A new EU Visa Code took effect on 5th April 2010 with the aim of harmonising and simplifying Schengen visa applications. To monitor its implementation, European Tour Operators Association is conducting a survey; they would also like to hear your experiences of visa processing for the UK and Ireland. which are not affected by this new code.

If you work with any of the origin markets affected, please complete this survey by clicking  http://www.consumerdatasurveys.com/etoa/

European Tour Operators Association would be very grateful if you could forward it to any trade partners (Tour Operators and Travel Agents) you work with: they are aiming to establish the most complete picture they can and Tour Operators and Travel Agents input is also essential. All contributions will be handled anonymously.

The survey takes a maximum of 15 minutes of your time and can be completed in stages. You can also save and print your responses.

The results of the survey will be published in the autumn. ETOA is planning an event in Brussels on 5th October to present the findings, make recommendations and also look at the opportunities from various origin markets across the world. Both the European Commission and European Parliament have expressed an interest in participating.

ETOA Visa Survey is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

The Survey, which was conducted in May 2010 and interviewed 1,571 people in the Greater China region, found that on average, mainland Chinese travelers are planning for 7.4 business and leisure trips in the next two years, compared with the 5.6 and 4.5 trips anticipated by Hong Kong and Taiwanese travelers.

The results also show that Greater China travelers are less affected by the economic climate than last year. In the 2009 Survey, 76 percent of Greater China respondents said economic uncertainties would affect their travel plans to the extent that they would either postpone their trips or choose less expensive destination options. However, this year, 50 percent of the respondents said they will travel irrespective of economic uncertainties.

In line with the 2009 survey results, Asia Pacific continues to be the number one destination region for Greater China leisure travelers over the next two years, followed by Western Europe and North America.

Richard Chang, Group Country Manager, Greater China, Visa, said: “This year the survey again highlights the strong intraregional travel preferences that exist among consumers in Greater China. Hong Kong remains a top leisure travel destination for mainland Chinese and Taiwan, while mainland China continues to rank as one of the most favorite holiday destinations for Hong Kongers and Taiwanese travelers. The survey findings provide insights on travelers’ behaviors and spending patterns of Greater China travelers, which enables travel industry players, government tourism agencies, and financial institutions to tailor their marketing strategies and satisfy the needs of overseas travelers.”

John Koldowski, Deputy CEO & Head, Office of Strategy Management, PATA, said, “The insights from the Visa Travel Intentions survey are useful to the whole industry in formulating strategies for sustainable growth. For instance, the survey tells us that countries in the Asia Pacific region will remain the top travel destinations for mainland Chinese visitors over the next two years. That, coupled with the fact that the mainland Chinese became the world’s fourth biggest tourism spenders last year, indicates that we must adapt to the needs of the growing number of affluent mainland Chinese, who have the discretionary spending power for leisure travel.”

The top five Asia Pacific destinations that Greater China leisure travelers surveyed were considering visiting between now and 2012 were:

Key leisure travel preferences for Greater China:

• Hong Kong remains among the top three travel destinations for mainland Chinese and Taiwanese travelers. Regular mainland Chinese travelers to Hong Kong prefer Hong Kong for its great food and shopping, while Taiwanese travelers like the food and the convenience of Hong Kong as a short haul destination.

• Thailand appears to be losing appeal as a holiday destination for Hong Kong travelers when compared with results last year, while the Maldives entered their list of top ten destinations for the first time.

• Australia and Japan have won the hearts of mainland Chinese travelers over Hong Kong as the destination more likely to be considered in Asia Pacific for the coming two years whereas Taiwanese travelers’ preference for Asia Pacific destinations such as Australia and New Zealand has decreased.

• The survey also shows that Macau has dropped down the priority list for all Greater China travelers, particularly for travelers from Mainland China.

The survey shows that across the region, Visa remains the most preferred brand for Greater China travelers as well as the brand most strongly associated with overseas cash access. 60 percent of travelers selected Visa as the preferred payment card for overseas purchases and cash access for international leisure travel.

The survey also reveals the different travel preference among Greater China travelers.

Profile of mainland Chinese travelers:

• Natural scenery, sunshine and beaches and new places are key hooks for mainland Chinese planning their holidays.

• Hong Kong has been the number one destination for leisure travel over the past two years, with repeat visits largely driven by great shopping, dining options and natural scenery. Australia and Japan are the top picks over the next two years.

• Mainland Chinese are willing to pay extra for good food, cultural experiences and exotic destinations. Mainland Chinese travelers also have a preference for environmentally friendly tourism and cultural immersion programs.

• Domestic vacations are also on the cards for mainland Chinese travelers. One in three intend to take four to six domestic holidays in the next two years with the key motivation being exploration of other parts of mainland China.

• Almost 80 percent of mainland Chinese travelers go online as their main source of travel information, more than travelers from any other part of the Greater China region. Popular online sources are online travel guides (general and search engine), travel forums and travel agent booking websites. Ctrip.com is the most visited

Profile of Hong Kong travelers:

• Overall, Hong Kong travelers evaluate the attractiveness of their holiday destination based on local cuisine, natural scenery and the novelty of the destination.

• Japan, mainland China, and Taiwan were the most popular destinations over the past two years and remain the top travel choices over the next two years. Repeat visits to these destinations were driven largely by enjoyment of the local cuisine and food remains a key draw for repeat visitors in future.

• Hongkongers will pay outside of their regular travel budget for food, exotic destinations and cultural immersion programs.

• 64 percent of Hong Kong travelers choose online as their main source of travel information. Online travel guides, travel forums and tourism bureau sites are key online sources with Priceline.com coming in as the most favored website. Facebook is popular across all demographic segments of Hong Kong travelers who want to share travel plans and experiences with friends.

Profile of Taiwanese travelers:

• Natural scenery, novelty and affordability of travel (including promotions and deals) are the principle motivators for Taiwanese deciding on a holiday destination.

• Mainland China, Japan and Hong Kong were the most visited destinations over the past two years. Repeat visits to Japan were largely driven by the local cuisine, its clean environment and the Japanese culture. Others revisited mainland China for the natural scenery, variety of states/ cities to visit, and great food and dining while great food and accessibility were the attractions in Hong Kong. Japan is the clear favorite for future travel.

• Taiwanese are willing to pay extra for exotic destinations, food and cultural immersion programs.

• Three in four consider the Internet as their main source of information, with Facebook being the most popular platform for sharing travel plans and experiences. The motivation to post holiday activities online is the same as with Hong Kong travelers – to document and share memorable experiences.

Source: eglobaltravelnews.com.au

Visa and PATA Survey: Mainland Chinese most frequent outbound travelers from Greater China is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

The China Travel Distribution Summit 2010 will bring together some of the world’s and China’s most influential travel industry leaders and executives to discuss core issues affecting travel.

“Despite a global downturn that has been impacting the world economy since late 2008, China remains the hotspot of the world’s travel market by achieving 11% growth in the number of domestic travelers for 2009,” said Eva He, event director for TravelDaily “China’s domestic air traffic also grew by more than 20% on a year-to-year basis.”

In two days of keynote speeches and panel discussions, industry leaders will explore how travel organizations can partner to improve market share and collaborate to revitalize the travel and tourism sectors.

“Participants in our summit seek solutions that can help transform, drive efficiency and improve bottom-line performance for China’s travel industry,” says TravelDaily’s He. “By working together with PhoCusWright, the world’s leading research authority for the travel industry, we are confident we can create a truly interactive and inspiring event for travel decision-makers.”

China, Consumer and Content are the main themes of the 2010 China Travel Distribution Summit. TravelDaily conferences are regarded as the most prestigious industry events by Chinese travel professionals and global travel companies interested in investing in China.

Distinguished speakers for this conference include:

Min Fan, CEO, Ctrip Inc.
Guangfu Cui, CEO, eLong Inc.
Glenn Fogel, Executive Vice President, Priceline.com
Cyril Ranque, Vice President, Partner Services Group, Asia Pacific, Expedia
Chong Phit Lian, CEO, Jetstar Asia Airways
Gregg Brockway, CEO, TripIt
Yen Lee, President       , Uptake
Brett Henry, Vice-President, Marketing, Abacus International
Gregor Lochite, Vice President of Greater China, American Express Business Travel
Ram Badrinathan, General Manager, Asia-Pacific, PhoCusWright Inc.
Fritz Demopoulos, CEO, Qunar
Sandeep Bahl   , General Manager China & Hong Kong, Delta Air Lines
Zheng Song, COO, Cloudw Wander(China) Limited Company
Phanindra Sama, CEO, redBus.in,
Morton Huang, CEO, Yiqifei.com
Hao Wu, General Manager, Daodao.com
David Chambat, Vice President, Asia-pacific, Tvtrip.com
Qinghua Hong, Founder, Lvmama.com
Liz Perkins, Regional Director, Hotel Marketing, Distribution & Relationship Marketing, Greater China, InterContinental Hotels Group
Nancy Chen, Vice President Marketing, BTG-JIANGUO Hotels & Resorts
Jens Thraenhart, Co-Founder, Dragon Trail & ChinaTravelTrends.com
Yang Yu, National Sales Director – Travel Insurance, Mondial Assistance China
Christine Zhang, Managing Director, HRS Asia Pacific
Fajin Hu, Senior Manager of E-commerce, Air China
Lifan Yang, Sales and Marketing Director, Spring Airlines
Mei Zhang, Founder, WildChina

The 2010 China Travel Distribution Summit will be held at the Beijing GeHua New Century Hotel, Sep. 15-16, 2010. The conference is now open for registration and the super early bird rate will be valid through July15. For more information, please visit the event website: http://summit.traveldaily.cn/distribution/index_en.asp

ChinaTravelTrends.com and Dragon Trail are partners of the 2010 China Travel distribution Summit, and will provide coverage on www.ChinaTravelTrends.com from the event.

2010 China Travel Distribution Summit will bring together some of the world’s and China’s most influential travel industry leaders is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

It is also a remarkable achievement for CUP’s internationalisation. The cooperation will provide payment convenience to CUP cardholders for their travel, business and study in Africa, Middle East and Asia.

Before 2009 CUP cardholders could withdraw cash and check account balance at SCB ATMs only in China and Hong Kong. Now these services have been extended to SCB ATMs in Kenya, Zambia, Gambia, Uganda, Botswana, Bahrain, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and UAE; and these services will also be offered in 2010 in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Jordan and Cote’ D’Ivoire.

Cardholders will be able to withdraw cash in the local currency of the country they are in – the withdrawal amount will be debited to a customer’s RMB account of the card issuing bank using a competitive exchange rate.

In recent years, the number of Chinese outbound tourists has been increasing along with the growth of China’s international economic and trading relations with the world. In 2008, outbound tourist numbers reached 45.84 million, up 11.9% compared to 2007. It has been a continuous social responsibility for CUP to satisfy the payment demands of these outbound tourists.

Simon McNamara, Chief Information Officer, Global Consumer Banking, Standard Chartered Bank, said: “We are very excited about our growing partnership with China Union Pay and the greater service and convenience it offers to Standard Chartered Bank’s customers and CUP cardholders worldwide.

CUP cardholders will be able to get cash and perform account inquiries at over 2,000 Standard Chartered Bank ATMs across Asia, Middle East, and Africa. We look forward to expanding our work with China Union Pay to continue to deliver great service to our customers.

“The cooperation brings 10 new countries to the CUP network”, Mr. Cai Jianbo, the First Executive President of CUP said. “CUP will work closely with Standard Chartered to provide premium, secured and efficient payment service to the cardholders.”

Mr. Cai also points out that, “CUP has accelerated the construction of its overseas acceptance network. This makes the CUP network one of the largest in the world. CUP is also dedicated to forging further alliances with overseas partners to provide premium services to its growing clientele. Now the CUP card can be used in more than 80 overseas countries and territories.

Source: peacefmonline.com

Stanchart’s ATMs Now Accept China Unionpay Card Worldwide is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

The Internet has transformed the lives of millions while disrupting and displacing the business models of traditional media channels around the globe. But what impact does the Internet have on how people live? How important a role does it play in their decisions? Does that role vary from country to country, or are users’ experiences universal? Will concerns about such issues as privacy and security dampen consumers’ digital enthusiasm, or will new media continue to play an expanding role in their lives?

These are critical questions. The Digital Influence Index has answers.

Now in its second year, the Digital Influence Index has expanded to cover 48 percent of the global online population, spanning France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Japan, and the United States. Through measuring key aspects of consumers’ use of theInternet — from media consumption patterns to the degree of adoption of digital behaviors, to involvement with social networking — the Digital Influence Index sheds new light on the ways in which the Internet is impacting the lives of consumers.

U.S. and European marketers may be underestimating the online marketing opportunity in China, according to a new paper released Thursday and written by Brian McRoberts of Fleishman-Hillard and George Terhanian of Harris Interactive.

The paper, “Digital Influence Index Study: Understanding the Role of the Internet in the Lives of Consumers,” indicates that China, which has 330 million Internet users, may have the largest and most advanced group of Internet users in the world. Additionally, the paper argues that China has the smallest “mobility gap,” which is the difference between the capabilities available on a smartphone and the number of capabilities actually used by the owner.

Chinese users actually use 90% of available smartphone capabilities, according to the paper. By way of contrast, users in the U.S., France and U.K. on average use less than 50% of their phone’s capabilities.

Nonetheless, Westerners seem unaware of the Chinese’s advancement on the Internet and mobile Web. A Harris poll found that 65% of Americans believed the U.S. had the most advanced Internet users.

When it comes to driving consumer decisions about a range of products and services, the Internet is by far the most influential media channel — but marketers have yet to capitalize on that influence. That is the central finding of the 2010 Digital Influence Index, released today by Fleishman-Hillard International Communications in conjunction with Harris Interactive.

The study also measures several key aspects of consumers’ use of the Internet, from media consumption patterns, to the degree of adoption of various digital behaviors, to involvement with online social networking. Now in its second year, the Index has expanded to include 48 percent of the global online population, spanning France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Japan and the United States.

“Our survey provides overwhelming evidence that the Internet is at the center of the decision-making process of consumers,” said Dave Senay, Fleishman-Hillard president and chief executive officer. “It suggests, definitively, that marketers who do not have end-to-end strategies which put digital influence at the center of their marketing plans are doing so at their own peril. Marketers who ‘get it’ will be able to leapfrog their competitors who don’t.”

The Digital Influence Index reveals the following nine key insights into the Internet’s global influence on consumers’ lives:

1. Funding Gap: Globally, digital dominates in influence but not marketing dollars spent. The Internet is by far the most important medium in the lives of consumers, but companies continue to underinvest in their online marketing efforts.

2. On the Edge: Chinese Internet users are more advanced, but are early adopters, with room to grow. Although the Internet is the most important medium in all countries, it plays an even more critical role in China, home to the world’s largest and fastest-growing population of online consumers.

3. Beyond Mainstream: Digital is core to decisions — for research, purchases and peer influence. The Internet plays an integral role in the decision-making process.

4. Too Much Information (TMI): Online oversharing of personal information isn’t just a bore, but a rising threat, as well. As more users embrace social media and generate content, a consensus is emerging — people share too much personal information, and too little of it is particularly interesting.

5. Cautiously Trusting: People trust the Internet most when they have multiple sources — and a friend is one of them.

6. Pay to Play Doesn’t Play: Trust in bloggers for hire remains weak. Across all countries studied, Internet users report a lack of trust in content produced by sponsored or paid bloggers.

7. Real-Time Trust: Microbloggers trust companies that listen and respond in real time. Users who have adopted microblogging tend to trust companies that monitor their online activity. They seem to view this online listening as a sign that organizations care about their needs and want their feedback.

8. Mobility Gap: As apps multiply and speeds increase, mobile users snap up smartphones — but realize only a fraction of their potential. Although mobile Internet use is growing, a significant gap exists between the capabilities available to mobile phone users and the number of individuals who actually take advantage of them.

9. Where to From Here?: As Internet use continues to grow, will its influence grow, too? Depends who you ask. As important as the Internet is now, will its consumer influence continue to grow in the future? The answer varies from country to country … but in China it is a resounding “yes!”

To download a complimentary copy of the Digital Influence Index white paper and read in-depth analysis on all nine insights, please visit digitalinfluence.fleishmanhillard.com.

