behind as competitors adopt renewable energy standard and incentives for investing in solar, wind and other forms of clean energy.

Read more at USA TODAY

Behind the 'Great Firewall': China's 'first blogger' speaks out

This week News Stream on CNN International focuses on the world's largest internet market: China. Follow online or watch News Stream every week day at 8 p.m. in Hong Kong, 1 p.m. in London and 8 a.m. in New York.

Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- The battle of Chinese censors to block political commentary on the internet is akin to "a snake swallowing its own tail," said Isaac Mao, an influential Chinese blogger.

"I think the problem to the whole country is that if we censor more and more keywords, we will be stopping the country from more and more innovations," said Mao, considered China's "first blogger" and outspoken critic of his country's online censorship. "I described it as a snake swallowing its own tail because the snake is trying to find the food and attack, but eventually he found his own tail."

Mao runs Isaac Technology Venture Corp. and is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He started blogging in 2002 and is followed closely as an influential figure who works behind the constraints of China's so-called 'Great Firewall', which closely monitors and restricts online content. The state policy on online media led to a public fight last year with Google when the company decided to side-step Chinese censor laws by moving its search engine functions to servers outside the mainland.

Read more at CNN

Space Awareness

By any rational metric, the United States is the world's dominant space power by quite a distance. Of the world’s roughly 1,100 active satellites, the United States possesses more than 400, half of them government-operated. Chinese organizations, by contrast, maintain fewer than 70 satellites, and probably only a dozen or so are strictly military in nature.

Still, China is aggressively expanding and diversifying its space arsenal—and the Pentagon is, officially at least, worried.

Chinese organizations are currently lofting as many as 15 (admittedly short-lived) spacecraft into orbit every year. Moreover, China is making big strides in space weaponry. In 2007, China successfully tested a rocket-based anti-satellite weapon. That test destroyed a decommissioned Chinese weather satellite, scattering thousands of pieces of dangerous, slow-decaying orbital debris as a two-decade reminder of Beijing's space ambitions.

Read more at The Diplomat

Mistrust stalls U.S.-China space cooperation

 

Chinese astronauts, left to right, Jing Haipeng, Zhai Zhigang and Liu Boming during a send-off ceremony before the launch of the Shenzhou 7 space craft at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gansu province, on Thursday Sept. 25, 2008. (Str - AP)

Read more at The Washington Post

New report suggests China will win EV race

China is likely to beat the US in the race to put electric vehicles on the road, according to a new report from global management consultancy firm Accenture.

The report, "The US and China: the race to disruptive transport technologies", concludes that because of the strong government backing given to electric vehicles, China will deploy EVs faster than the US.

In June last year, Chinese authorities said that they would subsidize purchases of alternative energy vehicles in five cities, including Shanghai - no small undertaking given the explosion recently seen in the Chinese car market.

China will also be aided by its plentiful supply of lithium, a key component of EV batteries, and its current battery production capabilities, said the report's authors.

The necessity of lithium for rechargeable batteries has sparked concern over its long-term supply, something that has prompted Japanese automaker Toyota to begin research into environmentally friendly-cars which don't use precious minerals.

Read more at The Independent

7 Technologies Where China Has the U.S. Beat

I've been watching China's ascent in cleantech for a couple of years. In that time China's potential to leapfrog the U.S. has gone from talk to substantive examples of leadership. Even so, I've been surprised by the increasing frequency with which China is pushing ahead in new fronts of cleantech development.

Earlier this week, the latest surprise came from energy secretary Steven Chu, who's been talking up China's green progress in an effort to boost Washington's resolve on clean tech policy.

In a talk at the National Press Club, with characteristic forceful clarity (PDF of slides), Chu illuminated the growing list of sectors where China's emerging leadership threatens U.S. players, and added leadership in supercomputing as the most recent Sino-superlative. China's success in these technologies represents a "Sputnik Moment" for the United States, Chu said.

"When it comes to innovation, Americans don't take a back seat to anyone -- and we certainly won't start now," said Secretary Chu at the event. "From wind power to nuclear reactors to high-speed rail, China and other countries are moving aggressively to capture the lead. Given that challenge, and given the enormous economic opportunities in clean energy, it's time for America to do what we do best: innovate."

