Shanghai China Snippets Observations about living in Shanghai and China in general

Yet again an announcement to control the internet in China more.

It can be summed up with one phrase. An Internet Culture with Chinese characteristics

I guess it’s about time each and any country will start doing the same.

I like to see an Internet culture with:

French characteristics,

one with Indian characteristics,

a Fiji version and ok, also a North Pole characterized internet.

Once these are all in place, each will have their own Countrynet and we can stop being distracted with what happens elsewhere. It takes up too much time anyway. Back to work.

Source: Reuters, picture IHT

Microsoft has a new product, a youtube clone, called soapbox.

The definition of a soapbox is

A soapbox is a raised, improvised platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject.

Well, no surprise here that Microsoft deems it appropriate not to make it available in China.

Interestingly enough the Chinese text says that “they’re very sorry it’s not available”. They care less apparently about the English speaking population.

To be fair to Microsoft, Google Video also doesn’t work here but at least they allow us Youtube.

It isn’t any news that the Internet in China is still slow and it bugs a lot of people I noticed .

My previous article about the slow speed of the Internet gets a lot of visitors searching for terms related to the incompetent structure of the Internet in China.

People ask the search engines:

“Why is the Internet in China slow”, others suffice with just typing “China Internet Slow” or in a different order, “Slow Internet China”.

There are also those that show their irritations:

“Terrible slow Internet in China”, “China Internet so slow” and my favorite “China internet slow again”.

I’m afraid I’ll be collecting more insights into the internet users frustrations in the coming time as it doesn’t seem the problem will be totally fixed before Chinese New Year. Just today I have had already 2 complete outages.

Chinalyst is a China Blog Community website and I just posted an interview with Fili, the owner of the website talking about his fascination with China and more specifically about Chinalyst.

I like watching boats sail by. The best spot for this is the Starbucks on the Pudong riverbank.
I fantasize where they go, where they’re going from and what it is like to spend 24/7 on limited square meters.

In [tag]Shanghai [/tag]Outdoor and Indoor lcd and led advertising is Wild West. There don’t seem to be a lot of regulations or maybe nobody is enforcing them. Each possible surface, whether it’s moving or static is seen as a potential target.

Buses, subways (stations) and taxi’s have small lcd screens. Screens in elevators have 20 seconds to grab my attention, at least when it’s not too crowded. Shopping in the supermarket, I’m exposed to more screens in the supermarket, as if I wasn’t there already to buy.

On the ring road big led screens intend to distract the drivers with flashy ads. It’s one big experiment ( I’m sure I still left out some other forms, like gymnasiums, office buildings, hotels, banks, golf clubs, hospitals, and so on) and causes sound and vision pollution. On the other hand I like it that they dare to experiment no matter if it will proof to be effective or not.

Like I said, I was sitting next to the river when a boat with an immense plasma screen caught my eye. It sailed past me, turned in front of the Bund and spent the next hour just slowly moving up and down hindering the view of all the tourists spending their time on the Bund promenade. I wonder what’s next.

Some advertising numbers, courtesy 8 days magazine.

• Number of advertising companies in China: 72,610
• Money that ad agencies are spending on out-of-home advertising in China this year: ¥20 billion (about 10% of the total)
• Money that a large advertising agency will generate in revenue in a Chinese city: ¥80 million (compared with ¥1.6 billion in US)
• Revenue from advertising on CCTV in 2005: ¥8.6 billion
• Money that OLAY (the cosmetic company) spent on advertising in 2004: ¥4.7billion
• Money spent on advertising in China in 2005: ¥243.9 billion
• Revenue from advertising on the internet in China from May to July in 2006: ¥1.5 billion

Pictures: Ad in subway station – treasuresthouhast, Ad in subway -vampirex, Ad in bus – zygzs
Black & White photo -ZonaEuropa

Excerpts from an interview with [tag]China[/tag]’s top Internet [tag]cop[/tag], Mr. Li Wufeng.

We don’t [tag]censor[/tag], we don’t know how

“We have neither the technology nor the manpower to censor or filter the Internet”, Li told us. “We have just dozens of people in the Internet affairs bureau. Half of them are here today [in the room],” he added.

But sometimes we close the window.

“We have our own choice of the Internet content” within China, he said. “If someone is shouting bad things about me from outside my window, I have the right to close that window.”

You guess the reality.

Source: Foreign Policy

Update:

Well, it seems that the wordpress.com website is still unblocked but the sub domains are again unavailable. What a pity.

Yet another blog service is accessible in [tag]China[/tag]. Not so long ago it were the blogspot blogs that had the honour of passing the great firewall unharmed.

WordPress.com, another host for blogs, is (for now) available. Curiously the .org version of [tag]Wordpress[/tag] was never blocked. Let’s hope it stays like this.