About the Digital Influence Index
The Digital Influence Index is a joint venture between Fleishman-Hillard and Harris Interactive. The project was designed and led by Fleishman-Hillard’s digital research group, a team within the agency’s network focused on providing research that supports the digital transformation of communications. Analysis and insight development was conducted in partnership with Harris Interactive.

The fieldwork for this study was also conducted by Harris Interactive through a comprehensive, 15-minute online survey among a representative sample of 4,243 Internet users in China, the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

This work took place between December 2009 and January 2010. Respondents to the survey were recruited from the various panels managed by Harris Interactive across the markets surveyed.

The data was weighted to online population targets, including those based on age, gender, education, region and Internet usage. Further weighting was applied to the analysis of the combined results to reflect the online population sizes in each country.

The Digital Influence Index was constructed by factoring in both consumption of a medium and the importance consumers attach to that consumption. Respondents were allowed to give various media a score out of 100 for the amount of time they spend on them and then rate how important this time is to their decisions. Consumption and importance were each scored out of 100 to produce a percentage score for each and a total score out of 200. This latter score is halved to produce a combined percentage score that sums up the influence of the medium.

Source: Fleischman Hillard (June 23, 2010)

Western marketers may be underestimating Chinese online market – Digital Influence Index Reveals Growing Impact of Internet on Consumer Decision-Making is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Sina Weibo and other domestic microblogging services are more than a match for the United States company, Lin Shujuan reports

Huang Jianxiang, 42, was once China’s best-known sports commentators.

He came to international attention during a World Cup commentary on June 26, 2006. Five months after his passionate outburst against Australia, while describing the final goal of the match between Australia and Italy, he resigned from China Central Television. Many thought that was the end of his career as a soccer commentator.

But Huang is back in business, commenting on each team and game of the ongoing FIFA World Cup in South Africa – in any tone he likes. Quite to his delight, he is not running short of an audience.

Huang is now a star in the world of Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, closely followed by more than 1 million fans who forward his comments to many more within minutes.

His made this comment on Wednesday’s early morning, right after China’s socialist neighbor North Korea played against Brazil:

“I plan to go to sleep immediately. Forget about any dream related to Chinese soccer. The idea of having a dream about Chinese soccer is itself ultimately stupid. Chinese soccer and soccer are in fact two different sports.”

Despite the early hours, this post was viewed nearly 2,000 times, forwarded by 140 people and commented on by 92 followers.

Weibo (which translates as microblog) has become a phenomenon since Sina started beta testing of its microblogging service, Sina Weibo, in August.

Over the past 10 months Sina Weibo has established itself as China’s leading microblogging service, raising the country’s microblogging population from less than 1 million to an estimated 10 million.

In early March 2010, Sina’s CEO Cao Guowei revealed there were 5 million registered users of the service. Then, in mid-May, Cao added the “number of registered members has doubled over the past quarter”.

In comparison, it took Twitter nearly 30 months to attract the same number of users.

“Twitter brought the concept of the microblog to China, but it is Sina Weibo that has popularized this kind of Internet service here,” says Hu Yong, an expert on new media from the School of Journalism and Communication of Peking University.

The service is much the same as Twitter in that it allows users to post messages of 140 Chinese characters or less via the Web, SMS or MMS.

But 140 Chinese characters can say a lot more, according to tech expert and Beijing resident Kaiser Kuo.

Before Sina Weibo, a few Twitter-like services had emerged in China, such as Fanfou, Jiwai and Digu.

Like Twitter, however, they were banned in July last year after deadly ethnic unrest in Xinjiang was blamed, in part, on agitators spreading their messages on the Web through Twitter.

Ironically, this turned into an opportunity for Sina Weibo to fill the gap.

Hu says Sina, as one of the top 20 websites in the world according to the Web-traffic monitoring agency Alexa.com, had a huge advantage building the massive user base needed to create a truly Twitter-like experience.

Moreover, the company’s decade of experience in content monitoring allowed it to avoid the potential pitfalls of its predecessors.

Within months Sina Weibo had become a hit with mainstream Chinese Internet users, thanks in part to a solid base of over 400 million netizens.

Many have attributed Sina Weibo’s success to Sina’s strong marketing, but Cao Zenghui, Sina Weibo’s project manager, doesn’t entirely agree.

He says celebrity sign-ups for the service did help drive up registrations but Sina Weibo also scored because it is easy to use.

“Weibo, unlike Twitter, is tailored to Chinese users,” Cao says. “That means Sina is able to create a more user-friendly microblogging experience for them than Twitter does.”

Cao says those who have used both services tend to agree that Sina Weibo is also more expressive, with its embedded emotions, photos, video and lyrics.

Duan Hongbin, an IT analyst at Anbound, reckons that even if Twitter was available in China, it still could not compete with Sina Weibo and other Chinese micro-blogging services.

“It’s like Baidu and Google in China. Generally, Google is better in terms of technology and branding, but most Chinese still prefer Baidu,” Duan says.

While Google’s global share is over 90 percent, its best performance in China was 31.1 percent against Baidu’s 63.9 percent of China’s Internet search market share in the third quarter of 2009, according to data from Analysys International, a leading advisor on technology, media and the telecom industry in China.

“It’s not because of nationalism, the language barrier is one reason. It is normal for Chinese users to use a Chinese-language interface. There are not many Web users in China who prefer an English interface,” Duan says.

Kaiser Kuo says that if Twitter became available again in China, it wouldn’t take Chinese netizens by storm because of the popularity of the services that have developed.

While Twitter would have Chinese users, he says, Sina Weibo and other similar services have gained too much momentum.

More celebrities are taking to microblogging to promote themselves and bond with their fans. Jules Quartly reports

It was a horror movie but singer and model Essa Xu was focused on her laptop instead of the TV screen. Curled up on the sofa in her Beijing apartment she edited a picture of herself and posted it on Sina Weibo.

These days she is far more interested in microblogging (weibo) than what is on TV. It is not just pleasure, keeping up with friends and their tweets, it is also business and a smart way of marketing herself.

Like many other celebrity types she survives on the oxygen of publicity and microblogging services like FanFou, Digu, TaoTao and Zuosa have rapidly become the best way to promote herself, directly to fans.

Six months after she started microblogging she has about 13,000 followers and although this pales in comparison to major league stars like Little S, who has 1.3 million, the number grows every week and she tends to them like a virtual gardener.

She waters followers with praise, supplements new photos every other day, gets involved in hot topics such as the World Cup (she supports Italy) and lets fans know what she is doing so there is bonding.

Opening her microblog is one of the first things Xu does in the morning. She reads fresh comments and browses the news, which she reckons is faster and more opinionated than mainstream media.

“People speak more freely,” she says.

When she is not at home she keeps an eye on her microblog using her phone. It has become like a second life to her.

“Microblogging has become an interesting part of my daily life. No matter when or where, I know what everyone is talking about and can express my own opinions It is an easy and simple process for people to get to know me.

“As an artist the more the people that know me the more opportunities will come my way. So far, increasing numbers of people have been paying attention to me and giving me lots of good advice.”

Sina Weibo, the most popular service, has experienced phenomenal growth since it started about 10 months ago and currently has approximately 10 million users, suggesting 1 million new users a month.

It also indirectly received the official seal of approval from the government earlier this month in a white paper on the Internet.

“The newly-emerging online services, including blogs, microblogs, video-sharing and social networking websites, are developing rapidly in China and provide greater convenience for Chinese citizens to communicate online,” it says.

While blogging is now a mature platform, microblogs are quickly becoming the new medium of choice. They tend to gather support quicker and it is easier to find out what is going on. Instead of entering queries into a search engine you just follow a provider and it feeds information.

While there have been criticisms that it is heavily censored by government Internet watchdogs, keyword screening and individual reporting, this does not bother the majority of users who are more interested in celebrities and entertainment than in politics.

One of the outcomes of such a pristine environment is that celebrity news is generally positive and the negative side of the business is glossed over.

One of the ways this is achieved is by giving selected microbloggers VIP status. For Sina Weibo this comes with a smart “V” against the celebrity’s name, which signifies “verified”.

This confers advantages such as having the artist’s name and picture put on the recommended artists list, which gets heavy traffic.

“The interesting thing about the ‘V’ that is given to someone who is in some way famous is that they originally gave them out to all sorts of people, but they are now a lot harder to get,” says Ogilvy PR digital influence strategist Jeremy Webb, who focuses on social media.

He says you have to apply through official channels or be pitched to get one, but it also helps if you have influence with someone at Sina.

As for flaming or negative comments, these are easily dealt with, according to Webb. He says one of his followers started writing “inappropriate sexual advances” on his site, so he blacklisted him and that was the end of that.

Another factor that distinguishes microblogging from blogging, or creating your own website, is the ease and speed with which it can be set up.

With Sina Weibo, you merely have to provide an e-mail, password and a captcha number. That’s it. You’re in.

This is much easier than Twitter, the mother of all microblogs, and though it is banned in China some commentators say the domestic versions are simpler to use, have more functions and would be just as popular, if not more.

“I have three times more followers on Weibo, which means more interaction,” Webb says. “Weibo has a couple of useful features too, such as being able to see expanded images and video without having to leave the feed.

“With more pictures and videos, as well as activities and games organized by Sina, Weibo is arguably a more fun place to be. This is perfect for China’s social media, which at this stage is largely about play and killing time.”

Webb says shorter, easier ways to interact like microblogging are more suited to on-the-go communication and thereby capitalize on the mobile Internet.

Beijing-based DJ Edmund says he has turned to microblogging because he does not want to miss out and it has a number of uses.

“It’s convenient and fun, easy to use and once you announce something then it’s there. You don’t have to do too much,” Edmund says.

“I can check out people I’m interested in like Pan Shiyi (chairman of Soho China), and it’s like keeping in touch with him as he uploads funny photos or smart insights. It’s quite relaxing.”

Edmund says he spends just 10 minutes a day and uploads items twice or more a week to “share my life with other people” and point traffic to his music, mix and photo websites. He compares it with the social networking site Moko, which features models, actors and other artists, saying that Moko is a better place to make friends whereas microblogging is “more random and has people from all over China”.

“It’s like fast food, easy to digest and simple to get.”

Some of the Top Celebrities on Weibo

Huang Jianxiang: No 7

Football is arguably the most popular sport on the planet. Huang Jianxiang, 42, a former sports commentator with China Central Television and anchorman at the Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television, agrees. But that’s not what makes him one of China’s most popular football commentators.

Cai Kangyong: No 5

Also known as Kevin Tsai, Cai is a writer and TV host in Taiwan. He is best known for his role in hosting the TV program Kanagxi Lai Le, which airs on Chuang Tien Television with fellow hostess Xu Xidi or Dee Hsu. Soon after Sina’s Weibo became accessible on iPhone across the world, Cai joined Weibo. Popular for his witty comments on various themes, one typical post reads:

“Yes, many people do bad things for money. It is the way they choose to get their money you should hate, not money. It doesn’t make you sound nobler if you hate money. Money is like kung fu in a kung fu novel. You could use your kung fu to do bad, or you could also use it to do a lot of wonderful things. Resisting making money is like resisting improving your kung fu, which is OK but you’d better be prepared. One day if a bad guy armed with strong kung fu bullies you, how will you react? – Kangyong, Short messages for the cruel world.”

Yao Cheng: No 1

Yao, a rising actress from the Chinese mainland known as “Queen of Weibo”, provides updates a couple of times each day no matter where she is. And she talks about almost everything.

“I am flying to the North. In fact, I have been flying everywhere this month. I am like Batwoman.”

Pan Shiyi: No 10

The presence of SOHO China’s Pan Shiyi on Sina Weibo’s top ten reflects the fact that the new social networking platform has become the pulse of Chinese society.

As one of China’s best known real estate developers, Pan has become a public figure for his willingness to talk to the media and his frequent blogging on Sina Weibo.

He has brought onboard many other real estate developers to join Weibo and hence formed an exchange platform on probably the country’s most discussed issue – the red-hot real estate market.

One recent typical Weibo from him was related to the government’s possible postponing of the introduction of a property tax to further cool the real estate market. He warned investors to avoid too much renewed optimism, writing on his Sina Weibo: “It is like a drowning person seeing a piece of wood floating on the sea. But don’t be optimistic, make plans for the worst.”

Li Kaifu: No 4

Li Kaifu, former president of Google China, is among the first popular celebrities to have joined Sina Weibo. He is the only Internet entrepreneur who has stayed in the top five.

He announced his leaving Google China on September 4, 2009 with the words “Goodbye, Google!”

As founder and CEO of Innovation Works, a new venture dedicated to serving young start-ups, he reviews the Internet scene, media trends and electronic products, updates on the company’s development and occasionally remarks on his daily routines especially those related to his two daughters.

Source: China Daily (June 17, 2010)

In China, Weibo is the Twitter match is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Posting negative comments on the Web about products and services is fast becoming the most popular channel for Chinese consumers to vent their spleen. Yet, behind this veneer of free expression lies a murky world of cyber bullies and unscrupulous webmasters who are manipulating the media to either promote or smear a company’s image for profit.

In a country with nearly 400 million Web users, online marketing has become a big business and has spawned a legion of Internet public relations agencies. Their services include not only getting a product seen but also removing any negative feedback they find.

“Real estate, cars, electronics: These are usually the most lucrative when it comes to deleting negative posts,” said Ma Mingdong, a 25-year-old Beijing blogger and online marketer. “Many people think it’s complicated to delete posts but it isn’t.”

He said it costs just a few hundred yuan to bribe staff at a website or forum to delete posts, and if that fails, “paid posters” – netizens hired to leave fake comments and delete genuine ones – can use software to copy the official documents and identification that websites need before they agree to remove a comment.

Posts can be deleted legitimately when a company or individual provides a copy of their ID card or business license, while many websites, including Baidu Post and tianya.cn, have issued statements saying they provide the service for free.

Several chat groups on QQ, the instant messaging service, have even become mini-trading centers where PR firms regularly advertise for paid posters, otherwise known as shuijun, the “water army”.

However, industry experts argue that the use of shuijun undermines consumer trust in the Web, as well as underlines the need for stricter policies to protect the rights of netizens and ensure fair competition.

The China International PR Association also released guidelines shortly after World Consumer Rights Day – March 15 – that specifically bar marketers from paying to have genuine negative comments removed.

With the vast amount of information uploaded every minute, though, the rule is virtually impossible to enforce.

“Deleting posts and comments is part of our daily job,” said a Beijing Web editor named Zhang who works at a popular online forum and has to review more than 2,000 comments each day. “There are so many topics that need to be monitored, and comments need to be deleted (for legitimate reasons) all the time. It would be very easy for me to delete negative posts about a company if I wanted to.”

More worrying, perhaps, is the growing use of fake negative comments by websites to pressure businesses into advertising with them.

Wang Yu (not his real name) worked as a Web editor for a property website in Jiangsu province after graduating from college in 2007. He said his job involved copying various articles about real estate agents from other sites and then leaving fake complaints about them under any number of pre-registered usernames.

“Negative comments are like intangible assets,” said the 26-year-old, before explaining that the companies usually responded to his comments “about poor service and bad construction” by offering to advertise with the site – on condition that the posts are deleted. It is a common problem faced by many Chinese businesses, and can be particularly hard on small, family-run firms that cannot afford to hire a PR firm to protect their reputation.

“Deleting news articles is difficult, but deleting posts from online forums is very common nowadays, only the price changes,” said Li Haigang, founder of Caogen PR, an Internet marketing company. “If one of my clients gets negative posts on certain online forum, everyone would say, ‘Oh, they are in trouble’ – but only because this forum charges more than the others.

“Of course, no one would list ‘post deleting’ as part of the contract,” he added. “The deals (between the website and the companies) are made in the name of advertising.”

Legal trouble

Although arguably ethically wrong, there is no law stopping this practice and is deemed legitimate if both sides reach an agreement.

“Since these websites are private companies, they have the right to manage their content, which includes deleting posts,” said Zhang Zhisheng, a lawyer with Beijing Zhongyin Law Firm.

Wang Yu wrote about his experience and posted it online because he wanted to tell people not to pay too much attention to harsh comments. “Some of it is simply manipulation by Web editors, who are trying to cause a debate so that people can keep the conversation going,” he said.

Websites often run the risk of being sued for defamation if they refuse to delete comments about certain products.