China's ascent to the top of the list for supercomputing speed reveals a new front in this race. Last month China's Tianhe-1A, developed by Chinese defense researchers, became the world's fastest supercomputer, with a performance level of 2.57 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second, for all the geeks in our audience, based on a standard test), substantially eclipsing the U.S. DOE's Cray XT5 "Jaguar" system at Oak Ridge national labs in Tennessee, which runs at 1.75 petaflop/s. Third place is also held by a Chinese computer.

Read more at REUTERS

iPad 2 Rumored for April so Should you Wait?

'Tis the season for rumors about Apple's next iPad, and it's only going to get worse as the expected release date draws closer.

 The latest report from DigiTimes says Apple will launch the iPad 2 -- or whatever it's finally called -- in April, with mass production and shipping from factories in China to begin in February. Component makers reportedly expect Apple to sell up to 15 million next-generation iPads in 2011.

 If you're thinking of getting an iPad or a tablet in general, now you've got to ask the obvious question: Is the iPad 2 worth waiting for? To answer that question, here's a bunch of other questions you should ask yourself first:

 Do you care about video chat?

 Rumors of a front-facing camera for the next iPad were flying around pretty much immediately after Apple announced the first iPad. Apple will, in all likelihood, bring Facetime to its tablet, but you may not need it so badly despite what Apple's marketing suggests. Think of it this way: If your laptop has a webcam, how often do you use the video chat on it now?

Read more at PCWorld

Private Jets in China increase in number due to business growth

With tremendous increase in Chinese trade, the trend of private airplanes in China has been flourishing rapidly. In a very short time, just in a few past years, the sale of private jets in China has become manifold.

China has become a center of trade in international market. People from all over the world are coming here and making huge investment in various projects. This increase in trade has lead China towards new dimension in aviation industry. This is the time, in which some dreams are rapidly changing into reality.

Read more at INFORMIXX

China and its Double-edged Cyber-sword

A recent batch of WikiLeaks cables led Der Spiegel and The New York Times to print front-page stories on China’s cyber-espionage capabilities Dec. 4 and 5. While China’s offensive capabilities on the Internet are widely recognized, the country is discovering the other edge of the sword.

China is no doubt facing a paradox as it tries to manipulate and confront the growing capabilities of Internet users. Recent arrests of Chinese hackers and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pronouncements suggest that China fears that its own computer experts, nationalist hackers and social media could turn against the government. While the exact cause of Beijing’s new focus on network security is unclear, it comes at a time when other countries are developing their own defenses against cyber attacks and hot topics like Stuxnet and WikiLeaks are generating new concerns about Internet security.

One of the U.S. State Department cables released by WikiLeaks focuses on the Chinese-based cyber attack on Google’s servers that became public in January 2010. According to a State Department source mentioned in one of the cables, Li Changchun, the fifth highest-ranking member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and head of the Party’s Propaganda Department, was concerned about the information he could find on himself through Google’s search engine. He also reportedly ordered the attack on Google. This is single-source information, and since the cables WikiLeaks released do not include the U.S. intelligence community’s actual analysis of the source, we cannot vouch for its accuracy. What it does appear to verify, however, is that Beijing is regularly debating the opportunities and threats presented by the Internet.


A Shift from Offensive Capabilities

On Nov. 2, the People’s Liberation Army Daily, the official paper for the PLA and the primary medium for announcing top-down policy, recommended the PLA better prepare itself for cyber threats, calling for new strategies to reduce Internet threats that are developing “at an unprecedented rate.” While the report did not detail any strategies, it quoted a PLA order issued for computer experts to focus on the issue.

The Nov. 2 PLA announcement is part of a long trend of growing network-security concerns in China. In 2009, Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu emphasized that the development of the Internet in China created “unprecedented challenges” in “social control and stability maintenance.” In June 2010, the State Council Information Office published a white paper on the growing threat of cyber crime and how to combat it. Clearly, these challenges have been addressed this year. The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced Nov. 30 that it had arrested 460 suspected hackers thought to have been involved in 180 cases so far in 2010. This is part of the MPS’ usual end-of-year announcement of statistics to promote its success. But the MPS announcement also said that cyber crime had increased 80 percent this year and seemed to blame the attacks only on hackers inside China.

These were cases mainly of producing and selling “Trojan” programs (malware that looks legitimate), organizing botnets, assisting others in carrying out denial-of-service attacks and invading government websites. The MPS also closed more than 100 websites that provided hackers with attack programs and taught them various tactics.

