Want China Milk, Mr. Mandelson?

British politician Peter Mandelson, who was feted in China for drinking a glass of yoghurt on television in Beijing last week, has been rushed to hospital suffering from a kidney stone.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson drinks a Beijing-branded yogurt at a press conference in the Chinese capital on Friday September 26, 2008. Mandelson said he was confident of Chinese dairy products despite the recent tainted milk scandal. On October 6, Peter Mandelson is to have a kidney stone removed after attending the first meeting of Gordon Brown's economic war council.

Thousands of babies across China have suffered kidney stones after drinking formula milk mixed with the industrial plastic melamine.

Also, if you want to get an idea of how the Chinese government is handling the post-scandal media since the milk powder contamination was revealed, here are instructions reportedly from the propaganda bureau on how to report the incident:

Recently, the Sanlu mild powder contamination story attracted a lot of attention on the Internet. Now we are issuing some requirements for managing online news publishing:
1. Strictly standardize news sources, only use dispatches from Xinhua, People’s Daily and other central media outlets.
2. Do not make any headlines or features on this topic. Emphasize the government’s handling of the crisis and progress, and the care given to the babies by hospitals and other care providers.
3. Forums and blogs should not recommend this topic, not put it on the top of their pages, and the atmosphere and number of threads in the forums should be monitored and controlled.
4. Firmly block and delete information and posts that criticize the Party, the government, instigate petitioning and spread rumors.
5. Mobilize online commentators to guide the opinions. The general guidance should be based on information released by the Ministry of Health, and lead online users to support the Party and the government, convey the effectiveness of the efforts by concerned agencies.

Boycott China Product If You Really Love China

My blog entry today on a certain dairy poisoning case was deleted by request of a certain company… I feel that this very company's PR tactics are really, really neat. Isn't this supposed to be the case with best PR practises in China? That is — bind the interests of the company and the government, use the government to control your PR, and remove all posts that do not reflect well upon you. What kind of a "rhetoric advantage" this is! This way, they'll keep on drinking what you make, and suddenly vanish into graves — just like that, out of the blue.

The greatest problem in China is that we have too many people who have knowledge and independent thought, if all these people are dead, we don't have anymore problem.

There is hearsay there the enterprise spent 3 million yuans in Baidu search engine, it seems that we have underestimated its power, they only need to spend half the amount to push the government's PR machine.

Remember: if you really love China, never buy anything made in China.

Top Ten China Mobile Site

Opera released a State of the Mobile Web: First Quarter, 2008 report recently. The report listed the top 10 Chinese mobile sites based on the statistics of Opera Mini.

Web portal content and search engine access is extremely popular in China, accounting for nearly 55% of the traffic.

E-commerce and e-mail are not yet as popular in China as in other parts of the world. Together, these two categories combine to create less than 2% of overall Opera Mini traffic in China.

Top 10 sites in China

www.sina.com.cn
www.baidu.com
www.google.cn
www.ko.cn
news.sohu.com
www.xiaonei.com
www.3g.cn
www.paojiao.com
www.188bet.com
www.feiku.com

Micro-blogging: Chinese Twitter Clone Site

Twitter is a social network micro-blogging services. The Twitter Clones (micro-blogging services) and it looks like one of the Chinese Twitters are gaining popularity quickly. Here is the most popular Twitter-clone sites in China what I known.

FanFou - FanFou is the biggest Twitter-like site in China. It seems FanFou copied almost everything of Twitter, you can use FanFou to update "what are you doing" in less than 140 characters, it supports updating and receiving notification via Gtalk, MSN, QQ, mobile phone and web, you can follow the updates of your friends, and turn on/off the notification of your friends. It already has a wordpress plugin, maxthon plug and other 3rd party add ons. It also has two Twittervision-like mashups that put Tweets on the 3D globe and a 2D map of China. Xing Wang is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of FanFou.