The most high-profile case was in 2007 when 315ts.net, a consumer protection website based in Beijing, was taken to court by two companies over posts they claimed damaged their image.

Doctor Bai, a cosmetics firm, and BiosTime Inc, which makes health food for children, both filed lawsuits claiming the site had faked comments about their products. Judges eventually ruled in the website’s favor because there was no evidence to suggest the posts were not genuine.

“Enterprises have an obligation to tolerate criticism,” was all Wang Fushan, chief executive of 315ts.net, would say about the outcome.

Since the website was launched in 2005, it has received more than 700,000 complaints from customers across China. After the lawsuit, users were asked to register and provide contact information to ensure the validity of their comments.

“We receive at least five calls a day from people asking us to remove complaints from our website,” said the CEO, who insisted that his 30 staff members only delete content when a customer’s problem is solved.

“You can’t depend on people’s conscience to do the right thing, though,” said Wang Fushan, who receives an e-notification every time a post is deleted. “You need a good system to prevent abuses from happening.”

Like many websites, 315ts.net generates its income from advertising and selling data analysis of its customer complaints. Before filing the lawsuit, Doctor Bai paid 5,000 yuan ($730) to place a product safety announcement on the site. However, Wang stressed: “Our advertising is completely separate from our content. Even if a company advertises with us, customers can still file complaints about them.”

The CEO said that although the websites that accept money to delete posts are breaching netizens’ trust, the real problem lies with the companies that pay them. “No companies went bankrupt because of bad comments, they go out of business because of other problems,” he added.

The growing demand for deleting posts deals a real blow to the ongoing efforts to protect consumer rights in China.

Many have turned to the Web to air their grievances because the other mechanisms on offer are slow, complicated and ineffective.

People unhappy with products can file complaints with industrial and commercial bureaus, but as there are few institutions that provide independent tests, it is difficult for customers to back up their claims, especially when it comes to property, automobiles and electrical goods. Legal procedures are also expensive and time-consuming.

Solving problems

The situation has led many consumers to believe that the best way to have a complaint heard is through publicity.

A recent online survey by sina.com, a Chinese news website, found that one-third of the 783 netizens polled see the media as the most efficient way to solve a dispute.

“Not all the disputes can be solved this way but I like to report my complaints to warn others that there is a problem,” said Qu Lingdi, a network engineer in Beijing.

Although PR expert Li Haigang said he believes deleting posts is still a “necessary measure”, he admitted that “papering over the cracks” of a problem usually only leads to crisis in the future. “Communication is the best solution,” he said. “If these bad comments are being generated by competitors, then we can find out the source and tell them to stop. Otherwise, we will fight back.”

However, the current law is too slow to prevent the fast spread of information on the Internet, he argued.

“Do you know how long it takes a company to file a lawsuit against libel?” he asked. “Netizens’ attention spans are very short, so it could be too late once a bad impression is made.”

For those people who have noticed their posts being deleted, however, they say they have already lost faith in what they read on the Web.

“I don’t trust websites anymore,” said blogger Ma Mingdong, who has given up posting negative articles. “My posts are just tools for these websites to make money.”

A paid poster who refuses to delete

Editor’s note: Ma Mingdong is a 25-year-old Beijing blogger and online marketer.

After I graduated from Huadong Jiaotong University in 2008 – my major was marketing – I worked as a sales person in a pharmaceutical company in Hebei province for six months. But I got bored and wanted to do something more exciting.

So, I found a job with an Internet marketing company in April 2009 and came to Beijing, where I’ve learned the business of “Internet manipulation”. It wasn’t widely known at that time.

I’m good at writing articles online. I used to visit the popular websites and online forums I write for when I was in school, so I know what kind of articles and titles attract attention.

My manager gave me contacts to a few people in charge of paid posters. We call them shuijun, which means water army. This is because most posts and comments are like water, they have no significance or meaning but they can be overwhelming when they flood in.

Paid posters use fake identities to leave comments and articles online. Basically anyone who knows certain people in the industry can flood the Internet with articles. They are paid about 10 to 30 cents for each post, and more if it includes pictures.

All these paid posters are college kids or jobless people. And there are so many of them. I’ve told some kids that they can share IDs with each other so they don’t need to register themselves. They need someone to teach them how the business works. Otherwise, they are just robots who only know how to copy and paste. I’ve had thousands of IDs on websites. Some people gave them to me as gifts when they quit this business.

Deleting posts is more advanced and more profitable. I’ve met a web editor who is surprised to know that he can make money from doing this. Some got fired because of deleting posts, but to some the money is handsome and they are willing to risk their jobs. I’m against deleting posts but paid posting are okay, as long as it’s legal.

Some people have put their experiences of injustice online, and I can help them to leave comments and forward to other websites so more people can read about these stories. For some, it’s their only hope to get their stories heard.

One of my friends asked me to promote his investment articles online. He is now teaching people how to buy stocks on the finance channel on sina.com. I’m definitely not going to listen to his investment advice. I don’t trust the Internet anymore.

Source: China Daily (June 19, 2010)

Complexity of Brand Reputation Management Online in China is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Agreement with China a Great Opportunity for Canada’s Tourism Industry

“This is a great day for tourism in Canada, and a great day for travelers from China,” said David Goldstein, President and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC). “This agreement will create a greater openness between our countries, allowing Chinese visitors greater access to all of Canada’s iconic attractions while providing our travel industry with the opportunity to market to the world’s fastest growing outbound travel market.”

The agreement, which had been announced in principle in December 2009, was formally signed in a ceremony in Ottawa by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Chinese President Hu Jintao. Approved Destination Status will allow Chinese citizens to more easily obtain tourist visas to travel to Canada for leisure purposes, and will allow Canada to actively market its tourism products in China. The ADS agreement will also authorize Chinese travel agencies to market and promote leisure group tours for travel in Canada.

Almost half a year after the announcement of ADS for Canada back in December 2009, On the day of the official signing of Approved Destination Status with China, Banff Lake Louise Tourism is right out of the gate to launch its social media ready, relevant Chinese language website portal (http://china.banfflakelouise.com/), together with social media profiles on key video sharing and social networks in China.  The strategy was developed in collaboration with digital brand engagement firm Dragon Trail, and the launch of the website is the first phase of a comprehensive and innovative strategy to increase brand awareness of the entire region of the Canadian Rockies in Alberta, Canada. Please see the press releases, announcing the signing of ADS with Canada, and Banff Lake Louise welcoming Chinese tourists, below.

CTC president and CEO Michele McKenzie, the Honourable Rob Moore, Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism and CTC chair Steve Allan together with chairman Shao Qiwei and other members of the Chinese National Tourism Administration.

CTC hosts the Chairman of the Chinese National Tourism Administration and a VIP delegation in Canada.

The tour allows the Chinese operators to personally meet with members of the Canadian travel trade and to build business relationships that will be key to promoting Canada in China.

Banff National Park Ready to Welcome Chinese Visitorsas We Celebrate Our 125th AnniversaryNew Chinese Website Activated to Start Holiday Planning to Banff National ParkBanff, Alberta, Canada (June 24, 2010) – Canada’s iconic tourism destination Banff National Parkhas been visited by leisure travelers from around the world for more than a century. Today wecelebrate the announcement that Canada can now receive leisure travelers from China.The process of Approved Destination Status, a travel agreement between China and Canada, beganin December 2009. With ADS, Chinese nationals are now permitted to travel to Canada for leisurepurposes in addition to business, study, or to visit friends and relatives. Effective immediately,travel to Canada has become easier and Chinese travel agents can begin promoting and organizinggroup tours to Canada.“Banff Lake Louise Tourism has been preparing for the emergence of the Chinese travel market forseveral years and even more so as ADS discussions advanced last December” says Julie Canning,president and CEO of Banff Lake Louise Tourism. “Today’s announcement officially opens thedoors of Canada to leisure travelers and Banff National Park is ready to welcome Chinese visitors.”Banff Lake Louise Tourism and its members have been actively engaged in laying groundwork forthis market by conducting educational China workshops, attending in-market events and developingkey relationships with Chinese travel trade and Chinese tour operators. Furthermore, in partnershipwith Dragon Trail Social Media & Digital Marketing Services, Banff Lake Louise Tourism todaylaunched a Chinese consumer website http://china.banfflakelouise.com. This is part of aninnovative and comprehensive e-strategy program in China to engage consumers by leveragingdigital campaigns, influencer marketing, and social media to increase brand awareness.Banff Lake Louise offers all of the comforts and amenities expected by the international travelerfrom Castles in the Rockies to Lakeside Chateaus while surrounded by pristine National Park. Weare ready to extend a warm welcome to those who wish to travel to our unique destination as BanffNational Park celebrates its 125th anniversary.-30-About Banff Lake Louise TourismBanff Lake Louise Tourism is a destination marketing organization for the Town of Banff, Community of LakeLouise and Banff National Park. Supporting over 800 businesses, our mission is to engage visitors in unrivalled,remarkable experiences with our membership. Visit www.banfflakelouise.com and http://china.banfflakelouise.com for more information.

Please also view the special announcement about the ADS announcement at http://china.banfflakelouise.com/page/zh-CN/welcome

Canada officially gets ADS Status from China – Banff Lake Louise Tourism launches Chinese Website the same Day is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Coming three months after the very public dispute with Google, which resulted in the shutdown of Google’s China-based portal, the paper offers a revealing look back on Chinese Internet history as well as where the country stands today.

Not surprisingly, China still supports the so-called “Great Firewall” approach to controlling and censoring Internet content, but it also oddly mentions Twitter as a favorable development for Chinese Internet citizens. Why is that odd? Because China routinely blocks Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networking services from being accessible to Chinese citizens.

By the end of 2009, the number of people using the internet in China rose to 384 million, 618 times that of 1997 with an annual increase of 31.95 million users, Xinhua reported.

The internet had reached 28.9 percent of the total population in 2009, higher than the world average. Its accessibility will be raised to 45 percent of the population in the next five years, it said.

There were 3.23 million websites, 2,152 times that of 1997, running in China last year. Of the total users, 346 million people used broadband and 233 million used mobile phones to access the internet.

“These statistics make China among the top of the developing countries in popularising the internet,” the 31-page document said.

The Information technology (IT), including the internet and its industry, has made significant contributions to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, it said.

In the past 16 years, the IT industry grew at over 26.6 percent annually, with its proportion in the national economy increasing from less than one percent to 10 percent, the paper said.

According to a sample survey, in 2009 alone, about 230 million people in China gathered information using search engines, and 240 million communicated through real-time telecommunications devices.

Also, 46 million Chinese people received education with the help of the internet, 35 million conducted securities trading on the internet, 15 million sought jobs through the internet and 14 million arranged trips via the internet.

The government is determined to further promote internet development and application so that more people can benefit from the internet.

“Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet,” it said. Over 80 percent of China’s websites provided electronic bulletin services. And there are some 220 million bloggers in China.

In order to facilitate reporting on corrupt officials, the central discipline inspection and supervision authorities, the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and other relevant bodies have set up information websites.

According to the paper, computer crimes in China have been on the increase in recent years. Public security departments dealt with 142 computer crime cases in 1998, 29,000 in 2007, 35,000 in 2008 and 48,000 in 2009. “China is one of the countries suffering most from hacking,” it said.

Besides, 18 million Chinese computers are infected by the Conficker virus every month, about 30 percent of the computers infected globally.

China’s regulation on the Internet industry is in line with the laws and should be free from unjustifiable interferences, a Chinese government official said in Beijing Sunday.

A spokesperson with China’s State Council Information Office told Xinhua in an exclusive interview, that China is regulating the Internet legally to build a more reliable, helpful information network that is beneficial to economic and social development.

Such regulation, the spokesperson said, are based on laws and regulations such as the Constitution, the Law on the Protection of Minors, and the Decision on Internet Safety pass by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.

Online information which incites subversion of state power, violence and terrorism or includes pornographic contents are explicitly prohibited in the laws and regulations, the spokesperson said.

China has full justification to deal with these illegal and harmful online contents, the spokesperson said.

This has nothing to do with the claims of “restrictions on Internet freedom”, the spokesperson stressed.

Different countries have different conditions and realities, thus they are regulating the Internet in different ways, the spokesperson said.

China’s regulation on the Internet industry is proved to be suitable for China’s national conditions and in line with common practices in most countries as well, the spokesperson said.

China is willing to cooperate and exchange opinions on issues about Internet development and management wit other countries, but opposes firmly to any defiance of Chinese laws, or intervening Chinese domestic affairs under the pretence of “Internet management” regardless of the truth, the spokesperson said.

According to the spokesperson, as of the end of 2009, the number of netizens in China reached 384 million, and websites topped 3.68 million.

China has millions of online forums and more than 200 million blogs, and every day, there are more than four million new blog entries posted online, the spokesperson said.

Chinese netizens’ right to express opinions within the law is well protected, and their opinions are given full consideration by the government in policy making process, the spokesperson said.

In other words, the paper makes it seem as if the government is stating that social networking sites are good things for Chinese citizens, within reason. But to the Chinese government, “within reason” means (according to the document), nothing that subverts state power, undermines national unity, infringes upon honor and interests or incites ethnic hatred and secession. Also banned are terror-related and gambling sites, sites propagating heretical or superstitious ideas, sites spreading rumors or disrupting social order and sites featuring vulgar or adult material.

Although here in the West, China’s censorship policies go against our culture’s core values about freedom and expression, simply pulling out of China, as Google threatened to do, isn’t that easy for many Western-based businesses. As the paper states, there are now 384 million Chinese citizens online (as of the end of 2009), or 28.9% of the population – higher than the world average. Within five years, the government aims to increase that number to 45% of the population. That makes China an Internet powerhouse to either be dealt with by playing by its rules or ignored with great at cost to the bottom line.

The paper is available at China.gov, or can be downloaded here:

Source: China.gov (June 8, 2010)

Chinese Government publishes Internet Policy Document is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Internet users in China spend about 1 billion hours online each day, more than double the daily total in the United States—and that number will grow to well over 2 billion hours a day by 2015, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). This report, titled China’s Digital Generations 2.0: Digital Media and Commerce Go Mainstream, offers a comprehensive study of online behavior in China based on quantitative data as well as interviews with nearly 2,000 people from 12 cities in 11 of China’s 22 provinces. It also illustrates these trends through in-depth profiles of individual consumers, allowing them to tell the story of China’s dynamic and complex market.

The report also reveals the explosive growth taking place in China’s e-commerce arena. In 2009, business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer transactions in China clocked in at a total of $37 billion, and BCG forecasts that they will surpass $100 billion in just three years. Many of the new industry giants of China’s online marketplace—Alibaba.com, Tencent, and Ctrip.com, among others—are homegrown players that have fended off tough competition from established multinationals.

Of course, China is an enormous country—but the explosive growth of the digital market isn’t due so much to demographics as to a behavioral shift: digital media and commerce have moved into the mainstream of Chinese Internet users’ lives. Specifically, these digital consumers are spending more time online to meet a more complex set of needs than ever before. For example, far more Chinese people use the Internet to communicate and seek entertainment than in other emerging markets. More than 80 percent of Chinese digital consumers use instant messaging, read news online, and stream or download music and video content via the Internet, and around half play games online. And Chinese consumers have “leapfrogged” over e-mail—only 53 percent of Chinese Internet users actively use e-mail, less than in any other major market. The average time online for Chinese Internet users increased from 2.4 hours per day in 2006 to 2.7 hours per day in 2009, compared with only 2.3 hours per day in the United States.

“We’re seeing a set of behaviors that didn’t exist a few years ago. And as a level of intense consumer activity shifts online, this is the beginning of a huge boom,” said David Michael, a senior partner in BCG’s Beijing office and lead author of the report. “The commercial relevance here is that a massive transformation in Chinese consumer habits is under way, and any company wanting to reach these consumers must first understand them.”

The majority of China’s digital consumption comes from those aged 35 and under, who make up 73 percent of China’s total online population and account for more than 80 percent of China’s online hours. Many of these users are sophisticated—well educated and with white-collar jobs. For instance, young professionals, who represent 6 percent of all Chinese Internet users, have a remarkable 99 percent penetration. They are also the heaviest users, averaging four hours a day online. Yet while urban users may be the early adopters, growth is increasingly coming from China’s vast rural areas. “Understanding the motivations and behaviors of these segments will be critical for businesses to tap into the potential that this trend offers,” explains Michael.

