REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

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

Google Cuts Ties With China Ad Agents

Google's woes in China appear to be worsening, despite the government's recent renewal of its Internet license. The company said Monday that it had cut ties with two of its Chinese advertising agents, raising concerns about whether other clients will slowly start to drift away from the search giant if it remains on the outs with officials.

Google ended partnerships with Universal Internet Media and Xi'an Weihua Network, which are the major advertising agents for Google in East and Northwest China, a Google spokesperson said. The firms are two of 25 that cover the nation for Google.

The search engine's market share in China dipped to 24% in the second quarter, a rapid decline from a 31% in the first quarter, according to research firm Analysys International, which measures market share by advertising revenue.

The share of Baidu, Google's main rival in China, hit 70%, a record for the company. Analysts believe Baidu is clearly benefiting from Google's tangle with the government earlier this year.

Some consumers remain wary to conduct mobile transactions but perception, reality aren't in sync The State of Mobile Security

Google said it would stop self-censoring its search results after hackers broke into its company network in Beijing, a move that some suspect had government backing as it targeted not only proprietary code but also certain Gmail user accounts. Since then, Google has redirected traffic to its Hong Kong site, which it does not censor.

Baidu is also looking to capture more of the mobile search market in China. Somewhat brazenly, it is trying to persuade users of Google's open source Android OS to prominently embed Baidu's search box rather than Google's. The mobile search market in China is still in its nascent stage, but is expected to grow rapidly.

Read more at INFORMATIONWEEK

China's star blogger treads fine line

HONG KONG — China's most popular blogger recalls being baffled when a publisher told him he could not run an article because it mentioned a person ordering a dish of lamb.

"I did not get it. What's wrong with eating lamb?" Han Han says.

The publisher explained that by ordering lamb, the diner could be someone who did not eat pork.

And that could imply he was a Muslim -- a particularly sensitive subject in China following deadly ethnic unrest in Xinjiang last year that pitted mostly Muslim Uighurs against the nation's dominant Han group.

The 27-year-old high school drop-out and champion amateur race-car driver said he was frustrated that self-censorship by mainland publishers was often more stringent than the authorities themselves.

"I wish there was a law saying clearly what can be done and what can't be. I wish we could lay all the issues on the table and discuss frankly about them."

Han, famous for his witty, scathing critiques of China's corrupt officials and social issues, has achieved phenomenal fame in the country's tightly monitored cyberspace.

He has accumulated more than 300 million hits on his blog, making it the most popular in China -- and probably the world.

A top-earning author with a dozen titles under his belt, Han was named by TIME magazine as among the world's 100 most influential people, grouping him alongside US President Barack Obama and pop star Lady Gaga.

Read more at Google News

State Grid Guns for China’s Smart Grid

State Grid Co. of China has thrown down the gauntlet in a move that could pose a major challenge to foreign companies seeking a foothold in the multibillion-dollar upgrades of China’s electricity network.

ZUMApress.com

Government-run State Grid is setting China’s smart-grid standards as it gets into the smart-grid business itself.

The state-owned company, which controls the transmission of electricity over 26 of China’s 31 provinces and regions and was ranked 15th on Fortune’s Global 500 list in 2009, on Tuesday announced a set of standards it wants adopted by the government over “smart-grid” upgrades to China’s power transmission and distribution networks.

State Grid, interestingly, is setting the standards as it gets into the business of making smart-grid technologies. Wang Yimin, head of its smart-grid department, told the state-run China Daily bluntly that the company hopes to use its role to help keep its dominance in grid building and equipment supply.

State Grid was created in 2002 when the government reformed the electricity sector, separating power generation from transmission and creating a new electricity regulator in the bet that competition among power producers would increase efficiency and lower costs.

But State Grid has been criticized for using its quasi-monopoly status to muscle back in. Though one magazine ran into trouble for taking on State Grid, even the more typically docile China Daily acknowledged critics’ worries.

“Some experts have expressed concern that the aggressive power supplier is trying to monopolize China’s smart grid market,” the paper said. “A public and transparent standard will help break the industry monopoly by encouraging competition.”

