132 millions Chinese netizens online

China has the second lasrgest internet community after USA, at 132 millions the numbers of netizens online far exceeded the numbers of total population for alot of small countries.

Growing together with the numbers of online chinese netizens is the amount of businesses that will gain from having an online presences in China.

China’s internet population increased by almost one-third during 2006, reinforcing the country’s position as one of the most powerful internet economies in the world.

The total number of people using the internet in China has risen to 132 million, according to state news agency Xinhua. The number of people accessing the web on high-speed broadband connections also rose rapidly to 52 million.

Such figures indicate 30% growth in the number of web users in just 12 months in the nation of more than 1.3 billion people.

China has the second-largest population of net users in the world after the US, which has 207 million citizens online. The growth has been driven by the country’s booming economy, as well as the huge number of internet cafes that have made the web popular among ordinary Chinese people.

There are more than a billion internet users around the world, dominated by the US and Europe, which has 308 million users across nearly 50 countries. But while online growth in the west is beginning to tail off, the speed of development in countries such as China and India is increasing.

Despite such positive growth there are still widespread concerns about state censorship of the internet in China. The government operates restrictions on websites that can be accessed from inside the country, and has clamped down on political dissidents using the internet to communicate with each other.

Although human rights campaigners continue to demonstrate over these constraints, powerful internet corporations are latching on to China’s rapid growth. Controversy erupted this year when Google launched a censored version of its web search index for people inside China’s “great firewall”.


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China's Internet to be Back to Normal by January 15th

Following the recent earthquake in Taiwan that disturbed the speed of internet worldwide are expected to be fully repaired by Jan the 15th 2007.

Internet services in China will not be back to normal until mid-January after being disrupted by a powerful earthquake off Taiwan, a news report Sunday quoted the country's biggest telephone company as saying.

Internet and telephone services in China and many parts of Asia were cut by Tuesday's quake, leaving telecommunications companies scrambling to repair damaged undersea cables and switch voice and data communications to satellites and undamaged cables.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted an unidentified China Telecom Corp. official as saying Internet service would be back to normal on Jan. 15

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Chinese Website charged with distributing hollywood movies online

Piracy has always been one of the top issues in China, and China is under alots of pressure from the global community to curb piracy and to penalise those who involved in such an act.

The upcoming Beijing Olympics games actually play a huge role on why Chinese government suddenly put such emphasize on this matter.

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (AP) — A Beijing court has ordered the popular Chinese Web portal Sohu.com to pay $140,000 in damages for distributing Hollywood movies online without permission, the movie industry’s trade group said Friday.

A subsidiary of Sohu.com must also publish an acknowledgment of wrongdoing, the Motion Picture Association said.

A Sohu spokeswoman, Zhang Xin, said the company was aware of the ruling but had no comment.

China is regarded as the world’s leading source of illegally copied movies, software and other goods, despite repeated government promises to stamp out the underground industry. The Motion Picture Association blames piracy in China for costing studios in the United States $244 million in lost box office revenues last year.

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eBay to shut own site in China

eBay PLANS TO PARTNER WITH LOCALLY OWNED FIRM

By Troy Wolverton



Mercury NewseBay plans to shutter its main auction site serving China and replace it with one majority owned and run by a Chinese company, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.


As soon as Tuesday, the San Jose-based online auction company will announce that it has formed a partnership with Tom Online, a Beijing-based online portal company, according to the Journal. Tom will invest $20 million and own a 51 percent stake in the joint venture, which will head up eBay's new Chinese auction effort. eBay will invest $40 million and own the remaining 49 percent of the company, the Journal reported.


The new site will launch next year, but the companies have not yet decided what to call it, according to the Journal. eBay will continue to run an auction site catering to Chinese who sell items to buyers outside of the country.


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Little Fatty Found Instant Fame

"Little Fatty" an instant Internet phenomenon

Dec. 9 - An overweight Chinese gas station attendant has become an unexpected celebrity after a picture of his portly face was posted on the Internet -- and then started appearing on movie posters and in other unlikely places.

Nicknamed "Little Fatty," 19-year-old Qian Zhijun's picture was loaded on to the Internet four years ago by a teacher.

