1927 Internet Cafés in Beijing. At Most.

What’s to like about Internet cafés in China? There’s no opportunity to link up to “reroutes” (so to speak; that’s if you must be so reactionary as to tweet or plurk in China), the place is dark, dank, and nicotine-laden, and there’s a good chance that official censors are just about everywhere. It’s a more Pyeongyangish part of our capital, and to the chagrin of those who just are dying to be censored, you can have only that many — Qianlong Web reports that a maximum of 1,927 Internet cafés (read: “official” cafés) are to be part of the Chinese capital.

Topping out the list is Chaoyang (unsurprising as it hosts the Sanlitun Apple Store) and Haidian (the place where our capital got its tech start in), with 350 and 300 Internet cafés authorized for each part of the city respectively. When reading over the stats for Dongcheng (106) and Xicheng (140), keep in mind that they incorporate what used to be Chongwen and Xuanwu districts, respectively. The least wired-up part of the city has got to be mountainous Huairou up north. Even with the new National Highway 111 extended, that’s not doing a lot to bring new computers into the hilly district, which will sport only 20 “official” Net cafés.

Lest you think that’s the only way capital-ists will be allowed online, there are also wifi bars, mobile phones, and your tech blogger’s absolute fav — works great in many places: iPhone 3GS tethered to his 15-incher. Voilà!

Is Barack Obama A PRC Citizen After All?

The Chinese may have a PRC ID number already in store for President 2.0.

This is a fairly scary bit of “the news” as of late: there’s this bit of “fake ID software” on the Chinese Interwebs (which we’re going to stay legal and not post a link to) which can generate PRC ID numbers for just about any person on the planet. If you’ve had a bad night out, you can even attempt ones for Kim Jong-Il, Superman or even E.T.!

This bit of “official fakeware” (as we’re compelled to call it) found its raison d’être to get youngsters into Internet cafés with valid ID (as those kids back then could not usually get in unless they were 18; young counter-revolutionaries, we question?), but has now emerged as “dark side jokeware”. And while you might get away with a fake ID for, say, E.T., PRC criminal code will likely see you in jail or at least a fair bit poorer for creating fake IDs — a criminal offence in China, and likely everywhere else as well.

Legal experts speaking to the Beijing Evening News, however, point out that you’re only handcuffed if you do the deed — as in use a fake ID. Until then, a mere screen showing President 2.0’s PRC ID number, real or fake, is unlikely to get the Supreme People’s Court upset or anything. We caution, though, that this is borderline behavior — as in you’re clearly treading on very thin ice here. Your tech blogger will pay no-one a prison visit if he or she got in by — well, creating fake IDs.

(He’s like this as he’s a law-abiding Swiss citizen.)

Local Media Descend Upon Google Like Vultures. Yet Again…

No doubts here: this is Cold War 2.0.

(The World Cup, for what it’s worth, looks a fair bit like World War II 2.0: last night, Paraguay’s two extra goals sent Japan home, much like Little Boy and Fat Man “did their stuff” 65 years ago; England is out and the US “just joined” in the last minute, qualifying for the Group of 16.)

The Chinese media have started descending on Google, once again, like vultures feeding on their prey. This time it’s about Google about to lose its mandatory ICP licence, required if it is to use a mainland Chinese web server.

Of course, having engaged in anti-censorship moves to the extent of getting the US Congress all excited, Google stands a fat chance of getting its ICP licence renewed. This is especially the case since March, when it decided (very much “unilaterally”) to have its google.cn domain shift to the uncensored google.com.hk server. In response, the Chinese censors have upped the censorship on Google to such an extent that you are deemed reactionary (and hence eligible for a government-mandated connection reset) if you so much as Google up a carrot (which uses the character 胡, used also — no surprise — in the Chinese name of the Chinese president, Hu Jintao).

The site, as it stands right now, still leads to google.com.hk, but this time, you have to click a link to continue your trek. (So much for user-friendliness.)

The Beijing Evening News goes further in saying that Google Maps might be in a little bit of trouble as well, for it might run afoul of mapping rules. (The government doesn’t want you to leak stuff about sensitive sites — we’ll let you guess here what they must be.) Baidu, its biggest fiend, is in; Google.cn is not.

Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespersons were quick to give the standard response of not mentioning Google by name while repeating that they welcome companies who do business in China in accordance with government regulations.

(And provided you don’t report to your home country’s congress when the Chinese government starts going after what you can’t publish.)

GoSo.cn: Here’s the “People’s Google”

Being in the “People’s China” (PRC), we have the — can we say this? — ”People’s Firewall” (Great Firewall; the former East Germany called their version, the Berlin Wall, the Anti-Fascism Protection Wall). With Google leaving China for obviously political reasons, the PRC now has, nearly a quarter after Google.cn’s departure, its own — “People’s Search Engine”.

The People’s Daily, known best as being the official party paper, has launched “People’s Search” (人民搜索; what an apt name!). Domain-wise, you’re going to be disappointed if you were looking for peoplessearch.cn; instead, it’s a semi-”fashionable” goso.cn. (On the Interwebs, the official organs try to get “snazzy” and “fashionable”, only to keep the censors.)

Of course, this being the official search engine, controversial content is left out. Look for the date of the Tian’anmen crackdown in Chinese, for example, and if you’re in China, you’ll get hits — which are not one bit related to the controversial event. If you’re outside China, interestingly enough, you get your connection to goso.cn cut. Yes, it’s as if the cyberofficials are saying: “We don’t want you US imperialists to go around messing about in our internal cyberaffairs in China” or something.