JiWai.de - JiWai.de is the first Chinese brother of twitter: an online service that enables user to broadcast short messages to your friends or "followers." It also lets you specify which JiWai.de users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place. Just like twitter, Jiwai supports updating through sms and gtalk. Updating from mobile phones onto jiwai.de, however, compared with Twitter, saves considerable money for Chinese users who want to use twitter-like stuff. To meet the demand of more Chinese users, Jiwai.de also supports updating from some other IMs, including MSN, skype, and QQ. Zhuohuan Li is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of JiWai.de.

TaoTao - Tencent QQ is the most popular IM in China. While Tencent has realized the value of micro-blogging, they launched a stand-alone service called Taotao. Not like FanFou, TaoTao only support updating from QQ and Web. It have no widget support. Since Tencent has the most extensive im user base, and the characteristics of this kind of micro-blogging service also match with profile of QQ's users.

Other Micro-blogging Site in China:

zuosa - http://zuosa.com
ilaodao - http://ilaodao.cn
komoo - http://komoo.cn
byuu - http://byuu.com
wulog - http://wulog.com
fish - http://fish.sh
laigula - http://laigula.com

Internet Censorship In Chinese Cyberspace

China's Internet filtering regime (the Great FireWall) is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world. The internet censorship in Chinese cyberspace is pervasive, sophisticated, andeffective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control.

The Great FireWall is unparalleled anywhere in the world and is an insult to the spirit of online freedom, the Chinese authorities use it blocking thousands of websites and censoring online news.

Because of Chinese government have deployed colossal human and financial resources to obstruct online free expression. Chinese news websites and blogs have been brought under the editorial control of the propaganda apparatus at both the national and local levels.

The use of the Internet keeps growing in China. The country now has more than 160 million Internet users and at least 1.3 million websites. But the Internet's promise of free expression and information has been nipped in the bud by the Chinese government's online censorship and surveillance system. The Govermment is afraid of reign, they want to control all of the society.

In my early report, the Chinese authorities blocks more than thousand of dedicated server in HeNan and GuangDong without any explanation, Also they use the Greate FireWall to blocks some great website like FeedBurner,Blogspot,Youtube and Flickr, prevent people to meet the unwanted material.

The Chinese authorities have a longstanding set of policies restricting the information to which citizens are exposed, and that which they may themselves publicly say. The Internet poses a new challenge to such censorship, both because of the sheer breadth of content typically available, and because sources of content are so often remote from Chinese jurisdiction, and thus much more difficult to penalize for breaching restrictions on permissible materials. There is some evidence that the government has attempted to prevent the spread of unwanted material by preventing the spread of the Internet itself, but a concomitant desire to capture the economic benefits of networked computing has led to a variety of strategies to split the difference.

For example, the government might encourage Internet access through cybercafes rather than in private spaces so that customers' surfing can be physically monitored by others in the cafe. As a technical matter, anecdotal reports have described a shifting set of barriers to surfing the web from Chinese points of access -- sites that are reported unavailable or domain names that are unknown to the system or that lead to unexpected destinations, individual pages that are blocked, and the use of search keywords that results in temporary limits to further searches.

The Great FireWall was bought from Cisco Inc. , the technologies that Cisco sold to China for backbone routing purposes have packet filtering capability, allowing the routers to filter bi-directionally at thepacket level and to implement up to 750,000 different filtering rules. These systems are designed to combat various Internet attacks, including Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and the spread of worms andviruses. These same techniques can beapplied to block political content. The particular technique described in Cisco Systems to be Key Supplier for Building China's Nation-Wide IP Backbone. Also, China regularly blocks access to Web sites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects.

Activists and human rights organizations have for years charged Cisco and other Westerncorporations with actively assisting China in developing censorship and surveillance systems. Companies such as Microsoft and Cisco respond to these charges by suggesting that they simplysell the technology to China; thus, they cannot and should not control how their customers use what theyhave bought.

Baidu Hijacking Google, Yahoo, Microsoft In China

Numerous users find that if they trying to access Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft search engines from China are being redirected to Chinese-owned search engine Baidu yesterday.