The PLA already has two notoriously large and capable network security units: the Seventh Bureau of the Military Intelligence Department (MID) and the Third Department of the PLA. In simple terms, the MID’s Seventh Bureau is an offensive unit, responsible for managing research institutes that develop new hacking methods, train hackers and produce new hardware and software. The PLA Third Department, defensive in nature, is the third largest signals intelligence-monitoring organization in the world. STRATFOR sources with expertise in network security believe that China’s government-sponsored hacking capabilities are the best in the world. But this perception is based in part on the fact that China demonstrates these capabilities quite often. The United States, on the other hand, is much more restrained in exercising its offensive cyber capabilities and is not inclined to do so until there is a dire and immediate need, such as war.

Read more at defence web

Social networks steer China web evolution

Nobody looking at Tencent’s financial statements – with its continued double-digit revenue growth and 68 per cent gross margin – would come to the conclusion that the company needs to change its business model.

Third-quarter revenue at the Chinese internet company grew 55.1 per cent to Rmb5.2bn ($780m), compared with the same period last year.

And yet, the world’s third-largest internet company by market capitalisation is working on changes that will turn its traditional strategy upside down.

Tencent’s biggest asset is the huge user base served by QQ, its instant messaging tool – which had 638m active accounts at the latest count.

In the past the company focused on making sure that if these people spent money online, they would spend it on Tencent products. It has made efforts to provide its users with a variety of services including online games, news and social networking, making them less likely to leave the Tencent platform.

Now it is throwing open the door and inviting others into the party: Other companies can offer their games on Tencent sites, and third-party websites can push their feeds on to the Tencent platform.

The about-turn recognises the fact that social networking sites are changing the monetisation models in the internet industry in China, the country with the world’s largest internet population at 420m.

Sina, the company that runs the country’s largest online news portal and leading microblog, last month teamed up with MSN China, opening its microblog and Microsoft’s instant messaging tool in China to each other.

Sina also set up a developer fund for third-party application providers on its microblog.

Read more at Financial Times

China Rising in Tech

During my latest trip to China, I became even more aware of the country's rising power in the tech world, thanks to its emphasis on math and science in education. We better do the same.

As part of my job, I've traveled to about 55 countries over the last 30 years. And while I really enjoy Italy, France, Hong Kong, and Singapore, China fascinates me the most. I first went to China in the early 1990's, just when it was starting to establish its special trade zones. At that time, the government was still leery of outsiders, and we could not travel anywhere without a personal guide.

Fast forward 20 years, and the China I visited in 1990 is not the same place it is today. China has emerged as an industrial powerhouse and a major manufacturer of all types of goods, especially electronics and computers. I became aware of China's real interest in computer manufacturing during a dinner I had in Taipei with Acer founder, Stan Shih, in 1991. At the time, it was illegal for any Taiwanese company to do business with mainland China. But Shih told me that he was working through private channels and was planning to put one of his computer manufacturing facilities in China shortly. Indeed, within a few years, China had opened its doors to various partners throughout the world and started down a path to becoming one of the major manufacturers of personal computers.

Read more at PC Mag

Ex-Googler teaching China 'Silicon Valley 101'

Kai-Fu Lee, Chairman and CEO of Beijing-based Innovation Works, an early stage venture fund, is mobbed by fans and young entrepreneurs outside his Innovation Works office in Beijing China, on October 15, 2010. The visitors won a competition sponsored by the local TV show "Hall of Fame" which is produced by the Economy Channel of the Beijing TV Station. The show featured a visit to Innovation Works and a presentation by Lee which was attended by the fans. (LiPo Ching/Mercury

BEIJING -- It is just a simple piece of plywood, but it is a striking symbol of the frenzied adoration Kai-Fu Lee, perhaps China's most prominent technologist, elicits in this country.

"One overanxious entrepreneur knocked down our door," said Lee, explaining why the plywood used to cover the damage is on display in his spaceshiplike offices.

Few Chinese executives have the technology cred of Lee, who was tapped by Bill Gates to lead Microsoft's operations in China, personally wooed away by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and turned down an offer by Steve Jobs. His new venture, Innovation Works, a $115 million fund to back early-stage technology companies, is something of a laboratory to teach this nation of 1.2 billion people a course that could be best described as "Silicon Valley 101." His efforts tap into the ambitions of a rising economic giant to someday have its own world-dominating technology companies.