State Grid’s moves are especially worrying for foreign companies such as General Electric Co., Siemens AG and others who see smart grid as a potentially huge and lucrative market. China is expected to spend $60 billion to $100 billion in the next decade on smart grid upgrades. Where Chinese suppliers of conventional power equipment can sell cheaply, foreign players think they have an edge on cutting-edge technology.

But if State Grid has its way, that edge could be dulled.

– Shai Oster

The Wall Street Journal

Women Changing China

 

If you don't have time to watch the full version, go to FORA.tv and watch the chapters you aerested in.

 

 

Despite censorship, Internet gives Chinese new ways to express themselves

BEIJING — Google's recent clash with Chinese authorities over censorship highlighted the limitations of the world's largest Internet market. But it also overshadowed a reality often missed by the West: China's Web gives citizens the ability to sound off in ways never possible before under a Communist system that restricts freedom of expression.

A generation of netizens is emerging that is worldly, informed and willing to take pokes at the government. "The Internet has taught the Chinese youth egalitarian values," said Lisa Li, founder of China Youthology, which examines the attitudes and beliefs of those ages 15 to 25.

There is a significant amount of online freedom, said Guobin Yang, associate professor at Barnard College in New York City and author of "The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online." "In the past year, the nation's top leaders have held unfiltered Internet chats with netizens. (Premier) Wen Jiabao held a two-hour session with Internet people. He responded to all kinds of questions. They raised very challenging questions. People were very critical of him. It shows how important the Internet is and how the government is paying close attention to it."

The yin and yang of China's Internet play out daily on the online video site Youku.com, which has become a media and cultural force in the country. Its emergence as the nation's top video site — it receives about 200 million unique visitors a month in a nation with more than 400 million Internet users — illustrates the rapidly changing Chinese Web in a quickly changing country.

Youku, backed by Palo Alto's Sutter Hill Ventures and cofounded by former Bay Area resident Victor Koo, a Hong Kong native, generates most of its traffic by offering up professionally produced videos, such as popular Chinese shows, and original content deemed too edgy for the drab, state-controlled TV stations. But it is also a platform for a new generation of amateur video bloggers who now have a way to sound off, said Gao Ming, an amateur video blogger who regularly posts videos about daily life on Youku.

"It was not long ago everyone was wearing Mao suits and there was just one path in life," he said. "The Internet gives common people a place to express their opinions, to share their stories and perspectives."

In a recent poll of 6,243 people taken by the state-controlled People's Tribune, 70 percent of respondents said the Internet plays an important role as a check on the behavior — or misbehavior — of government officials.

"The Internet is emerging as a kind of de facto public sphere," said Kaiser Kuo, an Internet consultant working with Youku. "There has never been a tradition of the public square or town hall in China. It's always been a very hierarchical and authoritarian society."

Still, Kuo noted, there is a line that Internet users are not allowed to cross. "You don't know exactly where the line is — but if you cross it, they let you know," he said.

Beyond providing China's citizens with a legitimate — if limited — watchdog role, the Web has also given rise to online vigilantism run amok. It's not uncommon for a citizen to smear an official with false allegations of extramarital affairs, or for a rejected lover to destroy an ex-girlfriend's reputation by falsely accusing her of having AIDS or being a prostitute.

Read more at Mercury News

Why the Dalai Lama should follow at least one person on Twitter

Earlier this week, from a hotel in New York, the Dalai Lama held an hour-long conversation via Twitter with his followers in China. The Dalai Lama uses Twitter regularly – and his verified account has more than 365,000 followers. But on this occasion, he used a third party to host the discussion session: Wang Lixiong, a Chinese writer who lives in Beijing, and is a recent convert to Tibetan Buddhism.

Of course, like all social networking sites, Twitter is heavily monitored in China, but where there is technology there is always a way and several activists managed to bypass China’s electronic barbicans which are used to good effect to suppress free speech online.

The Dalai Lama’s attempt to reach Chinese supporters was only a partial success, however. At the time of writing @wlixiong only had 8,000 or so followers, but perhaps China’s spies were watching and blocking.

I had a quick look but couldn’t understand a word. In fact, it was much more interesting trying to understand the Tibetan situation from my vantage point – an internet café in Dharamsala, the Indian home of the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan government-in-exile. Dharamsala is now effectively an relocated Lhasa, a situation that suits both India and China; the Dalai Lama can spread his constrained word from the ever-growing town, the Chinese can carry on with their charming version their modernised dissolution of the Tibetan monasteries. Naturally, the locals here get fat on the riches that tourists bring.

