The trusty old paper, as well as its more colorful variant, the mag, are still doing very well in China, with the 5th National Readership Survey coming in with stats of 74.5% and 50%, respectively, in terms of readership. Having said that, though, the Internet has replaced your trusty books as the third most-read item.

China, traditionally a nation of readers, continues to read, but also continues to take the habit online, with 36.5% of the population reading online. Books ar enow down in fourth place, down to 34.7%. The netizens scored a rise of 8.7% over the 2005 stats.

There are over 300,000+ new books hitting the shelves every year in China. However, the readership is dwindling fast. The stats have it that every person buys — on average — just 1.75 (that’s less than two) books a year.

Why is that the case? 69% of those interviewed agree that reading books is important; however, 49.4% say they simply don’t have the time. Books are pricey, too: 56% think that the price is too high. Furthermore, 42.8% of those simply don’t have the time to read.

Indeed, with the great big Web out there, your humble Shakespearean play in the form of a book may soon be read more often in electronic form than on paper…

The Carrefour website has already been hit by hackers even before the official May 1 start to the Carrefour boycott. The Carrefour China website (carrefour.com.cn) sported a “Boycott Carrefour” slogan at around 14:30 on April 17, 2008. (The site returned to normal just 40 minutes later.)

Meanwhile, the action got more and more intense as protesters outside the Carrefour Xi’an store unfurled a banner which read: Support the Olympics. Oppose “Tibet independence”. Boycott French products. Love our China. Unite!

Those joining in the boycott were mainly young people, as well as white-collar employees. As for the elderly, they were attracted more to Carrefour’s low prices than the boycott, or why the boycott took place at all.

Unless you don’t have a single pal in China that uses MSN / Windows Live Messenger, you’d probably have guessed by now that your Chinese contacts have this “(L) China” moniker before their name. If you’re using this sub-optimal OS known as “Windows”, you’d actually be able to see red hearts with the word “China”.

What’s going on?

Long story cut short: Tibet riots, attempts by separatists at the torch relay, Olympic boycotts, anti-Carrefour campaigns, and now (breaking news!), CNN blunders. By a long shot, China’s not getting the most out of its pledge to forge ahead with its “harmonious society”. The Chinese netizenry, in the meantime, is getting more than sick to death with the recent brouhaha — and has decided to react.

So they rally their people behind. They flood the Web with posts asking fellow countrymen to boycott Carrefour, “because that company supports ‘Tibetan independence’”. They also ask every “Chinese” (which can include Chinese with foreign nationalities) to stick “L (China)” on their MSN screen names. Finally, they initiate online petitions gathering over 5 million signatures — big enough news to make it to the newspapers and even the 7 o’clock Network News Broadcast.

This is mainland China in the year 2008. If you think this is “scary” enough, though, well — there is a “scarier” episode in recent Chinese-language Internet history.

When Shih Ming-Teh started the Million People Against Corruption, President Chen Must Go “Depose A-Bian” campaign, he used the Internet to get people to donate TWD 100 (per person) to make the rallies against Taiwan’s Chen Shui-Bian possible. Back in early September 2006, nearly every who wanted Chen to go stuck the trademark “step down” thumbs-down icon on their MSN screen names, with some replacing their entire screen names with “(N)”, which yielded a thumbs-down icon.

The power of the Chinese-language Internet is absolutely amazing. Whether rallying for those corrupt folks to step down or to unite against “your own country”, it shows all too well: on the Internet, word goes out pretty quick. The mainland netizenry of 200 million and counting are already the biggest Internet population on the surface of the planet (by country).

Is it appropriate to add the tagline “Don’t get the Chinese netizenry mad” here?

The recent unrest in Tibet has certainly left a big impact on the Chinese Internet. First of all, reports that CNN cropped pictures to make them deliberately anti-Chinese in content reached the Web and even official channels, and a subsequent picture of Chinese soldiers donning on religious clothing made its way onto even Chinese Central TV, where the announcers promptly debunked it as an old pic (2001) that was not part of the 2008 riots.

Now, the Chinese Internet is abuzz with the latest netizen campaign to boycott Carrefour and the LVMH group, including big brands such as LV and Kenzo, just to name a few. The reason: allegations are that these French companies are sponsoring the Tibetan separatists with cash. The word out on the Net: Don’t go to Carrefour on May 1!

The latest campaign has found its way to the man on the street by means of relentless copying-and-pasting — including illegal methods such as wiki spamming. One of our own wikis got hit with wiki spam, where it was promptly deleted.

This recent incident has set rhetoric aflame on the Chinese Internet, with those holding different opinions allegedly being regarded as “unpatriotic”, according to a Sohu IT report. Meanwhile, Carrefour itself claims to be victimized, and opinions about the boycott being unhelpful and being a loss-loss event. Recently, more and more “boycott Carrefour” posts have made themselves into that great big trash on the Web, as moderators have started taking down the posts.

