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.

This was one of the first Starbucks your blogger noticed outside central Beijing. Shunyi is Shunyi — you know, that bit with the big airport in the Jing — until you realize that it’s also home to loads of expats as well. (By the way, the airport is supposed to belong to Chaoyang District. Strictly speaking. Trust us…)

Shunyi is a funny mix of three different parts: the airport (which, again, is — strictly speaking — supposed to belong to Chaoyang); old Shunyi; and new Shunyi, as in, the Shunyi New City. Oh and we — once again — forgot the fourth bit, right next to China National Highways 101 and 111, and within striking distance of the airport.

Expats live in this bit of Shunyi which is close to Beijing Airport. Incredibly enough, they’re spared of the aural cacophony of the planes taking off or landing, despite being just miles from PEK. In this part of town, there’s a huge bit of Shunyi known as Pinnacle Plaza, which is basically full of fast food joints — Subway, Domino’s Pizza — and a Starbucks. (If you’re more for Costa Coffee, try Euro Plaza, basically a stone’s throw from Pinnacle Plaza.)

The Starbucks in this bit of town is a bit on the huge side. It’s often full of people during the day time, but come into the place around evening time on a Monday evening and it’s incredibly devoid of people. Along with the offer from the baristas to convert your “for here” tea to a “to-go” tea (for free, did we hear?) comes the pleasure of uninterrupted wifi access.

Right around the corner, of course, is the Subway joint. It’s a mix of the arrangement seen only at SOGO Xuanwumen: a sandwich joint right next to Starbucks. Zero commute. If you’re coming back from the countryside and want the wifi without the jams that make up central Beijing, Pinnacle Plaza has a Starbucks that might be worth checking out.

Wifi: Free; password needed, given upon purchase
Signal: Good
VPN support: Good
Transit links: None yet, although Pinnacle Plaza is expected to be a 15-20 minute walk from the China International Exhibition Center station on Line 15

Starbucks Pinnacle Plaza (星巴克 - 荣祥广场, 顺义)
Shunyi, Beijing, China

That new iPhone 4 is not coming into the Middle Kingdom cheap.

Some tweeps stayed up last night — late, that is — to see Steve Jobs reveal the iPhone 4. At just 93 millimeters in thickness, this thing sure is thin. State-side, the new iPhone 4’s yours on June 24, 2010 with pre-reservations starting on June 15, 2010 already.

Apple also noted that iPads were selling like hot cakes, despite them not being available in China. That’s an iPad every three second — gone. In terms of how expensive the new iPhone would be, we’re looking, at least at the start, at tenfold prices. Instead of CNY 700 (that’s about USD 99 here), we’re looking at prices up to CNY 8,000. And of course, they’re supposed to be “pirated goods”. You pay for being first here — and apparently, that’s a bit of e-capitalist China for you…

…which you can easily do on a month’s pay if you’re in the handwriting software business: the Beijing Evening News revealed that those in the handwriting software biz earn on average CNY 7,000 - 8,000 a month. Not bad, eh?

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.

Lest you think otherwise — nope, we are not ready to all shift into top gear on those cute-y-ish Audi TTs. But we are ready for this:

China’s a nation with 1.3 billion people and counting, as well as 56 ethnic groups with PRC nationality. Add the more internationalesque megalopolises with folks from a trillion other countries (aka Them Expats), and you’ll start getting the point. What if your tech blogger retweets someone in Chinese — but folks out there who speak nothing but English don’t get the idea?

Translate Retweet… TRT… TT for short. I like that. Will there be an official TT function soon?

If there is, credit @wolfgroupasia (David Wolf). The man behind the idea.

It’s the exam season, once again. With the National University Examinations in China taking place these days, the Ministry of Education’s really serious about anyone using the Interwebs to cheat.

A bit of heavy-handed officialspeak: the official People’s Daily, in a June 6, 2010 article, threatened those who cheat with a record on their credit report. If you cheat, you’re it. There’ll also be a full crackdown, both on the Web, and via short message services, of anyone who will e-cheat.