His face -- round, ruddy-cheeked, with a drooping mouth and topped by a mop of black hair -- has since replaced Tom Hanks' on a poster for the movie "The Da Vinci Code" and Johnny Depp's for "Pirates of the Caribbean," to name just two.

Although famous now and having appeared extensively in Chinese media, Qian says he was rather upset when he first saw his photo being made fun of on the Web.

"Now my feeling has changed. If you always feel depressed, then you feel uncomfortable. Now I can view this event with a calm mind, and I feel released," said Qian.

This combo taken from a Chinese website shows doctored pictures depicting "Xiao Pang" ("Little Fatty") on various movie posters in Beijing. The chubby-faced Shanghai gas-station intern known as 'Little Fatty' has vaulted to the top of Internet fame in China thanks to cheeky PhotoShop artists who are turning the plump youth into a pop icon. (Photo: AFP)

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Back Dorm Boys Going Pro

Huang Yixin, left, and Wei Wei, right, former college roommates from south China who last year found worldwide web notoriety with their low-quality, high-hilarity lipsynching clips, perform one of their famous numbers during a recording session in Beijing, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006.

Lip-synching duo look beyond YouTube fame


Dec. 13 - Their mock music videos draw millions of Internet viewers and thousands of fawning reviews by fans around the globe who declare them hilarious, talented, cute, and hot.
Now, Huang Yixin and Wei Wei, former college roommates from south China who last year found worldwide Web notoriety with their low-quality, high-hilarity lip-synching clips, are aiming for a career in the performing arts.


"We want to do movies, ads, music, abstract art, everything," said Huang, who is known to fans as "the little one." He usually "sings" the high notes and has perfected the pretty boy's doe-eyed gaze.


In February, the duo signed a five-year contract with Taihe Rye Music, a Beijing talent management company. Other clients include pop star Xu Wei and the winner of China's own American Idol-style singing contest Li Yuchun.


"We think they have a lot of artistic potential," said Taihe manager Song Zhe. "They could do a lot of different kinds of projects like movies, singing, maybe funny cameo bit parts ... their own art exhibitions."


They are known in English as the "Two Chinese Boys," "Chinese Backstreet Boys" or "Back Dorm Boys," which is a direct translation of their Chinese nickname "Houshe Nansheng."
The 24-year-old sculpture majors graduated from the Guanzhou Academy of Fine Arts in June and moved to Beijing in October to study singing, dancing and stage arts. At Taihe's office in Beijing, they show off their senior project: lifesize sculptures of themselves performing in red sweatshirts and chunky basketball shoes.


Huang and Wei are part of a new generation of Chinese who spend hours online every day, surfing, blogging, playing interactive games, doing video and text chat, and downloading music and movies.


China's Internet market is the world's second biggest after the United States, with more than 123 million people online.


Their tongue-in-cheek faux delivery of schmaltzy ballads and fluffy pop — all filmed in their dorm room with Huang's cheap little web camera — has spawned dozens of spoofs and countless copycats.


They posted their first "performance," a nearly 5-minute clip of lip-synching to the Backstreet Boys hit "I Want It That Way," to their college intranet in March 2005. It quickly migrated to big sites like YouTube and Google Video and fast became one of the most watched and highest rated amateur clips online.


A French fan leaves them a message on YouTube saying "j'adore!!!!!!!!!!" while another from Brazil writes "Perfeito!! Love u boys..love love love de video!!"


Over the past 18 months, they've done five more music videos and landed jobs advertising Pepsi Cola, Motorola, and Jessica Simpson's latest album 'Public Affair.'


Wei, the 'big one' who Huang insists looks like basketball star Yao Ming, said the two just want to have fun and approach whatever they do with an artistic attitude.


"The way we do things too is very easy going, we are really just looking to have fun and enjoy life," he said.


They won't reveal how much money they have earned since making it big on the Internet but say it is enough for them to maintain separate apartments in a Beijing suburb and keep spending money in their pockets.


"The secret is: enjoy yourself," the two said at the same time, when asked to explain why in a sea of amateur videos, they stand out. "And do what you like."

[source]