One of the specific trends explored in the report is the embrace of e-commerce among Chinese digital consumers. Some 8 percent of the Chinese population shopped online in 2009, compared with just 3 percent in 2006. “We’re at a tipping point in China in which consumers are crossing the threshold of trust and convenience—and each incremental transaction further entrenches the e-commerce impulse,” said Michael. “As disposable incomes increase, the potential for growth will rise dramatically.” But even for those consumers who are skittish about online-payment systems or seller fraud, e-commerce platforms are increasingly becoming a clearinghouse for product information. E-commerce adoption is estimated to jump to 19 percent of the population by 2012.

The report highlights the fundamental structural characteristics of the Chinese e-commerce market. Chief among them are the prevalence of consumer-to-consumer transactions, many of which take place at Taobao, an online auction site that is part of Alibaba Group. Consumers in China still prefer cash transactions, with only 20 percent using online payment systems. “The potential impact of these structural characteristics on conventional retailers should not be understated,” says Michael. “Many conventional retailers are starting to discover the plethora of Taobao sellers looking to compete with lower price points, or reaching out to different geographic regions, such as lower-tier cities and rural areas, that conventional retailers have difficulty serving today.”

The report also examines the booming popularity of social-networking sites in China, and the opportunities in online advertising. Throughout 2008, social-networking sites in China rapidly gained hold among university students and young professionals, and by 2009 Chinese Internet users of all backgrounds and age groups were active in their use. Meanwhile, as consumption of online news and other portal-based information has continued to climb, so too has the growth potential of China’s online-advertising market. Online advertising is taking share from magazines, newspapers, and TV, and will hit a projected 20 percent of total advertising in 2012, up from 8 percent in 2008.

The dominant digital players in the Chinese market are a crucial part of the story. Since BCG last conducted research on the Chinese digital market, in late 2007, the most successful local companies have roundly outperformed multinationals in every category of the Internet industry in China, driven by a deep understanding of Chinese consumers and by innovative approaches to meeting their needs. While interviews with consumers illustrate one dimension of China’s digital-consumption ecosystem, the rise of these digital giants also helps explain how monetizing Chinese consumer behavior can work, and the report offers case studies of how they have established their market presences.

According to Yvonne Zhou, a principal in BCG’s Beijing office and coauthor of the report, “Many consumer-oriented MNCs in China are operating under outdated assumptions about Chinese consumers’ media and shopping behaviors, and are not adapting their go-to-market strategies to reflect digital consumption patterns.” Any company committed to engaging Chinese consumers will need to grasp the trends and implications of the country’s Internet-usage patterns, which China’s Digital Generations 2.0 discusses in detail. Understanding the underlying needs and tastes of the different segments of China’s digital consumers is vital to crafting an effective approach to communicating with them. Companies that fail to do so are at grave risk of losing touch with one of the world’s most important growth markets.

Source: Boston Consulting Group, May 2010

Explosive Growth In Internet Use Is Fundamentally Changing China’s Economy and Society is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Rapid economic growth has created a middle class no longer satisfied with the beaches of east coast cities such as Dalian or Qingdao, or the historical delights of cities such as Xi’an in the interior, with its underground army of terracotta warriors.
While Chinese tourists have tended to favour destinations closer to home, more are venturing further afield to Europe, North America and – in growing numbers – the Middle East.

Foreign tourism in China has come a long way since 1978, when the reform process initiated by the former leader Deng Xiaoping began and just 230,000 visitors came from abroad.

Last year, there were 126.6 millions visits by tourists from overseas, a 3 per cent drop on 2008’s figure of 130 million. This year, the China Tourism Academy (CTA) is forecasting 136 million foreign visitors.

Such has been the growth in outbound tourism by Chinese recently that last year China experienced its first tourism deficit since 1982. Chinese tourists spent US$4 billion (Dh14.69bn) more overseas, a total of $43.7bn last year, than foreign tourists spent in China. Estimates suggest the deficit will grow to $5bn or $6bn this year as China’s economic growth outstrips that in most other parts of the world, allowing more Chinese people to travel overseas.

In China, international travel is dwarfed by the domestic market, which last year reached 1.9 billion visits and this year is expected to grow by 12 per cent to 2.1 billion trips, according to the CTA. These trips will generate 1.1 trillion yuan (Dh591.46bn) of spending, an increase of 14 per cent from last year, it forecasts.

Despite the global economic crisis last year, the number grew by 4 per cent, as Chinese tourists made 47.7 million trips abroad, according to the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA). Those travellers spent US$43.7 billion (Dh160.5bn) abroad, up 21 per cent from 2008, lifting China to fourth place from fifth the year before in rankings of foreign tourist spending.

And significant growth is likely this year, with numbers predicted to increase 15 per cent to 54 million.

The CNTA estimates that by 2015, there will be 100 million visits overseas each year by Chinese. The UN World Tourism Organisation had previously predicted the 100 million figure would not be reached until 2020.

“The GDP increase is about 8 per cent or 9 per cent a year and, for sure, outbound travel by Chinese people will [increase] more than this rate,” says Rao Tin, the America and Africa director for China International Travel Service. The sector was given a shot in the arm last week when the CNTA’s head, Shao Qiwei, announced plans to allow foreign tour operators to take Chinese overseas.

Up to now, overseas companies have been allowed only to bring in foreign visitors and operate domestic trips for Chinese holidaymakers.

Ben Cavender, the associate principal of China Market Research Group in Shanghai, says giving foreign tour operators access to Chinese tourists will “ultimately help to grow the market”.

“It will increase competition in the marketplace, give consumers more choice and will push the industry as a whole to become more professional,” he says.

This is just the latest in a series of moves by Chinese authorities to deregulate the market and expand outbound travel by the Chinese. Many more countries have gained “approved destination status” (ADS), from the government, which makes obtaining a visa much simpler and allows tour operators to arrange group visits.
A decade ago, just a handful of countries or districts had ADS, among them Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea and the Philippines. Now, more than 100 locations are listed.

Although for some locations the status applies only to travellers from certain parts of China, usually ADS applies to travel groups from anywhere in the country.

As a result, what is really fuelling the development of overseas travel, according to Mr Cavender, is the wanderlust of people in China’s second and third-tier cities, not just the biggest conurbations such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou.

“It’s people getting into entry-level, mid-level white-collar jobs. Because it’s getting easier, you’re seeing the market opening up,” he says.

It used to be especially difficult, he says, for people in provincial cities to secure visas. The logistics are also much simpler now.

“It’s a lot easier going to Hong Kong or Thailand than three or four years ago in terms of visas, [getting] a passport and flights that connect early and cheaply. There are more options,” he says. “China has done a lot to build up its network of airports. There are more flights, and by switching to e-tickets it’s demystified the process.”

Mr Cavender has identified patterns in how Chinese travel. Typically, the first trip is to Hong Kong, then perhaps Korea, Thailand, Japan or Malaysia, all countries that are relatively close and to varying degrees have cultural ties to China, he says. Once the Chinese traveller has a trip or two in the region under their belt, they like to venture further afield.

The emigration of many Chinese to Australia and New Zealand has made those countries popular, Mr Cavender says, while the US and Europe attract the more intrepid.

While many Chinese tourists do enjoy pottering about Roman ruins or marvelling at the splendour of ancient Greece, according to Ivy Gao, a senior executive at the Beijing office of Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), “culture is not the number one reason” why Chinese people travel abroad.

“Chinese people like shopping, so they choose a destination where they can buy cheap luxury things,” she says.

Mr Cavender agrees that “luxury purchases abroad are a big part of consumer spending”.

There is status associated with being able to travel overseas and come back with suitcases full of luxury goods, he says. “It’s popular for people to go in groups to Italy or France to buy luxury products.”

With shopping so popular among Chinese tourists, it is no surprise that the UAE, with its massive malls full of high-end stores, is attracting increasing numbers of them.

There has been a significant increase since September, when the UAE gained approved status, Ms Gao says.

Dubai is particularly popular because of the Dubai Summer Surprises shopping festival, she says.

“The UAE recently has been one of the hottest destinations for Chinese people. The price is not very high for Chinese people right now,” Ms Gao says. A five-day, three-night trip to the UAE from China costs about 5,000 yuan (Dh2,688) with airfare, she says.

Ms Gao estimates 150,000 Chinese visited the emirate last year, up from the 96,300 Chinese who stayed in Dubai hotels in 2008.

In keeping with the growing interest in overseas travel among residents of China’s second-tier cities, the DTCM is organising promotional events in 10 such locations including Tianjin and Shenyang, at which tour operators can meet hotel groups and airlines to arrange deals.

Eric Li, a Beijing-based tour operator with the travel wholesaler Uniway, says he has seen strong demand for trips to Abu Dhabi and Dubai this year.

“We only focus on the Middle East and Africa and we can see 2010 is a very good year. From our agency, we have increased 30 per cent outbound,” he says.

In response to the growing number of Chinese visitors, local businesses are planning a warm welcome. Some top-end stores in the Emirates have recruited Chinese staff, while hotels have added Chinese dishes to their menus.

James Hogan, the chief executive of Etihad Airways, based in Abu Dhabi, said during a visit to Beijing this month that the UAE capital would become a major attraction for Chinese holidaymakers.

“Abu Dhabi has a huge opportunity to bring tourists. Our presence in this market is key,” he said.

Source: The National (May 29, 2010)

Wider world opens up for Chinese is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

The projection is based on every Chinese tourist currently spending $1,000 on each outbound trip and the estimation that Chinese tourists will make 100 million overseas trips by 2015.

In the meantime, the deficit in tourism is expected to increase to $6 billion this year, up from China’s first deficit in tourism last year of around $4 billion, he said.

In 2009, a total of 47.66 million overseas trips contributed $42 billion to overseas economies, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, while overseas tourists spent only $38 billion on the mainland.

“China is now the No 2 market for Germany, but in terms of future potential China is definitely the No 1 market,” said Petra Hedorfer, CEO of the German National Tourist Board.

In the first quarter of this year, Chinese tourists outnumbered the Japanese for the first time, she said.

The rapidly increasing number of visitors from China have pushed the overseas tourism industry to double promotion efforts, as well as to provide services that specially cater to the needs of Chinese tourists.

J.W. Marriott Jr, Chairman and CEO of Marriott International, said that many of its hotels outside of China now provide Chinese-style breakfasts and are hiring more Mandarin-speaking staff to communicate with Chinese tourists.

To encourage even more visitors from China, Germany now issues visas to individual Chinese tourists, with a low refusal rate, Petra Hedorfer said.

Source: China Daily (May 27, 2010)

WOW! 100 million Chinese overseas trips, $100 billion USD tourist expenditure is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Prestigious Award recognizes

BEIJING, China, May 21, 2010 – For the seventh time, the “CTW Chinese Tourists Welcoming Award” winners, determined by an international jury of experts from inside and outside China, were presented with the awards during the COTTM China Outbound Travel and Tourism Market on April 29th, 2010 in Beijing, for providing excellent services and products for the growing Chinese Outbound Tourism market.  According to the China Tourism Academy, in 2010, 54 million Chinese are forecasted to travel across the border, more than ever before.  Besides Dragon Trail, winners also included Daodao.com (Tripadvisor China), and National Tourism Organizations from Czech Republic, Philippines and Peru this year.

Dragon Trail was founded in 2009 by Jens Thraenhart and George Cao , two Cornell University Master in Hospitality Management graduates with extensive experience in travel technology, e-tourism strategy and digital marketing in China and globally. Dragon Trail specializes in helping travel and tourism organizations such as hotel brands, cruise lines, and tourist boards to market to Chinese consumers by leveraging Internet technologies, digital marketing, and social media to increase brand awareness and encourage brand engagement.

According to Professor Wolfgang Arlt, Director of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, organizer of the CTW Award, “What impressed the international jury was the fact that Dragon Trail’s approach creates tremendous efficiencies for companies looking to enter the Chinese market. By helping clients understand the local consumer, the local travel trade, and the Chinese online landscape, Dragon Trail builds a powerful solution that makes it possible for clients to adapt to the changing market.” Founded less than a year ago, Dragon Trail already serves international clients from luxury hotel brands to tourist boards in Asia, North America, and Europe. The innovative approach is different from traditional digital web marketing agencies or China marketing representation companies as it builds a custom execution, based on establishing a solid online infrastructure, and on Dragon Trail’s proprietary Ring Strategy, as well as proprietary travel technology applications from trip planning, meta search, e-learning, online community, and social media applications.

According to Jens Thraenhart, co-founder and Chief Strategist of Dragon Trail, an award-winning e-marketer for the Canadian Tourism Commission and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts: “While outbound travel fulfillment in China is still predominantly done offline via traditional tour operators and travel agents, the Internet is the catalyst of influencing consumers to then go to the tour operator to ask for the destination or hotel brand.  Increasingly consumer research, brand recognition and travel purchasing are shaped by the internet, and Chinese consumers are often more educated about brands than consumers in the West.  Due to the complexity of the Chinese market, it is important not to start with a static website that is translated from English into Chinese or a digital campaign only on the big online portals, but to focus on developing a relevant and engaging web presence in China.”

The Chinese online landscape, now with over 400 million users, is vastly different from that in the “west”.  Fueled for growth as domestic internet penetration is still less than 30% (Source: CNNIC), China has already become one of the most engaged countries online with 92% of online users contributing to blogs and social networks,  George Cao, co-founder and Chief Technologist of Dragon Trail, a long time travel technology veteran in the US and China, adds: “With 85% of Chinese people approving the Internet censorship of sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, it creates a completely different online playing field with new rules and new ways of engagement. Traditional public relations tactics are not enough anymore to spread the word, and the ability to leverage technology will be a critical success factor for brands looking to enter the market, especially in connecting consumers with the trade.”

Geoffrey Lipman, Chief Advisor for Dragon Trail and Director of GreenEarth.travel comments: “China is becoming a global travel leader: just as the full potential of the internet is emerging for travel research, planning, branding and sales. The vibrant Chinese e-tourism market will play an increasingly important role for travelers, businesses and for policymakers inside and outside China. Particularly as we move to a smarter, cleaner and greener kind of tourism. This award captures the spirit of Dragon Trail’s vision in this space.”

About Dragon Trail (www.DragonTrail.com)
Dragon Trail, a UNWTO Affiliate member and PATA member, is the premier brand engagement firm to help travel and tourism organizations to connect to Chinese consumers by leveraging  Chinese online and social media.  Dragon Trail helps develop and seed relevant content, execute results-driven digital marketing campaigns, and provide innovative technology solutions.  Dragon Trail also develops and licenses proprietary travel technology solutions, such as trip planning, meta search, social media applications, online communities, and e-Learning systems, in order for travel companies to fully leverage technology as an enabler to engage with consumers and travel trade.

Dragon Trail publishes www.ChinaTravelTrends.com (Twitter: @CnTravelTrends), the one-stop English language resource website and professional community (www.community.chinatraveltrends.com) focused on China Outbound Tourism, Social Media and Digital Marketing in China, giving international travel and tourism organizations insights about the complexity of the China travel market and its online landscape.

In April 2010, Dragon Trail was awarded the Gold Award in the Product Innovations category of the prestigious “Chinese Tourist Welcoming Award”, recognizing Dragon Trail’s unique approach to marketing to Chinese consumers.  For more information, please visit www.DragonTrail.com

About the China Tourists Welcoming Awards
Started in 2004, the COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute has given awards to international tourism companies and organizations which provide excellent services and products for the growing the Chinese Outbound Tourism market. The China Tourists Welcoming (CTW) Award is presented in five categories: Product development, Marketing, Internet/New Media, Service Quality and Overall Performance, with Gold, Silver and Bronze awards given away by an international jury. For more information, please visit www.china-outbound.com.

Dragon Trail wins 2010 CTW Chinese Tourists Welcoming Award is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

May 18, 2010 - A first-of-its-kind poll of business travelers from four major economies commissioned by Marriott Hotels & Resorts indicates that 2010 may be shaping up as a year of transition from economic pessimism to greater confidence.  More than 60% of 1,207 respondents in four countries agree that business travel is essential; 75% of Chinese plan to travel more.