Cheating in exams in China is taking on more and more FBI-esque approaches, it seems. Cheat notes, both written and even digital (such as wireless “stick-on-your-ears” receivers), are not new, and they’re caught, year in, year out. The fact that there’s only space for 9.57 million in universities this year (that’s 650,000 less than on offer last year) in a nation of 1.3 billion has prompted many to be “creative” about getting into university, very much the only way out for many a child — especially those of poor rural farmers. The English language is at a loss to describe the inhumane pressure exerted upon many a candidate in the months and even years leading up to the exams. Fat boys have underwent forced slimming — and if Chinese universities are full of students with glasses (often indicative of a “good student”), that’s a sign that they’ve spent more than enough time preparing for the exams (preparations go into the wee hours, day in, day out).

Let a thousand startups bloom!

In China, you’ve lots of young people who refuse to be “unified” by force, so to speak. As in be mixed, matched and merged into that “Great Big ‘Society’ Out There”. Full of darkness or at least excess copycat stuff. Young folks have a lot of dreams, but if it doesn’t make capitalist pocketbooks fat, it’s not going to happen.

Or at least there’s an angel for Chinese startups. We leave it to Gang Lu of Mobinode, who himself has a startup (Kuukie.com), and has a post out on ChinAccelerator. This is fabulous. Check it out…

On the one hand, it’s about money. Startups do not need big amount of money to get started, but unfortunately here in China, it’s so hard to find angel investors who believe what the founders believe and are willing to give them money to share the risk together; on the other hand, money does not mean everything. There are loads of cash in China I would say, and there are many people out there waiting for projects. However, the issue is that many startups do not know how to reach them. More importantly most of the local investors are great in traditional business but know little about web industry. They only believe Guanxi will work and how-to-make-money is the only metric they trust, which basically shut down the door to many young men with dreams. Young entrepreneurs need angel money and also need mentors and help.

If you’re not too familiar what the “guanxi” thing is: China’s a very LinkedIn kind of nation where connections matter like — H.E. double hockey sticks, let’s just put it this way. Without the right ties, your startup idea will forever be stranded on the runway, only to be flattened by an Airbus A380-ish “fellow startup” who has the right government-and-capital ties and is out there to make you irrelevant.

Mobinode’s article on its partnership with ChinAccelerator is one uplifting read. Check it out here.

Oh wow. Hulu is planning an entry into the People’s Republic just months after Google seceded?

Here’s proof:

In a speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing yesterday, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said Hulu plans to eventually launch services in China, and is currently considering allowing users to upload videos. Hulu has already established an R&D team in Beijing.

Wait. It gets jucier.

Kilar reportedly also met secretly with Victor Koo, CEO of Youku; Gong Yu, CEO of Baidu’s (Nasdaq: BIDU) Qiyi; Lü Wensheng, CEO of Joy.cn; and the China head of Providence Equity Partners on June 2 in Tsinghua University’s Science & Technology building.

Oh cool. Welcome. Just make sure your vids are free of the following “controversial content”, and you should be fine…

• content that opposes the principles as set out by the Chinese Constitution (note: this includes the four topics that are not open to public debate, including party rule, the “socialist path”, and polit stuff like that);

• content that endangers national unity and sovereignty;
• content that leaks state secrets, endangers national security, or goes against national interests or slanders China;
• content inciting ethnic hatred and violence, thus endangering ethnic unity or practises;
• pro-cult content;
• content disrupting public order or social stability (there’s a very elastic provision);
• content inciting minors to commit offences or crimes, as well as those that beautify violence, porn, gambling or terrorism;
• libel; or content that infringes the legal interests of citizens and their privacy;
• content that goes against social norms or harms ethnic culture;
• content banned by other “related national laws”

(As per the 2008 Internet Audiovisual Program Management Regulations.)

