Keeping the genie half in the bottle
April 29, 2006
China is having quite a time living in the world of cyber-talk, where almost anything goes. The big Internet companies seem to be making moral compromises to help the Party keep the genie half in the bottle. I strongly suspect that neither the Chinese communist party nor the Googles and Yahoos of the world have much control of the situation.
China and the internet | The party, the people and the power of cyber-talk | Economist.com
For foreign companies, the internet business in China is certainly a moral minefield. …For foreign companies, the internet business in China is certainly a moral minefield. But the internet should not be dismissed as merely an instrument of control for the Communist Party. In the past three years, China has seen far more extensive use of the internet and the rapid development of groups that share views online that are by no means always the same as the party’s. The numbers of internet-connected computers have more than doubled since the end of 2002, to 45.6m, and internet-users have risen by 75%, to 111m. China now has more internet-users than any country but America, and over half of them have broadband (up from 6.6% at the end of 2002). Users of instant computer-to-computer messaging systems have more than doubled, to 87m. Blogs—online personal diaries, scarcely heard of three years ago—now number more than 30m. And search engines receive over 360m requests a day.
These statistics are startling! Imagine China with more Internet users than the U.S. And 30 million blogs.
Dave, wondering if the Orlop has had any Chinese visitors.
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