(Hint: the results for the Grass Mud Horse (草泥马 Caonima), as seen above, work well. That is, probably, until the Net mandarins censor the innocent alpaca as well… The Grass Mud Horse is commonly seen as representing the average Netizen, obviously in opposition to official mass censorship.)

Now for today’s dose of officialspeak: it’s claimed this search engine wants to “create an authoritative Chinese search engine” as well as “providing trusted search results”. As @spiked1989 notes on his tweet, there’s a funny side to this: just before goso.cn launched, Google, now in its uncensored version, had nearly all services become unusuable, Chinese Great Firewall be thanked.

@spiked1989 next ponders if a “People’s OS” will do for China. Your tech blogger, in the meanwhile, is taking a good, hard look at Google. With goso.cn out, it’s just a matter of time before all off Google might go under. There’s another factor in this: where does the official goso.cn leave the supposed-non-gov Baidu?

Chinese-Language URLs: Anyone Out There?

And you think: this is China. It’s supposed to be a place where we’re supposed to see more of this when it comes to URLs:

Yep, you’re supposedly right. Except for one thing. Not a lot of folks are doing Chinese URLs — especially those that involve Chinese ideograms. The sign you’re taking a good look at now is an exception.

Instead, the Chinese are into hanyu pinyin addresses (those with Chinese romanization instead of the characters themselves), abbreviated addresses in pinyin (does stuff like bjjtgl.gov.cn make any sense to you?), and — if all else fails — plain English. They’re dumping their own language — and characters.

As a Mac user (and occasional Windows guy) who has to get about in two languages (at least) every day, it’s no surprise, speaking from personal experience. On both major systems, you have to switch between different input systems with a rather complex keystroke to type in characters or in ASCII characters. As long as there’s that barrier, it’s likely those characters will remain in rarely-used territory on the Web.

Personally speaking, though, it’s a good thing they’re enabled in the first place. Now if we can just get the different keyboard layouts (and language layouts) to work out great so that it’s easier to switch between the lingos…

“Holiday Adjustment” Debate Rips Open Chinese Free Speech Holes

Who doesn’t want an extra day or two off? Sometimes, the Chinese play around with the holidays like an inexperienced driver on a manual transmission car. Sold that you can shift into higher gear all the time, the newbie yanks a 5-speed stick (in top gear) down — and engages reverse gear instead.

That’s precisely what we’ve done with our May 1 break. Bearing the hallmarks of a nominal Communist state, we’ve had May 1 off since PRC time immortal. When the higher authorities remixed the holidays so that we would get a seven-day “golden week”, May 1 was seen on the same rank of importance as the PRC’s own birthday, thereby begetting each one a full seven-day break. That was well until 2008, when the holidays were remixed; since then, May 1 is a three-day only break.

Now, the Beijing Evening News is reporting efforts to get it back again have been met with opposition from Tsinghua University professor Cai Jiming (蔡继明), who’s against the move. This immediately ignited not only fierce opposition from the Cai Jiming “talk bar” on Baidu (China’s largest home-made search engine), but mixed with the naysayers were those hurling outright abuse at Cai. Unsurprisingly, Cai’s angered by this and has threatened to sue Baidu for charges up to CNY 2.1 million.

If Tian’anmen stood as a symbol for more “freedom and democracy” in China, well, the stark naked fact is — China’s nowhere ready for that. Tolerance of dissent and multiple points of views, long a staple of established democracies and pluralistic societies, is noticeably absent in China. The simple case here that a movement to keep May Day as-is (as a three-day break instead of a “new lease on life” as a week off) has ignited this much controversy shows just how far China is from that verboten F-word: true freedom of speech. And while swearing is omnipresent on the Interwebs, escalating debates to these extremes show that the Chinese, while longing for more freedoms, are unlikely to value them (or, at that, more likely to abuse them) — in essence, giving rise to today’s sorry situation of unadulterated Internet censorship.

Chinese Internet White Paper: Citizens Apparently Have “Legal Freedom of Speech”

Okkie, so what’s all the censorship about?

The Chinese State Council Information Office today released the China Internet White Paper which focused more on the fact that the over 200 million blogs in China post over 3 million new entries every single day rather than on the dark side of the Web some of us know off by heart — the Great Firewall. In news summaries from especially the Beijing Evening News, not a word was mentioned about censorship. Instead, the White Paper mentioned that Chinese citizens have the constitutional freedom of speech, a freedom that, if you’re aware of the acute limits in the political sphere, is clipped with amazing speed and frequency.

Having, so to speak in Chinese Netspeak, “done a bit of propaganda for the Western reactionaries” (who apparently care more about foursquare going down than anything else as of late), here are some stats to follow…

• Over 80% of sites offer some form of interaction (a BBS, or something, to start things off with).

• There are over a million forums and 220 million blogs hostead in China.
• Over 66% of Netizens in China post or comment. (What’s this thing about the “silent majority”, then?)
• Over 50% of “big firms” do e-commerce (the figure’s 30% for SMEs).
• Over 100 million buy things through the Web.
• CNY 3.6 trillion — that’s the sum of all e-commerce done through the Chinese interwebs.
• In 2008, the Chinese Internet industry had a value of CNY 650 billion.
• That sum alone is 10% of worldwide figures or 1/60th that of Chinese GDP.

As usual, given from where those figures “came from”, take them with a healthy grain of salt.