Unlike other places such as Nepal, where an increasingly Beijing-friendly Nepalese Government is attempting to silence and ostracise its Tibetan refugees, the only burning issue in Dharamsala is how to ban vehicles from the town centre (and nothing binds a community together like a traffic jam).

Furthermore I have never seen as many mobile masts in one place. They outnumber stupas by ten to one so there’s no doubt His Holiness has the means to relay his message. For Mr Wang Lixiong, however, things on his return to Beijing may not be so easy. His courageous decision to host the Dalai Lama’s Q&A session is likely to result in a little chat with the Chinese authorities.

Consequently I notice His Holiness may have 365,000 Twitter followers, but as a semi-deity he has no need to follow anybody. But perhaps he should make an exception and decide to follow @wlixiong, not just for his bravery, but to keep Mr Lixiong in the public eye if and when he returns to Beijing.

The Telegraph

CNNIC: China's Young Internet Users Reach 195 Mln

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) issued its "2009 Report on the Behavior of China's Young Internet Users" in Beijing today, showing that as of the end of 2009, China had reached a total of 195 mln young internet users, up 16.8% from the previous year, accounting for 50.7% of all internet users in China. Internet penetration among youth reached 54.5%, and 74% of all young internet users accessed the internet via mobile phone, up 24.3% from the previous year.

Young internet users spent a weekly average of 16.5 hours online, 1.9 hours longer than in 2008.

Most marked was young internet users' use of entertainment services, with usage of online music (88.1%), online video (67%), online literature (47.1%) and online gaming (77.2%) all higher than that of overall internet users. Young internet users also used online communication tools at higher rates than overall internet users, including blogs (68.8%), instant messaging (77%), social networking sites (50.9%) and BBS (31.7%). 73.9% of young Chinese internet users used search engines. In general, young Chinese internet users were less active on commerce-related internet applications, with online shopping and payment used by 26.5% and 22.9% of users, respectively.

Read more at Marbridge Consulting

How Chinese bloggers evade censorship

Faced with escalating attacks by internet police, bloggers in China are playing a cat and mouse game to avoid detection.

They invent code words and create multiple accounts with pseudo names to escape censors.

It's a dangerous game, with Chinese security forces controlling email and scanning internet services for 1,083 filtered words that include the names of dissidents.

Read more at The Guardian

A beginner's guide to Chinese artist, activist, and twitterer Ai Weiwei

Artist, activist and Twitter-lover Ai Weiwei adores online social media, and hails it as "the very best tool humans have ever found to connect one person to another, and to really create a new society".

That last bit is likely what worries Chinese authorities the most, who do not appreciate outspokenness, especially when it clashes with their concept of what makes a harmonious society--all of which has pushed Ai Weiwei into the realms of "outsider art".

His multimedia installations and video pieces are often incendiary, or very directly political, or both--most notorious are his acts of smashing Ming Dynasty-eque vases, or daubing corporate logos on them; flipping the bird to the White House and the Forbidden Palace; and the post-Sichuan earthquake piece using children's schoolbags of various colors to form messages, in homage to the thousands of kids who died beneath the rubble of poorly constrcuted schools in that massive 2008 quake.

Read more at CNET

Lunch with the FT: Ai Weiwei

The prospect of a lunchtime encounter with Ai Weiwei, China’s most famous and most political artist, is, frankly, a bit intimidating. Ai, a hulking presence of a man, has been described by past interviewers as brooding, difficult and silent. He is also known for smashing things and, when he can be persuaded to speak, for lashing out at the authorities in Beijing with a ferocity rarely mustered by exiles, let alone those who dare to live inside China itself. “Study of Perspective” (1995-2003), a series of his work, appears to capture his character. It shows photographs of his outstretched arm in front of famous landmarks – the Forbidden City, the Eiffel Tower, the White House – middle finger raised in defiance.