China and fake stuff — the two never were on a clean slate, no matter what The Powers That Be try to remedy the situation. A recent report on Sohu IT quoted local media in saying that nearly 50% of all digital still camera batteries are — fake!

The report shows two batteries looking nearly exactly the same. The giveaway is shown in a sole typo: “OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO., LTD” versus “OLYMPUS OPTICAK CO., TLD”.

Here’s a hint: original or “real” batteries cost you around CNY 200 - CNY 300. If your battery costs you only CNY 10 (or even CNY 100), however, you might have a fake battery in your hands.

A fake battery will work in the short term, but will fail earlier than original batteries. There are, by the way, places where you can actually see for yourself if your batt is real — or fake.

Something odd happened on the Chinese Internet today, just a day after April Fools. MSN Messenger (also known as Windows Live Messenger) started “censoring” messages with links to major Chinese portals, such as Sohu and QQ.

The bug occurred just around 14:00. Content with the string www.sohu.com or www.qq.com, as well as content with just the word “sohu” were being blocked.

By around 14:47, according to reports on Sohu IT, Sohu links began working again, but links to qq.com were still being blocked. However, by around 15:00, the problem had simply vanished into the ether.

The problem seemed not to be a deliberate fault on the side of Microsoft’s MSN service, as the software giant stated that it did not deliberately initiate the block. Oddly enough, the QQ IM also seemed to have been in the practise of censoring sites: on QQ, “mistakes” blocked any links shared in a chat session leading to Baidu or Sina.

Here’s a post from China Web 2.0 Review about the next Mobile Monday Beijing. Keep your eyes out on the event, which takes place tonight (March 31, 2008). Details are here.

So what’s the Mobile Monday Peer Awards? The Mobile Monday Peer Awards is a launchpad for companies offering innovative services or technologies. The winner of Mobile Monday Beijing will compete in the Asia regional vote with the best-of-the-best coming from Mobile Monday APAC chapters. The top three from each catagory will then be headed-off to the Global Peer Award Finals, all expenses paid, in Kuala Lumpur on May 19th.

There are two categories with about 10 startups to compete the awards.
• Early stage (less than 1 million USD in funding)
• Emerging (over 1 million USD in funding)

Each company will have 3 minutes to present their service in English. The criteria for judging are:

1. Innovation
2. Market potential
3. Demonstrated capability to get users/clients
4. Ability to expand overseas (since MoMo promotes internationalization)

Are you ready for TD-SCDMA, ie 3G with Chinese Characteristics (so to sort of paraphrase the officialspeak)? Well, if you’re in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Shenzhen Xiamen and Qinhuangdao, the answer is — yes!

The new TD-SCDMA signals will be unleashed upon inhabitants of these metropolises bright and early on April 1, 2008. 3G subscribers will be using phone numbers 11 figures in length, starting with the prefix 157.

Note the date when TD-SCDMA signals launch — April 1, 2008. A high-ranking exec at China Mobile has been quoted as saying that this is not going to be an April Fools. Well… OK.

The flame has been lit! The Olympic Torch Relay is now officially underway, and according to a Sohu IT report, the “foreign language versions” of the Beijing 2008 website saw a 98% increase in visitors. Oddly enough, no languages were mentioned in the report; the site (beijing2008.cn) has versions in English, French and Chinese.

Last year, 20% of all visitors to beijing2008.cn visited non-Chinese pages; this year, the figure is more around 35%. The 98% jump compared to the total number of visitors the day before March 24, 2008, when the fire was lit.

The report also says that 5,000 messages of goodwill, wishing good luck to the Olympics, were received, coming from over 20 countries and regions, including the US, the UK, Greece, France, Germany and Brazil, just to mention a few.

A report on Sohu IT from The Beijing Times has it that China’s Ministry of Information Industry has started legislating on SMS text messages along with the Information Office of the State Council and the Ministry of Public Security. (China’s MII was altered in its then-present form at the most recent NPC, but the report still refers to the previous agency.)

The new bill, known as the Communications Short Message Service Management Regulations, sets for the first the limits on acceptable messaging, and defines what cannot be written in a text message. No details were given, although the usual duo — porn and problematic politics (eg “unconstitutional content” or “state secrets” — are almost certain to be included in the list of no-send content.

The new bill is also designed to crack down on SMS spamming, which is a serious problem in mainland China. Additionally, it will encourage telcos to adopt a blacklist and whitelist system, stopping undesirable messages and spam dead in its tracks.

The bill will now undergo approval before being promulgated and entering into law.