Key survey findings:

• Approximately one-third of business travelers polled in the U.S. (35%), UK (33%), and Germany (33%) think their economies will improve. Another third – U.S. (36%), U.K. (37%), and Germany (35%) – believe things have leveled off economically and will “stay the same.” About three in 10 – U.S. (29%), U.K. (30%), and Germany (33%) – forecast their national economy will get worse. China is the exception, with 81% of responders saying their economy will improve.
• In China, only 13% fear job loss in the coming year, versus 39% in the U.K., 34% in Germany, and 29% in the U.S. Once their economies improve, 66% of business travelers in China, 51% in the U.K., 40% in the U.S., and 39% in Germany plan to seek new jobs.
• Although affected by a lack of jobs, Millennials (referred to in the survey as Generation Y), ages 21-29, in the U.S. and U.K. express greater optimism about the economy than their older colleagues. Millennials in the U.S., U.K., and Germany also foresee more business trips in the coming year than their Baby Boomer counterparts.
• Most responders in all four countries say business travel gives their companies and their careers a competitive edge. More than nine in 10 agree business travel is important to achieve business goals, reaching a high of 96% among the Chinese. U.S. responders are most likely to say (82%), travel provides critical face-to-face time with clients and customers, followed by 77% in Germany, 74% in China, and 72% in the U.K.
• Business travelers predicting more travel next year: U.S. (22%), U.K. (20%), Germany (20%) and China (63%).

These are findings from “Global Business Trends in the Third Millennium,” a far-reaching Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll of 1,207 business travelers in the U.S., China, Germany and the U.K.  The study examines trends in the economy, business travel, career and personal goals, and generational and cultural differences.

“The findings mirror indications of the economic recovery in our hotels across the globe, where we are seeing improvement in corporate travel reflecting pent-up demand after two years of cutbacks,” said Don Semmler, executive vice president, global full-service brands for Marriott International. ““With nearly 500 hotels in 60 countries, Marriott Hotels & Resorts has tremendous insight and 50 years’ experience serving business travelers.  This survey spots cultural and generational trends that endorse our continued efforts to address work-life balance on the road; spaces that facilitate work, social interaction and relaxation; and to lead in the area of environmental stewardship.”

Additional Survey Highlights:

Economic Outlook

• Challenging times for many: Chinese business travelers are more than twice as optimistic (81%) about their national economy as their counterparts in the U.S. (35%), Germany (33%), and the U.K. (33%).
• Job security: About two-thirds of Chinese responders, 51% in the U.K., 40% in the U.S., and 39% of Germans expect to look for new job opportunities when their respective economies improve.
• Spending less: Companies have reduced some spending on business travel in all four countries. More than four in 10 responders in the U.S. (44%) and U.K. (43%), and about three in 10 in China (31%), and Germany (29%) report their companies have cut back on spending for business travel in the past year.

Generation Gaps

• Younger business travelers have a brighter outlook: Although affected by a lack of jobs, the Millennial generation in the U.S. and U.K. express greater optimism about the economy than their older colleagues. Millennials in the U.S., U.K., and Germany also foresee more business trips in the coming year than their Baby Boomer counterparts: China (92%), U.S. (76%), Germany (72%), and U.K. (71%).
• Crossing Generations: A plurality of respondents in the U.S. and U.K. describe colleagues one generation younger than themselves as “allies” and “frustrating,” while in China and Germany, younger colleagues are “motivating” and “inspiring.” Business travelers in general have a positive view of older colleagues, calling them “motivating,” “allies” and “inspiring.”
• Technology complements business travel: Adapting to emerging technology remains a challenge for today’s business travelers irrespective of their country of origin. Generation Y is just as likely to value business travel; but in the U.S. and Europe, this group is more inclined to think technological advances can replace some business trips.

Work-Career Imperatives

• Giving it their best: About six in 10 U.S. and European business travelers are satisfied with a good effort, even if they don’t beat out the competition. But in China, 62% think second best is not enough.
• Work-related travel creates an edge in business: Nearly all business travelers – more than nine in 10 – agree travel is important to achieve their business goals, reaching a high of 96% among the Chinese. U.S. responders are the most positive – 82% — about the critical value of face-to-face client contacts; 77% of German responders, 74% of Chinese business travelers, and 72% in the U.K. agree.
• n it for the team: When asked to describe themselves at work, 50% of U.S. responders say they are “resourceful,” while Germans are most likely (67%) to consider themselves team players. Being a “team player” and “loyal” are considered defining terms for nearly half the Chinese responders, while in the U.K., although 46% also describe themselves as team players, nearly four in 10 define themselves as “loyal,” “confident,” “resourceful,” and “determined.”

Business and Leisure Travel – All Work and No Play?

• Going for glamour: On a personal satisfaction level, the term “glamorous” is used by strong majorities in all countries to characterize business travel. Many in China (68%) and the U.S. (54%) also describe it as relaxing.
• The benefits of business travel: Business trips help respondents to: better understand clients (89% in the U.S. and U.K., 96% in China, 87% in Germany), exploring new places (88% in the U.S., 82% in the U.K., 91 % in China,72% in Germany), learning global values and perspectives (74% in the U.S., 79% in the U.K., 91% in China, 77% in Germany), competitive edge (80% in the U.S., 78% in the U.K., 87% in China, 75 % in Germany). More than 60% of business travelers in all four countries agree that work-related trips and destinations give them status among friends and colleagues. China has the largest percentage – 75% — who feel this way.
• Business Trip Expectations: Business travelers predicting more travel next year: U.S.(22%), U.K. (26%), Germany (20%) and China (63%); staying the same U.S.(54%), U.K. (45%), Germany (52%) and China (29%); less travel U.S.(25%), U.K. (29%), Germany (28%) and China (8%).
• Leisure Travel: Time Out: Respondents describing leisure travel as a necessity vs. a luxury: U.S. (50%), U.K. (52%), China (56%) and Germany (45%); as a time to de-stress: U.S. (38%), U.K. (38%), China (42%) and Germany (42%); as a time to spend with family, friends and loved ones: U.S. (38%), U.K. (37%), China (49%) and Germany (27%); to be adventurous, let loose: U.S. (20%), U.K. (20%), China (6%) and Germany (23%); something I do for others, I’d rather stay home: U.S. (4%), U.K. (5%), China (3%) and Germany (8%)
• All work and no play? A majority of business travelers report they are able to balance work and leisure activities successfully while on company trips.
• Travel etiquette: Top etiquette priorities vary across the cultures polled: 28% of U.S. business travelers name proper cell-phone etiquette as their highest priority; 29% of responders from the U.K. identify respect toward flight or hotel staff; 33% of Chinese responders list how to sense when it is a good or bad time to make small talk with fellow travelers; and for Germans, the top priority, at 28%, is reducing the sound of a television or conversation carrying from a hotel room.

Green Travel

• Green is beautiful:  Eco-friendly accommodations are considered a necessity by a majority of respondents across all four cultures, but especially in China, where 83% of business travelers indicate a hotel’s sustainability efforts are important.  This consideration is important to 51% of those polled from the U.S., 61% from the U.K., and 75% from Germany.

Methodology:  The online survey of 1,207 business travelers was conducted by The Marist Institute for Public Opinion in March and April 2010.  Responders were selected from members of an online research panel through Opinion Search Inc., an Internet hosting and sample management company.  Quotas for gender and age were maintained in each country.  303 U.S. residents, 300 people living in the United Kingdom, 303 in China, and 301 in Germany were polled.  Roughly one-third (at least 100) of respondents from each country fell into each of three age categories:  21-29 (Generation Y/Millennials), 30-45 (generation X), and 46-64 (Baby Boomers).  For this survey, business travelers are defined as employed residents of one of the four countries of interest, ages 21 to 64, who have taken at least one business trip requiring an overnight stay in the past 12 months.

To download the report, please click here.

CHINA (Fact Sheet)

Economic outlook:

• Up or Down: 81% of business travelers believe their national economy is getting better; 8% believe it is getting worse; and 12% believe it is staying about the same.
• Job Security: 13% fear losing their jobs in the next 12 months, and 51% are likely to look for a new job when the economy improves.

Work/Career Imperatives:

• Life Satisfaction: 70% are satisfied with life overall and 61% with their career path
• Giving their Best: 38% are satisfied with a good effort, even if their company does not come out on top, while 62% are never satisfied with being second best
• What Counts: 26% want to enjoy work and have fun; 14% want work/life balance; 14% want to make a lot of money; and 4% want to make a positive difference in someone’s life
• In It For the Team: 49% describe themselves as team players; 49% say they are loyal; and 38% identify themselves as resourceful.

Business and Leisure Travel:

• Necessity or Luxury: 71% of business travelers think work-related trips are a necessity; 55% enjoy it.
• Face Time: Business trips provide critical face-to-face time with customers/clients (74%); trips are not really necessary with technological advances (26%)
• More or Less Travel: Compared with two years ago, 32% of business travelers are traveling less for business
• Achieving Business/Career Goals: 41% say business travel is essential to achieving business goals and 35% say it is essential to achieve personal career goals
• Benefits of Business Travel: Better understand clients (96%), exploring new places (91%), learning global values and perspectives (91%), competitive edge (87%) and status among friends and colleagues (75%)
• Defining Business Travel: Mostly work (72%), glamorous (70%), relaxing (68%), stressful (32%), dull (30%), mostly play (28%),
• Mixing Business with Pleasure: 54% describe business trips as vacations, 57% like to bring a friend or family member along, 46% want a vacation from their business trips, 66% like to extend trips for leisure and 34% want to get the job done and get home.
• Worst Parts of Business Travel: Being away from home (31%), spending personal money (29%), travel hassles (17%) and working more than in office (12%).
• Work vs. Play: During business trips, 74% research local restaurants and hot spots, 77% connect with friends or family living close to the destination, and 53% use online/social networking sites to connect with or meet new people
• Time Out: 56% say leisure travel is a necessity vs. a luxury; 42% say it is time to de-stress, 49% to spend with friends/friends, 6% to be adventurous, and 3% prefer to stay home.
• Pet Peeves: Unwanted small talk from fellow travelers (33%), loud voices/TV from hotel rooms (18%), respect for staff (12%) and proper phone etiquette (4%).

Generation gap:

• Crossing Generations: Top two descriptions of workers one generation younger: “motivating” (34%) and “inspiring” (25%); of workers one generation older: “motivating” (28%) and “inspiring” (26%).
• Economic Outlook: Regardless of age, business travelers in China see a prosperous economy.
• Satisfaction with Salary: Little difference with age: 33% of Gen Y, 39% of Gen X and 36% of Baby Boomer business travelers are happy with their pay.

Environmental Consciousness:

• Eco-Friendly Hotel Services: 83% rate them a necessity versus a luxury
• Environmental Impact: 60% are impressed by hotels that minimize their environmental impact and 12% are indifferent, 24% suspicious and 4% annoyed.

Source: Hotel-Online (May 19, 2010)

75% of Chinese plan to travel more is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Considering the Chinese economic rise in recent years, and the expanding group of international Chinese tourists willing to go to new destinations, the US$43.7 billion spent in 2009 can be expected to rise in the coming years.

Currently, many Chinese tourists are spending their money in other Asian countries, but are making more trips to Europe and the United States. This growing group of international travelers willing to spend money has not gone unnoticed either, with U.S. states like Georgia and Florida ramping up their spending on marketing to Chinese.

With China’s growing spending classes, the Germans spending less money abroad, and other countries wooing the Chinese travelers, China could potentially sit in the top spot in the not-too-distant future.

Source: CNNGo.com (April 29,2010)

Chinese tourists climb the world’s big spenders list is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Stocks mentioned in this report include Ctrip.com (NASDAQ:CTRP), Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE), eLong Inc. (NASDAQ:LONG), China CYTS Tours Holding Co., Ltd (SHA:600138), China United Travel Co., Ltd. (SHA:600358), and Emei Shan Tourism Company Limited (SHE:000888).

1. Market Size

l Total Revenue of Travel Industry of China in 2008 was RMB1,160 billion ($170 billion), increased by 5.8% compared that in 2007, (China National Tourism Administration, 2010);

l Total Online Travel Booking in 2007 was RMB2.25 Billion ($.32 Billion), increased 66.4% from 2006 (Data Center of China Internet, 2010);

l Estimated Online Travel Booking in 2010 is RMB5.47 Billion ($.75 Billion)  (Data Center of China Internet, 2010).

China online travel booking market has developed rapidly. According to the statistics by a comprehensive survey,

l The number of citizens taking internet as the main channel to get tourism information accounted for 66.7% of China’s total,

l Citizens who have made a hotel reservation by internet amounted to 70.2% of China’s total,

l Citizens who have booked air tickets by internet accounted for 70.7% of China’s total,

l Citizens who have booked holiday products by internet amounted to 20.3% of China’s total.

The total value of the U.S. online travel market amounted to US$91 billion in 2007, from which we can see the shortage of China’s online tourism industry and meanwhile, we can also see it the bright future is foreseeable.

2. Market components

Source: iresearch (data from each company’s financial report, only including their online sales and income such as internet and Call center )

l Ctrip

Ctrp.com (NASDAQ:CTRP) is the biggest online travel agency by far in China and it accounted for 57% of online sales in china in 2008. Ctrip got listed on the NASDAQ in 2005 and did well during the last 5 years. Market cap of the company has increased 10 times from $0.5 billion to $5.06 billion now.

l Elong

ELong.com Inc. (NASDAQ:LONG) commenced 13 percent of the market in 2008. It also went public on NASDAQ around the same time as Ctrip.com (NASDAQ:CTRP). However, it didn’t do well in the stock market. Its share price has fallen a lot during the first year and followed a continually decreasing path since then. At this moment, its share price is even lower compared with its IPO price.

l Expedia

Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE) owns 52 percent of eLong.com (NASDAQ:LONG), but also has its own China website this year. In 2009, it took over Kuxun, which is one of the most popular online fly tickets booking websites in China. Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE) is an American company and went public on NASDAQ in 2005 and its market cap now is $7.16 billion. It didn’t do well either in the past 5 years.

l There are some other travel related companies who went public in Shanghai, and following are some big players:

China CYTS Tours Holding Co., Ltd (SHA:600138)²

It has been ranked the top 3 travel agents in China since 2000, and ranked as 2nd travel agent from 2004. The company was built in 1997 and went public at Shanghai one month after its establishment. The company doesn’t only run in the travel service area, but also in real estate, welfare lottery, hotel, and so on so forth. Its market cap is $1.06 billion now.

China United Travel Co., Ltd. (SHA:600358)²

China United Travel went to public on 2000 and went OK in the following 3 years and started to fall in 2004. After financial crisis, it went bank and now stands at 7 which is 30% higher than its IPO price.

Emei Shan Tourism Company Limited (SHE:000888)²

Emei Shan is one of the most famous mountains in China. The company went public in 2000 and the stock price almost tripled in 2009.

3. Concerns and bright future about Chinese Online Travel Industry

l Chinese consumers were reported to be wary of both online transactions and the use of credit cards (both on- and off-line) in the last couple of years, but in recent years, following by the improving of financial market and appearance of new finance products, such as “web bank shield”, Chinese are more open, even love, to use credit cards and online bank transactions.

l Chinese travel agents discourage online bookings because they pay higher credit card fees online (1.0%) compared to in person (0.1%). So the approach to online travel in China is to direct the public to call centers for information and bookings, and to travel agency offices for cash transaction.

l Most of Chinese consumers, especially elder consumers, are still used to travel with travel agents, therefore, attracting whole costumers into online travel industry may take time. However, the main costumers now for online travel industry are still young people. Following by the popular of self-design travelling in these years, families come into this industry too.

Source: Chinavestor.com (April 26, 2010)

Chinese Online Travel Industry is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

The actual Facebook.com is blocked by government censors (Chinese sites all obediently and quickly remove “objectionable” content). No single social network will conquer the China market in the immediate future, least of all a foreign one.

Instead, there is fierce competition between the top four:

• RenRen (formerly Xiaonei) copied the Facebook model: it started with students and has since opened to all.
• Kaixin001 attracted white-collar office workers by focusing on fun, addictive social games.
• Qzone gained young teens and rural users via cross-promotional traffic from QQ Messenger.
• 51.com started strong in lower tier cities, but growth has since slowed.

This post will assess market share, profile the top four, and boldly predict the future.