For the 2008 Olympic Games in China, Ai helped the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron to design the Bird’s Nest, a tangle of steel and concrete that became the country’s national stadium. He subsequently attacked the games as a propaganda tool or “pretend smile”. His increasingly ferocious run-ins with Chinese authorities over censorship, human rights and cover-ups of corruption have provoked Beijing to shut down his blogs, rifle his bank records and prise open his e-mail accounts (G-mail, of course). In Sichuan last August, police – rattled by Ai’s investigation into the deaths of children crushed in an earthquake that devastated the province in 2008 – raided his hotel room and beat him. A month after the attack, in Germany, he was rushed to hospital for surgery after doctors found haemorrhaging of the brain. Today Ai complains of memory loss, though with typically caustic irony says he has few memories worth retrieving.

Read more at Financial Times

Is the Internet the bedrock of civil society in China?

In China, the importance of the internet exceeds even that which we attach to it in the rest of the world. It has become the only available public space where everyone's dreams, ambitions and fantasies lie. To see the extent of the internet's omnipresence, it suffices to take notice of some recent debates in the Chinese and international press.

The revelations by Google and other corporations of highly sophisticated cyber spying attacks against them have pointed the spotlight on the more than dubious methods possibly being employed by the Chinese state to maximise her political and industrial advantages. However this is not the essential point and furthermore, the participation of the Chinese state has yet to be proved. What is clear for all to see is the proliferation of Chinese hackers; their sophistication, their active cooperation and their ability to share the work in order to reach their pre-designated target. Some of these networks could be linked to prestigious universities and others could merely be random cells. What's for sure is that there is an alliance between a highly lucrative new market and the coming of a generation who have grown up in, and been raised by, the internet. This generation is caught inside this web, with no other professional or personal way out other than by marauding at the web's boundaries. In other words, the proliferation of Chinese hackers is a manifestation of what we could call the 'desocialisation' of China - the impoverishment of their traditional social networks and their reconstruction on fraudulent and clandestine foundations.

Read more at eRenlai

Asia governments make fewer demands on Google

Governments in Asia seem less likely to petition Google to hand over user data or to censor information, according to statistics revealed by the search giant in a new online tool.

Governments in Asia seem less likely to petition Google to hand over user data or to censor information, according to statistics revealed by the search giant in a new online tool.

Google has implemented the new tool and map to provide the numbers of government requests directed to Google and Youtube, but it stops short of providing any precise details on the nature of the requests.

Google said the "vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations".

Read more at ComputerWorld

Why Yahoo Ought to Follow Google's Lead on China

Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo, born Yáng Zhìyuǎn and one of the most successful and well-known Chinese-Americans, has missed an opportunity to speak out on behalf of the people in the country of his birth - China. In fact, as one of the modern day creators of electronic communications, Yang recently disappointed thousands of Chinese seeking greater freedoms by not pushing the multi-million dollar company he created to follow Google’s lead and make the Internet more accessible -- without censorship -- to the people of China.

Around the same time Yang immigrated to the United States from Taiwan, a young man from Moscow also came with his family to a freer society, this time from Communist Russia. Sergey Brin, whose family experienced firsthand the limits of a controlling government and the new freedoms of living in America, arrived in the United States in 1979 at the age of 6. Yang, by then, was 11. No one knew in the late 1970’s that a young Chinese-American in California and a young Russian-American in Maryland would forever change how the world communicated. Brin grew up to co-found Google and directly compete with Yang’s Yahoo.

Read more at CBS

Google battle over Internet censorship goes far beyond China

At least 25 nations have blocked access to the search giant over the last several years.

Google Inc.'s fight with China over Internet censorship made headlines around the world, but it has been engaged in similar battles around the globe.

At least 25 countries, many of them with repressive regimes but even those with democracies, have at times blocked the public's access to Google over the last several years. All told, more than 40 countries actively censor the Internet, compared with a handful in 2004, which is when the OpenNet Initiative, a group of academics, began tracking global censorship.

Censorship runs the gamut. Denmark bans child pornography. Iran has the most extensive filtering and surveillance system of any country, blocking access to all online content critical of the government. It stepped up its Internet crackdown and surveillance during the disputed presidential election last summer.

Some countries are setting up powerful electronic barriers, similar to the "Great Firewall" in China, to control what the public can access. Others, such as Belize, have blocked Google Talk and Microsoft's MSN Messenger, as well as other services that allow people to talk to one another over the Internet.