Chinese DNS servers are under government control, some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but some suspect that Chinese government has unilaterally blocked there US search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu.

Hijacking Google Blog Search

Hijacking Yahoo Search

Hijacking Microsoft Live Search

Earlier this week, Beijing has been ramping up its filtering of political sites in an attempt to stifle political dissent leading up to the Communist Party Congress, a meeting in which leaders are selected to serve under the president for the next five years. The most popular online video website YouTube is also blocked in China yesterday.

FeedBurner Is Completely Blocked In China

At the end of August, when FeedBurner is blocked by China Telecom (most in south China), some of the China Netcom (most in north China) users may glad they still be able to visit feedburner. Today, FeedBurner is blocked by China Netcom too, so the China Netcom users must say goodbye to the FeedBurner.

So far, all Chinese users were unable to visit FeedBurner now.

This time is different from last year, in August 1,2006, FeedBurner is also blocked temporarily, one day later it’s came back. But this time, FeedBurner is blocked lot's of days, and it's still out there, which reminds us that this blockade may be permanent in the nature.

Even so, the Chinese users can still use Google Reader to visit FeedBurner, but if Google Reader becomes the next one, what should Chinese users do?

China Internet Censorship Goes Crazy

Are they going crazy? Before they would warn and order the webmasters to delete "harmful" information from their websites, sometimes they just blocked the website. But now thousand of websites would be blocked if they are so unlucky to be hosted by the same IDC company with a "harmful" website.

Yes, in the last month, most of the interactive website(including forum, guestbook, blog) in China were blocked by the Chinese authorities. Some believe this is because of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China opening, the Chinese authorities want a social stability. 

Chinese authorities often blocks an entire Web site, even if only parts of the site contain sensitive information. Just in the last month, more than thousand of dedicated server in HeNan TeleCom room and ShanTou TeleCom room were closed forcibly. thousand of sites were blocked included those on health, education, news, entertainment, religion. Also they use the Greate FireWall to blocks some great website like FeedBurner and Flickr.

This month, the Chinese authorities will finish their jobs, closing the rest of "illegal website". So when the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is opening, the Chinese cyberspace will become a very harmonious and stable.

Not a country renowned for freedom of speech, China has nevertheless outdone itself with more internet censorship that would make them proud.

FeedBurner Blocked By China

FeedBurner, the most popular and powerful worldwide RSS service provider, is blocked by Chinese authorities for the censorship tonight.

Now Chinese user unable to visit feeds.feedburner.com, when I try to ping feedburner from China, it will return "Request timed out".

When I issued traceroute requests to feedburner in China, I found the IP packets  are blocked by 202.97.33.110. This IP address is a main router of China Telecom.

It's confirm that the Greate FireWall's IP blocking works. The FeedBurner is blocked in China again.

This is not the first time that Chinese authorities blocks FeedBurner, in August 1,2006, FeedBurner is also blocked temporarily, one day later it's came back, but now it's blocked again.

Why Chinese authorities blocks FeedBurner? Because Feedburner provides content from countless websites. It could conceivably carry some information the Chinese authorities think it shouldn't. So they try to blocks it, Although this will let them be against lot's of Chinese bloggers.

Although the Chinese bloggers could visit FeedBurner via proxy server, only few people use proxy in fact, maybe because proxy is slow and instable.

I wish FeedBurner will come back tomorrow.

Google Launches Chinese Blog Search

Today, Google released a Chinese version of Google Blog Search, the URL is blogsearch.google.cn . The IP address of "Chinese Blog Search" is in Bei Jing. Now Chinese users can use Google blog search services in simplified Chinese language.

According to Google Chinese Blog, the Chinese version of Google Blog Search can track most of Chinese blog service providers,including Sina blog, Sohu blog, Tencent blog, 163.com blog, Baidu space, and other blog networks.

Meanwhile, Google blog search is also support most standalone blogs, such as WordPress, MovableType, Google Blogger blog.

