Posts Tagged with ‘prc’

If you somehow managed to keep up with the goings on of the broad international news space throughout 2007, you know there’s one topic in particular that received copious amounts of attention. No, not that Mexican repellant them paranoid repubs and loose-limbed dems signed off on. Nor the tinderscape that was/is southern California. Darfur? Nope. (Too bad, though. It sure would’ve been good to see the American media juggle that ball a tad bit more.) Pakistan? Nah. The year was [...]

We’re all aware of China’s affinity for censorship. Well, actually, the Chinese government’s affinity for censorship, to be more accurate. Whether its eyes are on the nation’s print news industry, its booming digital media space, or public displays of disaffection, the ruling party and its expansive and very loyal ranks of law enforcers enjoy keeping things as nice, tidy, and uniformly in line with their concepts of allegiance and order as possible.
And let’s face it, a good number of folk [...]

Reuters, having very recently documented the mere purchase of an Internet domain by Facebook, effectively opened a large window into the mind of the chief executive of the Web’s second-largest social network.
The name in profile is, very simply: 'Facebook.cn'.
The suffix tells you everything, doesn’t it? Yes, Facebook is now revealed to have made itself the owner of a China-compatible Web address, which it is quite likely to use as, well, the gateway for its future Asian operations. Obviously.
Why [...]

Yahoo!, in an effort to establish a greater presence in the Chinese online market, is planning to purchase a 10-percent block of stock shares in China’s largest online commerce company, Alibaba, in a sale arranged by the Asian giant. The move is being viewed as something of a responsive measure made to counteract Google’s increased involvement in the Chinese market. In the past, Google created headlines worldwide as a result of its involvement with the reigning megalith of the continent, [...]

First, let me point out that there is in fact a difference – a big difference - between censoring the Web and shutting it down completely (or at least a portion of it), as has been done in Myanmar, or Burma, as it is more familiarly known. Yet I think you’ll agree that both measures can be very impactful.
That said, this is pretty big news. I mean, the people working China’s “Great Firewall” have essentially blocked all RSS feeds. Nationwide. [...]

For those wonder when, oh when, Google is going to get serious about social networking, the wait is over. Maybe. Well, we’re not quite sure just yet.
Most of us know something about the network Big G’s been maintaining these past few years, called Orkut. Popular in some parts of the southwestern hemisphere, it’s been a piece of Google not very much spoken for by Mountain View.
Now, however, Google is showing signs that it’s paying closer attention to the social Web [...]

Despite all the censorship, and even the threat of prison time (for some fairly outspoken bloggers), more and more Chinese can’t seem to help but spend more and more time on the Internet. The surge in Net-based activity on the mainland has even grabbed the attention of the national government in the past couple of years. The government has now gone so far as to classify excessive time spent before the screen an indication of addiction, and has proceeded to [...]

Think Silicon Valley is hot on Web 2.0? You’re right. It is. Want to know where else you can find a place abuzz over Web-based firms, from startups to big leaguers? China.
Though we advise that you do not “forget Silicon Valley,” as Michael Kanellos lectures in the opener to a recent piece published on CNET’s News.com, we definitely hope you begin to pay attention to the capitalistic shift happening in the PRC (People’s Republic of China), which isn’t only fueling [...]

China’s bloggers aren’t much liked by their government. Some of them don’t speak kindly of President Hu Jintao and the Communist Party, so some are censored - even jailed in a number of circumstances. And lately those in charge have made known their drive to require bloggers “use their real names” upon registration of their blogs. Tuesday May 22, however, marked the beginning of the end of such an initiative, due to “an outcry over the proposal from the [...]