Read more at The Los Angeles Times

Google cyberattack hit password system: report

Reuters) - A December cyberattack on Google Inc computers hit the company's password system that millions of people worldwide use to access almost all of the company's Web services, The New York Times reported, citing a person with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The closely-guarded program is considered a crown jewel at Google, enabling users and employees to sign in with their password only once to operate various services including e-mail and business applications, the newspaper said in its April 20 edition.

Google did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Code-named Gaia for the Greek goddess of the earth, and still in use under the name Single Sign-On, the program was described publicly only once at a technical conference four years ago, the newspaper said.

Read more at REUTERS

Alibaba.com: English language Platform Attacked By Hackers

HONG KONG (Dow Jones)--Chinese online trading platform operator Alibaba.com Ltd. (1688.HK) said Monday its English language platform in beta testing was attacked by unidentified hackers over the weekend and it believes its servers in the U.S. and China were the target.

"This past weekend (April 16 and 17th), Alibaba.com's AliExpress platform was the target of malicious attacks by unidentified hackers using a variety of intrusion measures," the company said in a statement. "While the attacks temporarily affected access to the AliExpress site, under the built-in safeguards and swift response of our team, the Web site quickly resumed normal operations."

The company said that there was no breach of customer data and it is taking measures to protect future incidents.

The issue of cyber attacks has been in the spotlight since Google Inc. (GOOG) said in January that it was the target of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China that appeared to be primarily aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Amid concerns about censorship, Google decided last month to move its Chinese-language search operations to Hong Kong. Google also said it had detected cyber attacks against over twenty other large companies.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

For Chinese, Web Is the Way to Entertainment

SHANGHAI — The daily Web habits of a typical 18-year-old college student named Li Yufei show why American Internet companies, one after another, have had trouble penetrating what is now the world’s most wired nation.

He writes a blog, downloads Korean television shows, manages two Web sites devoted to music and plays an online game called Rongguang Hospital, at Baidu.com.

“I started doing a lot of this when I was about 11 years old,” says Mr. Li, a freshman at the Shanghai Maritime University. “Now, I spend most of my leisure time on the Internet,” he says. “There’s nowhere else to go.”

Google’s decision last month to remove some of its operations from China has overshadowed a startling dynamic at work in this country, a place where young people complain that there is not a lot to do: the Internet, already a potent social force here, has become the country’s prime entertainment service.

Read more at The New York Times

China Starts New Bureau to Curb Web

BEIJING — China has quietly formed a new bureau to police social networking sites and other user-driven forums on the Internet, which are proving harder for the government to monitor and control than ordinary news portals.

The new bureau marks the latest outgrowth to a morass of agencies tasked with regulating online business and communications in China. People informed of the expansion say the authorities are retooling their media apparatus to deepen their leverage over the Web, and regulators are jostling for the growing power and prestige at stake.

The new agency, officially called the Internet news coordination bureau, is part of this effort to better monitor the communications of Chinese Web users, who total nearly 400 million by official estimates.

Read more at The New York Times

Forces need action plan to fight cyber attacks

NEW DELHI: The armed forces should be capable of fighting enemies both in the real and virtual battlefields.

This was defence minister A K Antony's message on Friday, in the backdrop of the spurt in online espionage attacks from China.

Armed forces need to prepare "a crisis management action plan", in close conjunction with agencies like National Technical Research Organisation and Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) as well as ministries like home affairs and communications, to counter cyber attacks and cyber-terrorism, said Antony.

Read more at The Times of India

Non-Chinese versions of Opera Mini for iPhone are blocked, unusable in China

Opera Mini for iPhone has landed in some country's iTunes App Stores, and I've just snagged it from the UK store and fired it up here in China, only to discover that... it's blocked, unusable, dead--thanks to the Great Firewall, and Opera's compliance with it.

I've tested only the international, English version (pictured, above)--it's not on the Chinese App Store yet--but it was actually inevitable that Opera Mini for iPhone would suffer this same fate as its Java-based browser.

Back in November last year, I reported that Opera was forced by local media regulations to create a sectioned-off Chinese version of the browser whose Opera Turbo servers are located in China and therefore abide by nationwide Web filtering.