We envision the “harmonization” of Hulu (at least the Chinese version) — at least don’t expect any “controversial content” regarding the “two Ps” (porn and politics) — if they’re to stay in China for any length, that is.

The average plane landing at Beijing Airport tells the tale: there is bound to be a phone beeping about around 15 seconds after the plane leaves the runway. (On some airliners, you’ll have to wait until you’re at the terminal building, but most of us break the rules anyway.) It’s no secret that the China of today is a truly mobile society — with mobile phones, of course.

Once upon a time, a mobile phone just got your word from A to B by voice only. In 2000, SMS came in (it’s now a nightmare, with all those real estate developers spamtexting everyone). Now, most phones are Web-savvy, and it’s not easy these days to get a phone which does not have Internet access. (We need not even mention the iPhone or the iPad 3G!)

Thing is, getting access to the Interwebs on the go (with the Great Firewall still intact, unless you “reroute”) is possible, but to the average non-capitalist consumer, is more costly than you think. The official People’s Daily ran a whole page on the mobile Internet (not mentioning censorship at all, by the way), and the official point of view is this: the mobile Web remains too expensive in China.

Unless you’re on a subscription and on a data plan, charges can get sky high. Bandwidth goes for CNY 0.1 per megabyte, which means that if you’re downloading about a gigabyte of stuff, that’s easily CNY 100 down the sewer. China Mobile’s subscriptions is one of the few that will actually top out at CNY 500 a month — regardless if you’re tweeting on the go or not. (That’s a high price to pay for unlimited data access!) Others have data plans that will include the first 5 GB or so of data access at CNY 300, but if you’re over it, it’s CNY 0.1 a megabyte. Download a 12 GB movie, and that’s an astronomical bill waiting for you.

What the paper doesn’t touch upon are those charges you get when overseas. Despite the PRC’s adamant stance that “Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan were, are and will always be part of China”, if you’re tweeting about from there, international data charges apply. Your tech blogger was “penalized” to the tune of a CNY 1,200+ bill in February 2010 — because of excess use of Posterous, flickr and Twitter on the “renegade province” of Taiwan.

And this just as AT&T is giving that unlimited data plan a second thought…

The Chinese censors are a sight to behold. As in how fast they react. It’s an open secret that while Twitter is probably chock-full of “the wrong people” (to the censors), the censors themselves are there, too.

Given that, well, are we surprised? China has blocked foursquare — apparently because we’ve seen too much of this…

…and because foursquare speaks to both Twitter and Facebook, some of us posted that onto — right… especially Twitter. The censors probably went, “Ah…” and boom — blocked the site outright.

Jeepers. This is the stuff that must have the censors soiling in their pants. Virtually hundreds of people checked into Tian’anmen Square, the place where “something baaad happened” 21 years ago. Of course, the square itself is “safe” (in the real world) today, with cops even in helmets, as well as SWAT forces, all reported in the vicinity of the world’s largest square.

In place of student demonstrators and their banners, we have people basically filing into foursquare and leaving “sensitive comments” as “tips”. Those checking in included folks outside Beijing; @isaac (Isaac Mao), @rejon (Jon Philips) and the rest just flocked to the square, even if they were based elsewhere. (You can do this, by the way, by going to the Foursquare mobile site or even the main site and change your location — although if you’re not actually there, that could be seen as cheating…)

Can we call this politicized cheating — or a way to remind ourselves that something baaad happened on this day?

Foursquare. Dead to China beginning in the afternoon hours of June 4, 2010. (Confirmed here in Beijing.) You’ll have to reroute to get in…

Late night update: We have updates that this is indeed a nationwide block. Here’s a list of other cities in which foursquare is invisible: Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou (thanks, @APE_kIng @EnjoyCHH @Marvinlou @warrenLOL for the updates).

Yet another update: Good news (if there’s any) for those who did check in: you automatically got the Swarm badge and the Player Please! badge. As they say, to every cloud there’s always a silver lining…