The Chinese blog search is self-censoring, when I try to search "Tiananmen Square" in blogsearch.google.cn, I get no result. Google is not just translate BlogSearch's interface into Chinese language.

Google Answers Censorship In China

Today, Google and Tianya (a famous Chinese community website) launched a free Q&A service - "Tianya Answers". Some believe this is a strong competitors of "Baidu Zhidao" (the biggest Q&A site in China). In the bottom of "Tianya Answers" we can get "Google technology provide".

Social search has been Google's weaknesses, Google Answers is also defeat by Yahoo Answers. In China, Baidu Zhidao is the biggest Q&A service. Google launches Q&A service in China will enable Google to compete with Baidu. But in the "Tianya Answers", we found some of the very obvious Google-specific issues.

When we register a new account, we can get the following message : "Please note that according to Chinese laws, your IP information will be recorded for at least 60 days. And it will be will be provided to government agencies when we get the request."

That is mean, Google will complied with requests from the Chinese authorities to furnish information regarding an IP address of Google's users, and Google will only simply state that they just conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate.

Before in 2006, Google launches the Chinese version of its search engine to be censored (google.cn). Google use so-call SafeSearch filter used to keep people away from "bad" information, such as "subversive" material.

Google being in China helps itself more than China and simply does not fit into the "Don't Be Evil" mantra, but Google also known little about China's censorship. The "community website" is the "high-risk" project, they must face the work of looking out for and cleaning up "harmful information", if they do not get the "harmful information" out, they will be out. So they choice to collaborates with the Chinese regime.

Google "Don't Be Evil" ... Not in China.

Sources in Chinese .

Survival For Standalone Blogs

This is my responded to Zousuper's discussion on standalone blog's  survival(Thanks for danwei's translation). Later Zousuper's blog is blocked by Chinese government, but Zousuper is not render submissive, he set up a new host and blogging again. Here is the post:

The necessary conditions for setting up a blog on a separate domain in China - whether or not it is illegal, whether or not it requires registration - is currently a hotly debated issue. From the look of current policy, it seems that all standalone websites that have interactive information have to be registered.

There are issues of location here. If the server is overseas, then theoretically speaking registration is not necessary, but there is no way to guarantee that the server's IP will be accessible. Rose Luqiu's 1510 Blogs is a typical example. When a large proportion of visitors are from the mainland, then under normal circumstances a mainland server will be chosen. This is when we arrive the question of the blog's legality.

Here I'll summarize the steps and conditions for legally setting up a blog on a standalone domain; this should be basically the same in all major cities across the country.

Website registration is not a simple question. MII registration is just a basic registration, suitable for non-forum websites that do not have interactive information. If you think that MII registration will solve everything, then you are very wrong. Of course, you could close the comments section to your blog and voluntarily choose not to disseminate "harmful information"; in that case the MII registration would be enough. If your website allows leaving messages and exchanging information, and its traffic is low, you may be able to simply get by. In general, for normal small websites, MII registration is enough.

If your website traffic is relatively large, particularly if it is highly interactive, like a forum or a blog, then you'll face the appearance of so-called "harmful information." Normally, when you discover "harmful information," someone will be tasked with notifying the webmaster to delete it; it becomes a problem when it occurs frequently.

Strictly speaking, individuals are not permitted to provide BBS services on the Internet (interactive online services in which users provide information for release, including message boards, electronic whiteboards, e-forums, online chat services, and guestbooks) without formally registering or passing review by state communication administrators. To providing interactive forum and guestbook services, you must set up "technological measures for network security," in addition to registering with the PSB's Internet Supervision Center. This means a system for review, control, and deletion of information, as well as associated "computer security personnel."

Usually, registering with the PSB Internet Supervision Center is pretty complicated and drawn-out. The registration is vastly different from MII's: it is very strict. If your website supports BBS, forums, guestbook, or chat services, then you must provide the following materials:

1. A copy of the computer security personnel certificate;


2. Registered Internet user network security form;


3. Providers of Internet services for news, publishing, education, health, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment must be approved by the appropriate government agencies in accordance with laws and regulations, and must present the government approval documents at the time of registration.