In addition, there is a long tail of social networks in China. Most Chinese are members of multiple SNS, on average 2.8, according to the Chinese Internet Network Information Center. A number of smaller SNS target niche demographics: the elite (P1), women (iPartment), techies (5G), business (Wealink) etc. The Chinese social network scene is crowded and competitive, though clear separation exists between the top four and ‘the rest’ in terms of mass-market viability.

Market Share: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

There is no trustworthy data on users or revenues. Every social network in China claims to be the largest: Qzone, RenRen, Kaixin001, and 51.com. The short and sweet is this: Qzone has the most users, RenRen has the most active users, and Kaixin001 has the most highly active users. 51.com user’s are the most rural.

In addition to the rankings from Alexa and China Rank, the Chinese Internet Network Information Center conducted 3007 telephone interviews on SNS with respondents across China in July 2009. It found that Qzone has 22% market share of social network users, RenRen has 17%, Kaixin001 12%, and 51.com 12%.

Kaixin001’s users are highly active. It averages 34 pageviews and 33 minutes spent on the site per user, numbers that are about twice as high as the competition. Kaixin001’s white-collars love surfing the site at work, and occasionally in their free time too.

As scant as the user data is, that on revenues is even worse. The little data that the networks do release is questionable. Only rough snapshots are available of the positioning in China’s social network race.

Renren (formerly Xiaonei)

Renren’s design and business model are copied from Facebook. RenRen beat out a number of competitors at China’s elite universities and spread from there. It is aggressively courting the mass market.

Users: The majority of users are students, although RenRen strives to retain those users after graduation. In the fall of 2009, it launched a massive advertising campaign—both traditional and digital—urging Chinese to reconnect with old friends and classmates. The emphasis is on connecting with real-life friends online, just as on Facebook. As RenRen grows, it is encroaching on the turf of its rivals: teens (Qzone), white-collars (Kaixin001), and lower-tier cities (51.com).

User Interface: The user interface is nearly identical to Facebook (though it has not copied Facebook’s latest redesign). It has a few unique features, such as a “footprint” of who last visited your page and recently added game mechanics or ‘funware’ so that users can reach ‘higher levels’ for interacting on the site. It also allows custom skins, though the majority of users stay with the basic theme.

Platform: The application programming interface is open to 3rd parties, but revenue share is a capped at 56%. It boasts about 250 applications (almost all games) and is China’s most popular open platform. Foreign game developers are just starting to test the approval process, with FooMojo, RockYou, and PopCap leading the way. Access for foreign developers is certain to be a hot topic at the upcoming 2010 China Social Games Summit.

Games: RenRen has the most and best games, in large part due to its open platform. But RenRen also develops games in-house, leading to concerns that RenRen will favor its own games over those of outside developers. Other networks often copy the most popular games on RenRen.

Financing: Softbank purchased 35% of RenRen for $430 million, valuing the company at $1.2 billion. The company intends to hold an initial public offering as soon as 2011. RenRen’s parent company is Oak Pacific Interactive, which also owns Mop, a smaller Chinese social network, forum, and humor site.

Revenues: Annual revenue was over 100 million RMB ($15 million) in 2009, according to one source from the company. The primary revenue channel is advertising (brands, games, and e-commerce).

Analysis: RenRen is the most popular, most open, and best-financed social network in China. Its management team is also the smartest and fastest-moving. It is actively developing advertising, gaming, and e-commerce revenues. Its user growth is impressive, in large part due to its aggressive marketing campaigns. The August 2009 name switch from Xiaonei (inside-campus) to RenRen (people’s web) signaled its ambition to become China’s dominant popular social network. By comparison, China’s other social networks are asleep at the wheel.

Kaixin001

While RenRen was still concentrated on students, the upstart Kaixin001 was able to attract white-collar workers (in large part via spam).

Its social games got entire offices addicted to parking cars, stealing crops, and other top games. Its white-collar workers are the richest and most monetizable demographic of social network users. Kaixin001’s critical battle is ensuring that the next generation of students “graduate” to its site upon entering the workforce, rather than remaining with RenRen.

Users: White-collar workers who can secretly farm crops and check friends’ photos from their office desk. Its users spend twice as much time on site, as compared to users on the other social networks.

User Interface: The interface is clean and very simple—Kaixin001 is a pared-down version of Facebook. It eases first-time users into social network: the most popular applications, like “Buying a House,” even come pre-installed. Advertising is minimal.

Platform: Kainxin001 is a closed platform, although insiders say that it will eventually open up. It has about 50 applications, the majority of which are games. Post-forwarding is also extremely popular: celebrity gossip, cute photos, or funny stories routinely receive many thousands of rating and forwards.

Games: Kaixin001 launched the social games craze in China and its users are game-crazy. But its games now lag behind RenRen in quantity and quality, because it’s attempting to develop everything in-house. For instance, it took Kaixin001’s developers 6 months (an eternity in social game years) to copy a popular restaurant game on RenRen. That will damage Kaixin001 as it aims to attract new users and retain and monetize its existing users.

Financing: Kaixin001 has received a total of $23 million through two funding rounds. Investors include Sina, Qiming Ventures, and Northern Light Venture Capital.

Revenues: Kaixin001 has reached monthly revenues of 7 million RMB ($1 million), but is not yet profitable. Advertisers at ad:tech Beijing cited Kaixin001 as the hottest site.

Analysis: Kaixin001 has seen rapid growth and has captured a desirable demographic of white-collar workers (appealing to advertisers), who spend tons of time on the site. But its management team is far more conservative and slow-moving than RenRen. It’s far behind in terms of its advertising and monetization channels. Its site design has changed little and its application programming interface remains closed. If Kaixin001 fails to innovate or at least keep up with the curve, it will lose out. Sudents will stick with RenRen rather than “graduate” to Kaixin001.

Qzone

Qzone draws traffic from QQ Messenger, which boasts 523 million active users and is also owned by Tencent. Qzone targets teens, rural, and casual users and claims a whopping 388 million active users, a highly suspect number. But Tencent’s internet ecosystem, QQ Messenger, QQ Show, QQ Games, QQ Pet, and Qzone, does connect a huge number of Chinese.

Still, the classification of Qzone as a social network is questionable. It has tons of dormant, skeleton profiles that are pulled from QQ Messenger. In that regard, it’s similar to MSN Spaces, which also has a ton of “users,” but low value and retention rates. Qzone users often use nicknames or aliases rather than real-life names.

Given Tencent’s awesome advantages and synergies in social networks, Tencent’s forays into “real-identity” social networking can be seen as a squandered opportunity.

Users: Teens and rural users. Qzone is attempting to funnel its older users towards its other social network, Xiaoyou (classmates), with limited success. It failed with an earlier attempt called QQ Campus.

User Interface: Qzone is a lousy website: it’s ugly, unintuitive, and buggy. The site is very basic for a social network, but not in a user-friendly way (like Kaixin001).

Platform: Qzone is a closed platform, though it is experimenting with licensing. It has about 50 applications (mainly games). Benjamin Joffe, Tencent expert and CEO of internet market research firm +8*, comments: “Applications are all copies or licenses or bought from social gaming companies, generally with terrible revenue share or poor valuation. Why? Because Tencent is a closed network and because they can. Problem is: operating social games is not the same as instant messaging or massive multi-player online games and there is a learning curve – even for Tencent.”

Games: Although Qzone should have a natural advantage (Tencent also owns QQ Games), the games, like much else on the site, are of low quality. Qzone develops in-house copies of popular games, but it lags way behind and prohibits users from adding games without paying at certain times. Perhaps Qzone’s comparatively young and rural users are so naïve that they pay Qzone when they can play the same—or better—games for free on the other networks. But it’s doubtful that this a successful business strategy in the long run.

Financing: Tencent, Qzone’s parent company, is massively profitable and can employ incredible resources should it so desire.

Revenues: No public figures are released. There is a lack of advertising and quality games, so virtually all revenues must come from Qzone “Yellow Diamond” memberships. It is difficult to estimate that revenue stream, but it’s hard to imagine that too many Chinese users will stay loyal to Qzone in the long-run if they continue to offer lousy services.

Analysis: Tencent with Qzone is like Microsoft with Windows Vista: a near-monopolist (in instant messaging) that can thrive despite a terrible product and lack of vision. Tencent is indeed massively profitable: 2009 revenues were $1.8 billion, about three times Facebook’s estimated revenues. It’s unclear how much of that is attributable to the Qzone social network though.

Benjamin Joffe comments, “Tencent is definitely not the best in terms of products or innovation – similar to Zynga in that sense – but their ability to deliver a “good enough” mass market service and integrating it within their ecosystem is impressive.”

It holds the teen demographic, but poor site design and management have cost it ground against its competitors. Qzone is struggling for the market of older students and shut out of that for white-collar workers, and RenRen is now encroaching on its core demographic of teens. Qzone could still turn things around though, as its parent company Tencent is an 800-pound gorilla in the Chinese internet.

51.com

51.com was an early favorite with significant backing, but is now struggling. Growth has slowed and it has the lowest traffic rankings of the top four. In early January, the site was briefly blocked for “objectionable” content, so management is trying to clean itself of lewd users and content (it’s rumored to be a platform for the world’s oldest profession). Its Chief Strategy Officer recently resigned, citing illness.

51.com is a borderline mass-market contender at best. Urban and educated demographics have all turned to its competitors. It’s now in the precarious position of defending its core user base in lower tier cities.

Users: Users from lower tier cities.

User Interface: 51.com is a simple social network. It’s far more functional than elegant. Several popular applications are pre-installed and custom skins are available.

Platform: 51.com offers an open platform. It has attracted about 50 applications (mostly games). It is expected to offer more favorable revenue share terms than RenRen.

Games: The games on 51.com are decent, though not as numerous or high-quality as on RenRen. 51.com also develops its own games in-house: it’s investing $15 million in a gaming portal, in an attempt to reduce its reliance on advertising and value-added services. It will also soon connect into the gaming platform from Giant Interactive, one of its investors.

Financing: Giant Interactive, a publicly-listed Chinese massive multiplayer online gaming company, invested $51 million for a 25% stake. Earlier backers include venture capital firms Sequia Capital, SIG, Redpoint Ventures, and Intel Capital. In early 2007 there was premature talk of an IPO in 2010, but nothing has been heard since.

Revenues: 51.com claims to have turned a profit in 2009, with advertising revenues of about 200 million RMB ($29 million). Its open platform generated roughly 12 million RMB ($1.8 million) in revenues.

Analysis: 51.com was likely doomed to the mass-market by its rural roots. Its lower tier cities approach initially allowed for quick user growth, but the site now has a low-brow reputation and is scorned by more sophisticated netizens. RenRen’s approach of starting with students at China’s elite universities, Tsinghua and Peking, and then spreading outward (copied from Facebook), appears to have been far more successful.

Second tier social networks worldwide are falling to Facebook. Will China’s more “sophisticated” networks push into 51.com’s territory? 51.com’s stagnation in user growth relative to other networks is not a good sign; spreading outward from elite users has been successful for social networks worldwide and for RenRen in China too.

There are certainly differing opinions though. Beijing-based internet guru Kaiser Kuo states, “I wouldn’t write them off at all: They’ve got a real hold in sub-secondary cities and with their tie-up to a major game company (Giant Interactive), they’ve got plenty of cash, and as far as I know, loads of traffic. It’s also been cleaned up quite a bit within the last year, from what I’ve heard.”

51.com may or may not hold its ground in lower tier cities. But one thing’s for certain: 51.com stands little chance in China’s top-tier cities.

Future Predictions: One RenRen to Rule them All?

The competition is open and fierce between the top four networks, but BloggerInsight’s bold crystal ball sees RenRen’s on the rise in the future. Its management team is nimbler and more aggressive than its competitors. Where other networks are dabbling (licensing games), RenRen is blazing ahead (open application programming interface).

Because of its relative sophistication, RenRen is starting to push outward from university students into both younger and older demographics. As teens become savvier on the internet at younger ages, they will start to abandon Qzone for RenRen. As students move into the workplace they should remain loyal to RenRen, encroaching upon Kaixin001. 51.com, meanwhile, faces a difficult fight to retain its users in lower tier cities. China’s social network universe, though fractured by different demographics for now, may gradually coalesce around RenRen.

Kai Lukoff is an analyst at BloggerInsight and an editor on China Social Games.

Source: Venture Beat (April 7, 2009)

China’s Top 4 Social Networks is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Throw in last week’s blocking of Hotspot Shield, a complete absence of working CGI proxy servers (sites that allow anonymous IP browsing), and suddenly you’re contemplating a Chinese search on Baidu whilst inviting all of your friends to come join you on Renren!

In the run-up to China’s illustrious 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic, Chris Yew, complete with virtual ladder, scales the Great Fire Wall of China in an attempt to get on top of government web-blocking and its implications for digital marketing.

Contents

- Hitting The Wall: Firewall Workings

- Feeling The Burn: Netizens’ Feelings

- National Events & Censorship

- Firewall Focus: Google & Baidu

- Firewall Focus: Facebook And Renren

- China Differences Beyond Firewall

- Comply Or Die

Hitting The Wall

My first attempt to get information about the Great Firewall (GFW) of China met with a bruised browser and several broken links.

I made an innocent search on Google for “Facebook stats in China”. On seeing ABCnews.com had produced a perfectly apt story titled, “China’s Facebook Status: Blocked” I clicked, anticipating an insightful view into the block and perhaps a few figures about its effect. I glanced at the loading bar at the bottom of the browser. Nothing. And then- ‘Problem Loading Page’. Blocked. This was the case for all of the natural listings related to my search (on Google’s initial result page).

China’s GFW continues to grow and prevent access to a vast plethora of websites: from the innocent victims of the government’s “URL Keyword block”, to some of the largest and most popular sites in the world, which are DNS blocked outright. Infact, the Chinese government has an ever increasing arsenal of methods for preventing access to sites, which are, loosely termed, “unwholesome”.

The Golden Shield Project

To really understand the ways in which a site suddenly fails to exist in China, we have to dig a little deeper into China’s web technology. China’s GFW is actually a leading role in an overall government control strategy called the “Golden Shield Project”. It utilizes the GFW within its structure, and combines it with other online policing strategies.

Firstly, the “Golden Shield Project” reflects a structural property of the Chinese internet which marks it as unique to the rest of the world. While the internet is designed to have no choke points, in order for packets of information to flow freely, China’s internet was designed with ready-made choke points: these are a tiny collection of fiber-optic cables entering the country at a limited number of points: Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

The choke points allow the Chinese government to perform their extensive and continuous development of internet blocking, as they have the capability to analyze and monitor all web-traffic entering and leaving the country. The technology used to monitor this traffic comes from “tappers” which essentially mirror the data entering or leaving the country. When the data is mirrored it is basically copied and bounced to a Golden Shield computer. The golden shield computers then pass judgement via several operations in order to decide whether the information can pass in or out of China. These operations are:

1) DNS Block. When a site is DNS blocked, it has been configured by the GFW to give no IP address. Like a wrong number in a phone directory- you get no signal.

2) Connect Failure. Here the IP address is given; however while the computer you are using requests a connection and awaits a reply, a government computer simultaneously mirrors the request and checks the IP against a list of prohibited sites. If your IP is in the list, the government computer sends a “reset” command to your computer and the one operating the site you are interested in. This is when you see “The connection was reset” message. Equivalent to a telephone being disconnected.

3) URL Keyword Block. Here, having passed stages 1 and 2, the computer goes to the next stage: analysis of the URL. If you’re URL contains government censored keywords the connection is reset.

4) Site Scan. If you have passed the above stages, the most advanced stage of the
GFW kicks in: a ‘spider’ scan of the contents within your destination site’s pages.
In this case, you may start to download elements of the site and see the webpage; however, once the surveillance computer identifies a forbidden term it will terminate the connection between your and the website’s computer. It is also common for the GFW to then initiate a ‘blackout’ preventing you from accessing the site again for an increment of time. The increments will increase based on the number of reattempts to access the site.

To top off the Golden Shield Project there is also ever-growing ‘humanware’ used to keep the internet ‘safe. Although the exact numbers are unknown, there are thought to be at-least 10,000 government paid censors and volunteers who search for offensive sites, delete posts and warn netizens of their web behaviour.

Feeling The Burn: Do Netizens Glow With Rage Or Enjoy the Heat?

Feelings towards internet censorship by the government are wide and varied within a country hosting the biggest population of Netizens.