Read more at CNET

China's Tencent to Buy Stake in Russia's DST

BEIJING—China's largest Internet company, Tencent Holdings Ltd., is purchasing a 10% stake in Digital Sky Technologies Ltd., a Russian investment firm that holds a stake in Facebook Inc.

Shenzhen-based Tencent, which popularized instant messaging in China and operates an online game portal and other Chinese Internet services, said it will invest approximately $300 million in Moscow-based Digital Sky, also known as DST. The companies plan to explore "new business opportunities" in the Russian-speaking Internet markets, said Tencent President Martin Lau in a joint statement Monday.

"Our teams share many common views and beliefs and a clear vision about the significant opportunities that lay ahead," said Digital Sky's chief executive, Yuri Milner, in the statement. Digital Sky is known for its stakes in Russian Internet companies including Mail.ru, one of the country's largest Web sites.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Why is "Happy Farmer" so popular?

"Happy Farmer" now is China's hottest web game, attracting roughly 80 million Chinese netizens since its establishment in 2008. Why is the game so popular? Newsweek's reporter Isaac Stone Fish gives this explanation: "The game's success reflects a deep and growing nostalgia for China's traditional agrarian way of life."

In an article published by Newsweek on April 9, Fish pointed out that, as 225 million Chinese peasants flocked to big cities for better jobs over the last 30 years, "cities spring out of nowhere, and social networking games like Happy Farmer have become a tangible reminder of the sense of community that many migrants believe has been lost."

In addition, the popular game also reflected the urban middle class' concerns over the country's poor air and food quality, said the article, and "Happy Farmer reflects a wistfulness for a rural China that at least in the romantic image does not suffer from such problems."

While an increasingly popular tourist trend called "Farm Family Fun" meets this need for a taste of the rural, the Happy Farmer game has taken that faux-agrarian lifestyle to a new level, and "its success is changing the way some city dwellers behave in real life. Urbanites have started leasing farmland and are building vegetable plots across South China, where urban residents volunteer and tend their sections of the garden."

Fish concluded that there are no statistics on the size of the game's spillover effect, "but one thing is clear: China's peasants are migrating to the cities in search of a better life—while a growing urban middle class is looking back toward its roots."

China Daily

Slow going for pensioners on info superhighway

Zhao Guoqing and modern China were born on the same day, October 1, 1949.

She grew up at a time when high-tech in China meant you had a rotary dial telephone and a radio set with two or three stations.

Zhao was 29 years old before her family was able to afford a black-and-white TV set with three channels and fuzzy reception.

Writing a message meant a half-penny postage stamp on a letter that took five days to get from Chongqing to Beijing, not an e-mail. Of course the letter was handwritten in perfect characters, not today's sloppy Internet jargon that uses numbers for words.

The personal computer has been around for 35 years and widely available in China over the past decade. But you would never know that judging by the terror that strikes the heart of people Zhao Guoqing's age when you ask them to send you an e-mail.

For seniors in their late 60s and 70s, the Internet Age is a frightening environment, typified by 74-year-old John McCain, the former US presidential candidate who admitted he didn't know how to send an e-mail either.

Read more at Global Times

Social media loses ground in China

One of the hottest conversations online in China right now is about the so-called ‘water army’, a term referring to people employed to post comments on online forums and social networking groups that benefit commercial clients. Postings by the ‘water army’ may be negative or positive (more on this below), but whatever the case they are lies and the practice is leading to declining trust in social media sources.

The situation has got so bad that according to a special report on CCTV (aired on 15 March – which was also World Consumer Rights Day), 50 per cent or more of allegedly hot issues on social media sites were concocted by online marketing companies and their ‘water army’ to benefit clients. If this figure is correct, then Web 2.0 in China is facing terminal decline.

The social media in China has been abused by marketing firms and the ‘water army’ for a long time, but only now are online users discovering the truth. We used to believe breaking news on bad corporate behaviour and other news about companies. Now, however, we discover that most of what we read is lies. Public relations companies reached into the online world a long time ago to research and monitor brand image and reputation of clients. But some of them went an extra step and started creating news for clients. The CCTV report mentioned above claimed that some online marketing companies hire part-time employees to fabricate bad news about competitors and in some instance post on thousands of threads to help spread the story.

Read more at CSR Asia