techblog86 spin: Is Microblogging Taking Off in China?

Given that this is China — a place where anything “with Chinese characteristics” is big — it looks like the no-censors-included Twitter isn’t doing much to get the government’s attention — as in include tweets on a mainstream Chinese paper. Instead, what’s gracing papers such as the Beijing Evening News are tweets, if we may, from — Sina Microblog and Co. And it does appear that Hu and Wen want to tweet as well, but be assured — @HuJintao and @WenJiabao on Twitter are fakes.

Increasingly, folks are flocking to Sina Microblogs, amongst other microblogs, in China. Netease has a service, but apparently, it’s still very much an invite-only case, with those who even have an account limited in some respects from inviting others. (It’s a fair bit more restrictive of the Gmail or yesteryear.) QQ caused quite a stir some days ago, when it planned to launch its microblog — only to unexpectedly delay the launch. (Some said it was a ploy — to get 100 million users online at the same time.)

But then again, @zixia from Jiwai.de (which provided all the local tweeting at the Chinese Blogger Conference in Beijing in November 2007) may have had the last word. As one of the earliest local tweeps in the business, he’s of the opinion that, in this day and age, only those who are big and have good ties with the government in China can afford to let the tweeting continue. Startups and non-China-based tweeting machines, apparently, just won’t do.

最近開「微博」了沒? 中國大陸也逐步掀起一場「微博熱」，不過對於已經「被和諧」的推特等國外諸多微型博客服務來講，國內用戶很難上去，除非是「翻牆」過去。而與此同時，「牆內」則掀起了以新浪微博為「代表」的「境內微博浪」。前一段時間，嘰歪網的 @zixia 曾經在 Ignite 北京說道，現在如果你又「不大」又沒有與「主管機構」的「關係」的話，微博很難做大。

Personal Home Pages with Chinese Characteristics: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

We had to sigh when we encountered this tweet from @danshoufuqiang:

Li Yi, the head [Ed: Minister] of the Chinese Ministry of Informational Industry stated: “To manage personal home pages, we’d have to shut them down first, then clean them up, and then slow allow them to come back online, one by one.” Fellow Netizens responded: “Thank God Lord Li is not the Minister of Public Security [Ed: Chinese police]… otherwise, they’d first detain billions, then interrogate them in turn, and finally allow them to come out back to freedom, one by one.”

(Original text: 工信部部长李毅中表示：“整理个人网站，就得把它先停掉，停掉以后进行清理，然后再一个一个恢复。”有网友表示：“幸好李大人没当公安部部长，否则他一定会先把十多亿人全抓起来进行审讯，然后再一个一个放出来。”)

Sad but true. Just a few days ago, papers around China report that all e-commerce sites in the Chinese mainland came “back to life” — that’s about 31 sites in all — in Xinjiang, where they had the July 5th riots last year.

Guilty until proven innocent. Is this Justice (or Justice 2.0) with Chinese characteristics?

Also of note: is this true “just” for websites based in China or is it true for sites the world over?

中國推友 @danshoufuqiang 就個人網站審查問題轉載中國工信部負責人之政策中，提到對於個網先關閉，再整理後再逐一「放回」。與此相關，前幾天新疆才剛剛恢復中國大陸三十一家電子商務網站，允許新疆網民訪問這些網站。