Illustrating the importance the country places on his efforts, the government subsidizes the rent of Innovation Works. And Lee's new headquarters was designed -- for free -- by one of the designers of Beijing's National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, constructed for the 2008 Olympics.

On a recent October Saturday afternoon, he was mobbed by 100 wannabe entrepreneurs who won a competition sponsored by a local TV show that let them hear a presentation by Lee. They arrived at his office in formal business attire and cheeredas if he were, well, Steve Jobs.

Read more at Mercury News

Woman may be 'first in China' persecuted over tweet

BEIJING — A Chinese woman sentenced to a year in a labour camp could be the first person in the country persecuted over a tweet, human rights groups said Friday, as Beijing tightens its grip on social media.

Cheng Jianping, 46, was convicted on Monday of "disturbing social order" after she retweeted a Twitter posting that mocked anti-Japanese protesters and suggested they attack the Japanese pavilion at Shanghai's World Expo.

"To my knowledge it is the first time ... someone was sent to labour camp for tweeting," Vincent Brossel, a representative of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, told AFP.

Even though Twitter is blocked in China, the government has sent a "very clear message ... that they watch it and (users should) be careful," he said. Amnesty International has urged the government to release Cheng, whose sentencing comes as China faces intense criticism over its tough reaction to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident writer Liu Xiaobo.

Cheng, an online activist who had supported Liu and other rights defenders, could be the first Chinese citizen to become "a prisoner of conscience on the basis of a single tweet," Amnesty said.

On October 17, Cheng added the phrase "Angry youth, charge!" before retweeting a message posted by her fiance, Hua Chunhui, that mocked Chinese anti-Japanese protesters who had smashed Japanese products over a maritime dispute between the two countries, Amnesty said.

Hua wrote that if protesters "really wanted to kick it up a notch, you'd immediately fly to Shanghai to smash the Japanese Expo pavilion".

The dispute erupted in early September when Tokyo arrested a Chinese trawler captain near a disputed East China Sea archipelago claimed by both sides.

Read more at Google Hosted News

China rejects US web hijack allegations

China hit back on Friday at a US report claiming a Chinese state-owned telecoms firm had hijacked sensitive Internet traffic on American government and military websites, calling it politically biased.

The report, presented to Congress Wednesday, said China Telecom rerouted email traffic to and from websites of the US Senate, the Department of Defense, and "many others" including national space agency NASA for 18 minutes on April 8.

"This report ignores the facts and is full of Cold War thinking and political bias," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement.

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The report, compiled by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said the rerouting began at a smaller Chinese Internet service provider before being propagated by China Telecom.

The company, one of China's major telecommunications operators, has denied the claims.

"We advise this so-called commission to stop interfering in China's internal affairs and do more for mutual trust and cooperation between China and the United States," Hong said.

Leading web security firm McAfee has warned of a rise in cyberattacks with political objectives, pointing to China as one of the leading players in assaults on foreign networks.

But Beijing has always dismissed allegations of Chinese involvement in such attacks.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Why America Must Win the Supercomputing Race

Four decades ago, NASA put a man on the moon using a computer system less powerful than the electronics in many modern-day toasters. With that audacious act of technological faith, the United States took a giant step toward global leadership in science, engineering, and a myriad of other sectors that had not yet been imagined.

This week, when a Chinese machine was ranked number one on the most recent Top 500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers, the United States has lost more than international bragging rights. By creating the Tianhe-1A, with 1.4 times more muscle than America's fastest supercomputer (the Jaguar at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory,) the Chinese have sent a forceful message to the world about their ambitious vision of their country's scientific, economic and military future.

The United States cannot afford to take a back seat in computer technology to the Chinese, or to anyone else. The nation that leads the world in high-performance computing will have an enormous competitive advantage in every sector, including national defense, medicine, energy, environment, finance, manufacturing and product development.

But more important, the nation with the best and fastest supercomputers will attract the best scientific and engineering talent from around the world. And if the United States loses a generation of our top technological talent to another nation, we will feel the impact of that loss for decades to come.

There is no reason for the United States to yield its position as the world's leader in supercomputing. As the director of Argonne National Laboratory, home to one of the world's fastest supercomputers, I know that we already have in place a roadmap to create the next generation of supercomputers - systems that will be 1,000 times more powerful than the new Chinese machine.

Read moe at The Huffington Post