The computer security personnel certificate is typically obtained by paying 660 yuan to be trained and tested. That means that if you want to write a blog, you must first pass the "security worker" exam. The registration form basically requires writing out your name, ID#, home address, mobile phone number, and place of work, so that if there are any problems you can be arrested on the spot. If you do not provide this information, then your registration may not pass.

After you've registered, you then face the work of looking out for and cleaning up "harmful information" - this is the responsibility of the "computer security personnel." Because the appearance of "harmful information" on a forum or blog is ultimately the responsibility of the webmaster, the PSB will carry out punishment against the webmaster according to the volume of "harmful information" that is circulated. Here you'll run into the issue of standards for punishment. Current punishment standards takes into account the number of registered users, the quantity of circulating information, the hit count, and illegal revenue; so long as one area exceeds the standard then you're determined to be in "extremely serious circumstances." An article clicked by one person is completely different from the same article clicked by 10,000 people; are you able to guarantee 24-hour review for your personal blog or forum? If you cannot, then hiding your webpage counters and your pageview numbers may cut down on some unwanted trouble. At the same time, you should keep your website income a secret; there is nothing good and a whole lot bad about making your website's income public. Under normal circumstances, this is a standard for determining punishment. The greater your website's income, the more serious the problem, and the worse off you will be.

Hence, if you have a forum or a guestbook system, you've got a hidden time bomb. "Harmful information" will cause a lot of trouble for the webmaster when it surfaces. So if you have a forum, it's best to put it on a separate domain name and move it to an overseas server unless you can guarantee you'll be online 24 hours a day to prevent every single bit of "harmful information" from being published. Otherwise you're giving them an angle to get you.. So high-risk systems like forums should be moved out. The same goes for guestbooks and comments to blog posts. If you cannot cut off comment functions, then you must implement keyword filters to turn every sensitive word into ××. Doing this will save you a bit of unnecessary trouble.

In short, there is currently no clear idea about the system for registering blogs, but for most blogs that have a fair number of comments and discussion, it's no good to simply register with MII; you have to go to the local PSB's website to register for it to have any effect. And you must maintain a good relationship with the local PSB. Whatever they want, you give it to them; don't antagonize them, and don't dispute matters of theory with them. Don't say anything when it's not your turn - it won't work, anyway.

Sources:William Long: The way for standalone blogs to survive  (Chinese)

The Secret Of Internet Censorship In China

As we know, whether blog or forum is censored in China, people can not say anything in China. What can be said, and what can not be said is a question for all of us, today, I will introduce some of the legal basis in China: "Computer Information Network and Internet Security, Protection and Management Regulations"

The management regulations is approved by the State Council of China on December 11 1997 and promulgated by the Ministry of Public Security of China on December 30, 1997. This is a legal basis. In that regulations, a detailed definition of "harmful information" the specific meaning, publishing "harmful information" is forbidden. Then what is the "harmful information"?

According to the Section Five of the Act provides that no individual may use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or spread the following kinds of information:

(1) Inciting to resist or breaking the Constitution or laws or the implementation of administrative regulations;

(2) Inciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system;

(3) Inciting division of the country, harming national unification;

(4) Inciting hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming the unity of the nationalities;

(5) Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of society;

(6) Promoting feudal superstitions, sexually suggestive material, gambling, violence, murder,

(7) Terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity; openly insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander people;

(8) Injuring the reputation of state organs;

(9) Other activities against the Constitution, laws or administrative regulations.

Evidently, these nine categories of information is harmful information. I think, in one word, any threat to social stability statements are "harmful information". Anyone want to publishing "harmful information" is illegal. This is the so-called "Internet censorship in China", If you knew about this, you will be able to understand those weird things in China's cyberspace.

Sources:William Long: The internet censership's law basis  (Chinese)