With regards to the recent re-block of Facebook in July this year, a survey by Huanqiu.com showed 81.7 percent of online respondents supported penalizing the website because users had formed Facebook groups in support of Uyghur people.

A report by Pew Internet & American Life also showed that a strong majority (80%) of Chinese people believed the internet should be ‘managed or controlled’. 85% believed this should be done by the government. The survey was taken from a seven year study of internet and non-internet users in China.

However, there are those Chinese netizens who feel the government’s blocking is wrong and breaches their freedom and rights. As usual in China, the opposition has responded to the government in quirky, viral ways.

In March this year, the ‘Song of the Grass-Mud Horse (Cao Ni Ma)’ became extremely popular on Chinese online video sites (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKx1aenJK08). The clip shows an alpaca-like creature singing a child-like song riddled with ‘dirty’ homophones. This circulated like wildfire and became interpreted in the chinese netizen community as a protest against the government’s banning of subversive material, specifically that of internet material. Consider also, the recent spurge of viral art that also circulated on China’s BBS boards regarding the “Green Dam Youth Escort” (implicated as a “censored” prostitute in many drawings: http://www.chinasmack.com/more/green-dam-girl-chinese-netizens-art-ridicule/) and you are sure of the opposition to Chinese internet censorship.

The Government have attempted to block much of this opposition, including the crucial blocking of all terms related to ‘Charter 08’, a manifesto for Democratization in the PRC. Yet many Netizens remain determined, including a Chinese blogger who told the times that freedom via technological advances will prevail over the government. “It is like a water flow- if you block one direction, it flows to other directions, or overflows”.

One such flow involves the recent formation of a declaration published in June 09, by the ‘Anonymous Netizens’. Taken from the shanghaiist, it addresses the government with several statements, including: “We have seen your moves on the Internet. You have deprived your netizens of the freedom of speech. You have come to see technology as your mortal enemy. For the freedom of the internet and for our rights, we are going to acquaint your censorship machine with systematic sabotage and show you just how weak the claws of your censorship really are”.

National Events

The government are particularly careful about both domestic and global internet activity, or community opinion, when confronted with major national events. In order to quell the domestic protests of netizens, whilst simultaneously maintaining a positive national image, the GFW is employed in more tactical ways during major events.

Raising The Bar- The Olympics

With the Olympics providing the perfect stage for either the greatest piece of worldwide PR, or an embarrassing revelation into Western frustration online, the Chinese government opted to extinguish the GFW. In some places.

Although the internet speed may have appeared slow to many visitors (due to the confining Golden Shield net-structure struggling to deal with the immense online congestion), most would have left China believing the rumored ‘government control’ of the internet was wildly exaggerated. This calculated operation involved internet engineers unblocking IP addresses of specially selected Internet cafes, hotels and business centres where foreigners were expected to frequent during the olympic games.

The activity was a perfect way of keeping the GFW away from foreign public and press, whilst maintaining control of its people. It is also a clear indication of the government’s efforts to keep its censoring operations quiet and largely unanswered for. For example, whilst many countries with censorship, such as Singapore, will cite reasons for blocking a webpage, the Chinese government have never owned up to the blocking of a site during an internet browse. Instead ‘the connection was reset’ serves the government better, acting as an anonymous, unattributable, unreasonable error occurring unpredictably online.

Shutting Shop- PRC 60th Year Anniversary

The build up to the 60th Year anniversary underlines an extremely eventful time in the Chinese government’s history. Not only has the country just passed the 20th year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests, but it fast approaches the 60th year of control by the People’s Republic of China.

With increasing vigilance on the streets, and whilst parades are practiced and streets are closed in preparation for a gigantic spectacle in Beijing, a similar ‘tightening up’ is being experienced online.

In the early run-up, this included the blocking of Google for several days in June. The government cited the reasoning due to “the spreading of pornography among its citizens”. Chinese news services also showed clearly contrived examples of how google suggests pornographic searches. The foreign affairs ministry spokesperson, Qin Gang stated that Google was “seriously violating China’s relevant laws and regulations”.

Within the same month, acting as a virtual mirror to the increasing guns and tanks seen on Beijing’s streets, municipal authorities in Beijing brought together over 10,000 volunteers working to police the internet and report ‘offensive’ content. Naturally, events continued to escalate throughout September.

The next stage we experienced online, as the government installed new security measures designed to crack down on CGI proxies and other tools which help users like you or me circumvent the GFW. Bill Xia, president of Dynamic Internet Technology, a company which runs ‘Freegate’ (an anti-censorship program hit hard by this improvement) agreed “they put more resources into the blocking, it has been getting worse and worse this month”.

This security improvement has resulted in the access of proxy servers and even VPNs meeting with extreme difficulty, and usually, failure. As a westerner, CGI proxies and systems such as Hotspot shield have allowed me to access Twitter, Facebook or Youtube when I’ve wanted to get away from China’s controls, however the ‘inconvenience factor’ in getting around the firewall has now turned up another notch. If you’re not subscribed to a paid VPN (which can switch tunnel protocol when blocked) you will find passing the wall extremely difficult.

The technical improvement may not lie in quality, but quantity. According to Freegate, China is now blocking a much wider range of IP addresses as we approach the 60th year anniversary. Obviously, this increases the risk of generally affecting internet user experience, as thousands of non-offensive sites are blocked according to any one of the GFWs security processes.

The next stage, which has already started in Guangzhou, and might be happening in Beijing now, involves the ISPs installing ‘security monitoring’ software on all servers. Failure to not follow this government request is being threatened with punishment. Ofcourse, in an effort to detract from the subtlety of these online moves, the government are also publicly promoting pro-government software like Blue Shield and stating that all of the recent changes will ‘create a favorable online environment’ for China’s National Day celebration.

As China have a trend of imposing and lifting relative levels of internet blocking around particular events, I expect these implementations should soften after the anniversary. But to what extent? Only the government could possibly know. With next year’s Shanghai Expo coming to China, I doubt it will be too long before another online clamp down is experienced.

The Eye Of The Storm: Google and Baidu

It is important to put the context of Chinese internet censorship on the big players competing for control of the turbulent Chinese digital market. Where better to start than Google’s troubles in China, and Baidu’s plans for world domination.

Baidu Buoy

Robin Li, rather gingerly, said “Don’t underestimate the Chinese Market” in a recent and rare tour of the US. Apart from revealing the appallingly shallow ‘box computing’ strategy for Baidu to Stanford students, he generally spoke of the rapid and strong growth of Baidu in China, and beyond.

Baidu have amassed 76% of the Chinese search market, consisting of 338 million internet users. To set an awesome scale, this is already a larger audience than the entire population of the U.S.

It should be noted that Li continues to acknowledge and whole-heartedly agree with the governments censorship. When asked in Stanford, he stated “the internet is new everywhere, but it’s especially new to China. That means that regulations haven’t always anticipated the issues that can arise on the Internet and lag the pace at which the Internet evolves.”

Whilst not completely underlining the Baidu’s pro-censorship standpoint -the search engine censors more internet search pages in China than any of its search competitors (2008 study by University of Toronto)- Li is consistently playing in tune to the government outlook on internet censorship, and this may be paying dividends with Baidu’s increasing growth.

Baidu started its international development strategy in 2007. The first fruit of its labour fell in 2008, when Baidu Japan was launched. Baidu is already in the top three for photo and video searches in Japan, according to Li. Furthermore in an ironic twist for Google, it might not be too long until Baidu arrive at their doorstep, with Li’s desire for the US market. Li stated “the United states is a huge market. If Chinese companies can grasp good opportunities…they should have an opportunity to succeed in the US market.”

Baidu have clearly grown and grown, even with Google.com.cn launched, yet one has to consider: is the effect of their government compliance and sporadic censorship on its major competitor resulting in the acceleration of Baidu’s success?

Google Gloom

Even as far back as 2002, Google were not in favour with the Chinese government. As Chinese netizens began to use their service, they quickly found they were being redirected from Google.com, to Baidu.com. Was this fair?

Google have been the innocent/guilty (delete as you feel appropriate) subjects of several internet security blocks this year (see: http://bit.ly/eShSr); as well as appearing to be blocked or unblocked according to the government’s discretion, they have also been publicly victimized as ambassadors for pornography or material that does not adhere to the government’s regime.

Often the occasion for ‘Google gloom’ has occurred around key events, such as Chinese National holidays or anniversaries, and most recently the 20 year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident. Key times like this see Netizens using and relying on search engine services for vital information -it is an important time where website reliability is a must. Therefore it could be argued that the government blocks have sabotaged any reliability Chinese netizens may have discovered in the use of google.com.cn. Publicly making example of Google’s failures to adhere to policy and government’s standards also makes Google appear somewhat of a pariah, and may be deterring the use of Google compared to its compliance-centric competitor, Baidu.

Check Google.com.cn or even Google.com today and you will see that the sites are not blocked. This is because Google are playing ball, they are complying (though not all of the time, according to the government) with the Chinese government’s content and preferred business requirements for Western companies operating in China.

Good Google

As strongly recommended by the Chinese government, Google have set up their Chinese offices with a Chinese partner, created a specific domain name for the Chinese population, and agreed to adhere to government internet policies, publicly stating how they are striving to fall in line with government requirements.

For example, in reply to the government’s wrist slap regarding pornography this June, Google stated it was “working to block pornography reaching users of its Chinese service”. It further added that company officials had met government representatives “to discuss problems with the Google.cn service and its serving of pornographic images and content based on foriegn language searches”.

Google have constantly reiterated their support for web restrictions, particularly stating their aim to cut down on “material that s harmful to children on the web in China”.

Whilst this compliance is allowing Google to exist and operate, most of the time, in China, many think that the government’s issues lie further than pornography, and the level of censorship may eventually fall harder on political content levels. How Google react to this potential next stage of censorship may decide their future in continuing business in China.

It should be noted that Google already fail to show sites with sensitive political topics if predetermined by the government as offensive- including search on human rights and the Dalai Lama; however many users can still gain news from some banned sites in China via Google’s cache function.

Currently, Google state they have 30% of the search market in China.

The Eye Of The Storm: Facebook and Renren

In the world of SNS, Facebook is one of the leaders; however, ask a netizen in China about Facebook and you might not get an answer. The following discusses the affects of government censorship on SNS, from both a Chinese and Western perspective.

Reign of Renren

Renren, or Xiaonei as it was previously known, made its name, like Facebook, through the college student population.

With near saturation of the student population (Renren has 27 million of the estimated 30 million students in China), Renren expanded their approach into the wider demographic market, attracting the valuable white collar population (Currently, 46 million estimated users are from this demographic). The latter group is now the majority audience within Renren’s impressive 80 million-user community (Source, Renren stats, Sept 09).

The fast growth of Renren can be traced back only 4 years ago, when in December 2005, Tsinghua graduates Wang Xing and several others created the platform. Once acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive the following year, Renren started to take on a very similar look and feel to Facebook.

Its open platform was launched in July 2007, allowing 3rd parties to integrate with Renren in a very similar way to Facebook. Infact, the APIs Renren list are extremely similar to Facebooks, and developers of Renren freely admit to developing based on Facebook’s software development kit.

By following in the footsteps of Facebook’s lofty climb, Renren was announced as China’s largest online community website amongst Universities in July 2008, with 40 million users registered. It is highly regarded as one of the most powerful Chinese SNS.

In terms of SNS domination, the market is still relatively wide-open with communities like QQ and Kaixin 001 holding significant web community populations. Unfortunately, there is still no sign of Facebook. Why has Facebook, one of the original SNS communities, failed to get a foothold in China?

Forgetting Facebook

Whilst in the West, Director David Fincher Prepares to make a film called “The Social Network” a movie about the beginnings and success of Facebook, starring famous names like Justin Timberlake, the East holds a different story for the social networking site…

Developing a Chinese SNS with the Facebook logo is one way of describing the challenge Facebook had in trying to be appeal to 1) The Chinese Netizens and 2) The Government.

The Facebook.com site had sporadic bursts of traffic in 2006 and 2007 when word of Facebook’s success reached China and Netizens (majority expats) began to use the service. Once the government became aware of Facebook.com it was blocked, leaving Facebook HQ with some decisions to make regarding the Chinese market.

Facebook decided it would meet several of the standard requirements deemed appropriate for starting an internet business in China. Firstly, it attempted to create an entirely Chinese version of the Facebook.com site, with local translations (including user-generated assistance worldwide). Secondly, it created a chinese specific domain (zh-cn.facebook.com) aiming to give a sense of Facebook’s ‘rebirth’ in China via an official Chinese launch date.

Unfortunately, on July 2nd, 2008, several weeks after officially launching Facebook in China, the site was blocked by the GFW. Facebook were extremely careful to comment on the block, fully aware of the need to accept and adhere to government decisions.

Interestingly, further investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that blocking had not occurred nation-wide and this was indeed, dependent on different governing regions in China, or even different ISPs. This was further confirmed on numerous BBS boards (including Danwei) in which many Netizens became confused as some remarked they were receiving the service fine and others noted complete or partial blocks.

Like a CD player prone to skip, Facebook continued on in this inconvenient fashion for many Netizens, with sporadic blocking, random timeouts and a sense of a stuttering community lighting up and then blacking out around China. This is the type of control- confusion the government attempt to create in order to demotivate Netizen’s determination to use government-blocked websites.

It’s not about blocking up the GFW so it is impenetrable, but as James Fallows describes “By making the search for external information a nuisance, they drive Chinese people back to an environment in which familiar tools of social control come into play”. The sporadic, regional blocking was also an excellent way for the government to stretch it’s paws and test it’s ability to isolate various communities it sees as a threat…

The Xinjiang riots on July 7th this year resulted in the mass communication of anti-government information the authorities had long feared would occur with a tool such as Facebook. Uygur people also used Facebook to protest, forming groups within the online community in favour of the protests and justifying the violence that had occurred.

Naturally, Facebook was first blocked regionally in Xinjiang, with the government rapidly extending the block to encompass all of China. The main reason the government cited for nation-wide blocking was the potential for the tool to be used “as a medium for communication amongst protestors”.

With many national celebrations to come in the following months, the government will not take any more chances with Facebook and, atleast for now, it remains blocked.

In terms of numbers, several sites I have scanned suggest the number of users registered to Facebook had nearly reached 900K prior to the Xinjiang riots. Following this the numbers have receded with many closing accounts. CheckFacebook.com ironically lists China as having the fastest growing Facebook community population. According to the site it has grown by over 100% this week with the total active Facebook users in China now at 13,800. Facebook China practically has no traffic.

Facebook Has Few Friends

Why has the Government made such an example of Facebook, and has this inadvertently boosted the growth of homegrown Chinese SNS like Renren?

The latter question is impossible to answer, although you have to assume the block on Facebook will result in one less major competitor for Renren. The reason for the former question boils down to Facebook not focusing enough on China. Atleast this is how the government and many bloggers feel, and, ofcourse, they would like general netizens to resonate in the same way.

Firstly, from a government perspective, Facebook were never abiding by their suggested regulations for conducting a business in China. They never set offices in China (conducting business from the US), and the content of Facebook pages often violated government regulations: for example, there were war games being advertised on the Facebook site. War games are banned by the government.

Secondly, Facebook brought business acumen based on Western insights, not Chinese ways of doing business. They believed their SNS would fly due to the power of Word of Mouth on web 2.0; however they did not take into consideration how dozens of Chinese SNS use money in offline marketing promotions around Chinese student campuses.

Thirdly, the design of the site was based on the Western model, with targeted Facebook ads, placed on the browser, as the primary means of revenue for Facebook China. In the Chinese market, SNS sites are usually structured around games and avatars, instead of adverts. Games are the primary means SNS in China use for making revenue. Facebook never seriously considered the importance of this.

Lastly, many have cited that Facebook’s simplified mandarin language feels Chinese “translated”, and therefore does not have the dialogue or ‘voice’ of the current Chinese generation. From a Western perspective I liken this to watching a film with subtitles. Something may be lost in translation.

If we consider homophones, we see another level of language that Facebook may not have considered: Netizens in China are a humorous and, sometimes, superstitious bunch when it comes to homophones, this specifically rings true if the site is from the west and therefore prone to making errors in translating across to the Chinese public.

A comical error that Gang Lu, a blogger for tech site mobinode.com, points out is that the chinese character pronunciation of Facebook: “FeiSiBuKe”, means “Doomed to Die”. This type of omen wouldn’t necessarily be taken as read by Chinese netizens; however, many would cite it as a bad luck reasoning that added to the site’s plight.

Among Chinese Netizens, it feels as though the government has won the battle with Facebook, convincing the people of its irrelevance and inconvenience to China. As well as the poll by Huanqiu.com showing unanimous support for the penalizing of Facebook due to the creation of online Xinjiang rioting groups, Mobinode show originality isn’t necessarily King. Mobinode.com, a site very much at the heart of what Chinese netizens think, make many anecdotal remarks on the fact that many young internet users haven’t even heard of Facebook, or see Facebook and remark on the fact that it looks like Xiaonei or Kaixin001.

The fact that most netizens are unaware of ‘who is copying who’ in the world of SNS deems Facebook’s ‘original’ offerings as a relatively moot point. Perhaps, most alarmingly, as it highlights the importance of government spin, others have even adopted conspiracy theories from the internet. Many of the theories suggest Facebook is actually a CIA run company spying on China (See: http://bit.ly/iBgE)

In general Facebook came to China with a global strategy and failed to adapt their approach to Chinese operations. In a country operated by an autocratic government, the need to comply with local standards is a must. In failing to really note the seriousness of this, Facebook are being forced out of China.

The China Difference

Throughout this article I have touched on how the Government’s Golden Shield and GFW have limited access to some of the most popular western websites trying to establish their name in China.

This intense period of blocking has occurred around a year of extreme political and public focus for a government entering its 60th year of rule; however, it it not fair to cheapen the overall success of homegrown Chinese websites by considering western censorship a major catalyst for their nationwide growth.

In actuality there are many differences in China’s business climate, some of which we have already considered, that have been utilized or adopted by domestic businesses in order to thrive in the Chinese market. Many of these differences would be apparent between Western and Chinese businesses regardless of imposed government blocking. Here I introduce just a few:

Designing SNS For Chinese Customers

As mentioned briefly when considering Facebook, there is a much greater emphasis on games in Chinese SNS compared to Western SNS. Yet, not only have Chinese SNS moved away from the advertising style pioneered by Facebook, they have taken Facebook’s Web 2.0 technology and adopted it specifically for the Chinese audience. For their love of games. From a statistical perspective, six of the largest ten internet companies by revenue operate online games as a major part of their business (statistic from Alibaba News).

Renren and 51.com are two sites which have adopted this strategy of mixing social networking with social gaming. As well as gaming, many other Chinese-focused implementations were born from close observation of their netizen’s behaviour. Other differences Joe Chen, founder of Oak Pacific (Renren’s holding company) noted included a much smaller emphasis on pictures in Chinese SNS compared to the west. Chen said, “As digital cameras are less widespread in China than in the US, our users write more blogs and post fewer photos on the site”. Naturally, many Chinese SNS’ frameworks are now designed to emphasize blogging features.

You could argue that sites like Facebook might be learning to cater for Chinese netizens if their site wasn’t blocked- however one might counter with the fact that the Chinese market conditions should be appreciated in the first place.

Government Law Makes Or Breaks Chinese SNS

In September this year, a government law was passed allowing for more government buy-in and overall merger between SNS and the government. This included the potential for the government to impose licensing on an SNS and therefore decide whether a Chinese SNS, 1) Stays online independently 2) Becomes partly controlled by the government or 3) Is banned from the internet.

As a result, many Chinese SNS are under immense pressure to abide and follow government policy to the letter, otherwise risking partial control from the government. On the other hand, Government control is of less concern to other Chinese social networking sites, who see the control as an advantage: for example, many SNS sites already have significant government investment and therefore have the monetary and legal backing of the one authority that counts.

A site like Facebook, without government investment, backing or control, is liberated from these market conditions; however, in a market where your competitors are favored by an autocratic government, how can you win? In this situation, regardless of a GFW, any SNS with government investment or level of control will have many more advantages in China.

On the flipside, those Chinese SNS which can manage the balancing act of following the government’s regulations (without prompting their involvement), whilst creating a thriving and successful online social network, could arguably be applauded as perfect business models of what is expected from the Chinese social network.

Dealing A Blow To Anonymous Websurfing

A feature which we could never imagine being adopted in a western online experience, has long been a key focus for the government’s control of the internet. Real Identity registration. Potential knowledge of what everyone is doing online by name would technically put enough fear in people to inhibit the need for the GFW.

Again, due to the run-up to the 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic, we are seeing an increase in the government’s requirement to use national identity cards for online activity. For example, Radio Free Asia report that, one year ago, a man from Chengdu did not need any identity proof in order to use an internet cafe; jump forward to today, and Chengdu contains many internet cafes requiring second generation ID cards to be swiped in before going online.

The government want knowledge of everyone’s online actions by name and location; therefore it’s only logical that this requirement manifests itself within website registration. As well as becoming compulsory on a plethora of Chinese news sites, the latest answer to Twitter, Sina Mico Bo requires real name registration in order to use the service. This is a government compromise wherein failure to oblige would result in the site being shutdown like SNS sites Fanfou, Jiwai and Digu.

The site is operated by Sina Micro Bo staff, yet they effectively must act as ambassadors for the government and therefore monitor comment boards, apply content filters to prevent forbidden words being said, and openly delete and reject posts.

In matters such as this, Western sites have to look beyond the expectations of their local market and consider what is needed by the Chinese government in order to operate. In China if you fail to fall in line, as a Chinese business, you will face potential shutdown. Here Chinese search engines and SNS do business on the Chinese government’s terms. It is their ability to comply in innovative ways that make them successful. This quality underlines a vital trait within Chinese business, marking a major difference Western websites may need to appreciate when approaching China.

Comply or Die

If a Western site wants the manacles of web-blocking removed from their wrists, the best piece of advice I could give is this: be compliant.

Dangers of Compliance

Many will argue that complying with the Chinese government on digital technology was the initial error that ironically led to the GFW. It was Cisco Technologies in the US who sold the technical capabilities for much of what we know today as the Golden Shield Project. Cisco consistently deny that they created the equipment in order to suit the Chinese government’s requirements, remarking it was the usual software they would sell to anyone.

Furthermore one might say, looking past the GFW, that government compliance has resulted in several human rights issues for the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN have all come under fire for being overly tolerant of the country’s censoring. The biggest amount of media attention came to Yahoo, when it freely admitted to giving the Chinese government intelligence from its information archives, resulting in the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist. Yahoo has defended itself, citing it is only abiding by the law of the country.

Also, as Tien Loon shows in the article “Yahoo Getting Ready To Leave China?” (http://cndev18.reddotprofero.com:8090/?p=294), there are examples that show how being overly compliant and giving too much control to partner companies could result in dilution within the Chinese market.

Compliance Equals Success? Making an example of Myspace.cn

On the other hand, those who go ahead with compliance, have to do so by justifying the means. Google, for example, justify the self-censored .cn site by remarking that it is better to offer a limited set of information in China than no information at all.

Failure to comply with the government laws and legislation can ultimately lead to a popular worldwide site having no influence in the Chinese market. However, just because China lets you into the market, doesn’t mean you will necessarily meet success, as the following example with Myspace.cn demonstrates…

Myspace show it can be tricky to get the formula right in order to operate effectively in China. They were extremely compliant with the Chinese government, setting up Myspace.cn (in April 2007) with the aid of local Chinese businesses.

With their office based in Beijing and a website built in translated simplified Chinese, a censoring filter system was employed on their site to prevent the posting of content about subjects such as Taiwan Independence or the Dalai Lama. On top of this, users can also report the ‘misconduct’ of other users for various offences, including ‘endangering national security’ and ‘subverting the government’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#MySpace_China).

Where Myspace have gone wrong is in the use of a ‘Global Strategy’ imposed with little bespoke tailoring to Chinese netizens’ needs and internet behaviour. For example, while Myspace are selling advertising in China, for it’s Chinese domain, they have not allowed regional Chinese management to customize any changes to suit domestic online behaviour.

The result has been sluggish growth and mild disinterest in Myspace.cn amongst Chinese netizens. Figures in February 09 showed only 10,000,000 users signed up to myspace.cn compared to domestic rivals whose figures on average are nearer to 100,000,000. In an attempt to grow numbers further, Myspace.com tried to force its Chinese members to move across to the .cn site. This did nothing to dramatically improve numbers.

CEO of Myspace China, Luo Chuan, was disappointed in both the simplified mandarin translation of the site, and the features and elements within the site structure. He wanted Myspace.cn to have its independence from Myspace.com in order for the site to be more successful in the Chinese market. No agreement was reached in rolling out a Chinese-specific strategy and consequently Luo Chuan resigned from Myspace.

In the case of Myspace.cn, their compliance with the government means they have not been the subject of the GFW; however, by not looking into the unique qualities of the Chinese netizen and the various unique elements of SNS in China, their success has been minimal. For more on why social media has to be appreciated for its unique qualities, please see my recent article, Social Media in China Is Unique (http://cndev18.reddotprofero.com:8090/?page_id=98)

Limitations to Compliance

I think it’s fair to conclude that if you are a Western business trying to work in China you will have to comply with the government at some point. As Qin Gang remarked of Google China, ” [it] is a company operating within China to provide Internet search services, and it should strictly abide by Chinese laws and regulations.”

In order for a Chinese business to thrive unquestioned, the government has to feel it has an element of control over the business output; especially if it concerns the creation, output and sharing of information, which SNS and search engines certainly do.

Within this article I have described how Government control comes from a variety of factors including:

- Basing business locally
- Partnering with Chinese companies
- Appearing transparent in supporting government information requests
- Structuring your site with appropriate filters in order to comply with government content
- Designing your site in order to monitor and impose real-user identity regulations.
- Allowing for a user complaint system based on the government’s censorship values.
- Fast adaption/adherence to government complaints/suggestions for site improvement.
The list goes on.

Ofcourse, whilst many websites are able to comply with the authority’s requests for, what is ultimately, the restriction of freedom to access and share information online, there are several websites which I believe could simply not operate under the government’s terms.

In the case of SNS sites like Twitter, it is difficult to imagine a site based on the imagination of such an open and laidback term as a ‘Tweet’ imposing strict content filtering in order to adhere to the rules and regulations of the Golden Shield Project. Restricting freedom to react to news and opinions would strip away most of the charm from the 140 character service. I doubt it would be successful.

It’s also difficult to imagine a world with a successful Chinese Facebook unless, ofcourse, it established a new home in China and was subjected to the Government’s recent SNS legislation- potentially resulting in governmental control of the site. But at what cost?

Chinese bloggers seeking to incense political adversity to the government have long ago learned that, if they want to be read by Chinese people, they have to be in China. The irony of their plight is, by writing illegal material they risk blocking and therefore a lack of visibility to mainstream netizens. The problem lies in the fact that most netizens will not go beyond their comfort zone and find the GFW too much of an inconvenience to bypass in order to get information from ‘blocked bloggers’.

As a former CNN correspondent Rebecca MacKinnon states, “If you want to have traction in China, you have to be in China”. The brave Chinese blogger does just that, ignoring the peril of the GFW and finding a way, through metaphor, homophone or sheer luck to remain in China’s online world. The timid Chinese blogger is a blogger no more, atleast not on government issues, self-censoring their output to stay below the wall.

Websites in the west are served a similar challenge when approaching China. Do they comply as far as their own values will allow and then stand their ground, staying resolute in their challenge to the authority of China’s government? Or, do they adopt a principle of ‘something is better than nothing’ and work out the best compromise in order to provide some level of service to the information-hungry Chinese netizen?

This connection has timed out.

References

General Censorship

http://www.blogherald.com/2009/09/14/chinas-censorship-equilibrium/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885961,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

Censorship Commentary

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/14/1337223

Censorship Opposition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_08

About the Firewall

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/chinese-firewall

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=20180

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-11/ff_chinafirewall

Hotspot Shield

http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=el&comments_parentId=448736&forumId=1

Censorship Around 60th Anniversary of PRC

http://www.pcworld.com/article/172627/china_clamps_down_on_internet_ahead_of_60th_anniversary.html

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/gfw-09162009120149.html?textonly=1

Censorship Around 20th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square Protests

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/china-censors-internet-before-tiananmen-square-anniversary/

User Anonymity

http://www.ngonlinenews.com/news/internet-regulations/

Baidu General

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10360549-265.html

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-09/16/content_8700076.htm

Google Block

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529090,00.html

Google Commentary

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,527462,00.html

Renren

http://news.alibaba.com/article/detail/business-in-china/100138821-1-xiaonei-51.com%253A-merging-web-2.0.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renren

Facebook Success

http://mashable.com/2009/09/23/facebook-movie-cast-2/

Facebook Figures

http://www.checkfacebook.com/

Facebook Block

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/07/AR2009070701162.html

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/chinese-goverment-shuts-down-facebook/

http://mashable.com/2009/07/07/china-blocks-twitter-facebook/

http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/facebook_blocked_in_china.php

http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/facebook-blocked-china

Facebook Commentary

http://www.mobinode.com/2009/07/05/best-strategy-for-facebook-china-is-forget-about-china/

http://www.examiner.com/x-15615-Asia-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m7d10-Poll-Most-Chinese-support-Facebook-block

Myspace General

http://www.mobinode.com/2008/09/05/ceo-of-myspace-china-resigns-independence-fails/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#MySpace_China

http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/05/myspace-china-ceo-quits-yet-another-us-tech-company-struggles-in-china/

http://gawker.com/5158222/wendi-deng-murdochs-myspace-problem

Myspace Commentary

http://profy.com/2007/04/27/myspace-china/

http://mashable.com/2007/08/27/myspace-switch-chinese-users/

DigiTrends
Yahoo Getting Ready To Leave China http://cndev18.reddotprofero.com:8090/?p=294
Social Media in China is Unique http://cndev18.reddotprofero.com:8090/?page_id=98
Google At The Mercy Of China http://cndev18.reddotprofero.com:8090/?p=74
Government Challenges To Chinese SNS http://cndev18.reddotprofero.com:8090/?p=62

Source: DigiTrends (September 2009)

Behind the Great Firewall of China is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Will China’s Web, like its larger economy, comfortably combine extraordinary growth with government repression?

On March 23, the day after Google pulled its search operations out of mainland China, a woman who uses the online pseudonym Xiaomi arose in her Shanghai apartment and sat down in her bedroom office for another day of outwitting Internet censorship. She leads a confederation of volunteer translators around the world who turn out Mandarin versions of Western journalism and scholarly works that are banned on China’s Internet–and that wouldn’t be available in Mandarin in any case. That day, working in a communal Google Docs account, she and her fellow volunteers completed translations of texts that ranged from a fresh New York Times interview with Google cofounder Sergey Brin to “The Limits of Authoritarian Resilience,” a seven-year-old analysis of China’s Communist Party from the Journal of Democracy.

What happened when Xiaomi hit “Post” reveals that the government’s constraints have their limits. The pieces went live on a blog and a public Google Docs page. These links were broadcast to the nearly 4,000 people who follow her on Twitter (as @xiaomi2020), the 1,170 more who follow her on Google Buzz, and others on five Chinese Twitter clones. Although Blogspot and Twitter are blocked in China to those without circumvention software, anybody in the country can open the Google Docs page–at least for now. (The government did block Google Docs for a time last year but relented after protests from companies and universities.) Once posted, ­Xiaomi’s translations are often reposted 10,000 times or more on blogs and bulletin-board-style discussion sites. There, they can survive for various lengths of time, though the hosting services–which are required to self-censor–generally take them down. The total readership may be orders of magnitude higher than the number of repostings, since each post is presumably read by many people, some of whom also copy the translations into group e-mails.

Xiaomi takes steps to preserve her anonymity and avoid run-ins with the authorities. (Such encounters often start when police summon someone to the local station to”drink tea”–the euphemism for questioning designed to let people know they are being watched–and can end with imprisonment.) She uses Gmail (which is encrypted and hosted outside China) and technologies that make her computer’s Internet Protocol address appear to come from the United States (the address changes frequently to thwart blocking). When she needs to talk, she uses the encrypted Internet voice service Skype–a version she installed in the United States, not one available in China that was found to allow surveillance.

What she achieves with the help of such tools is hardly the only example of free speech and protest percolating through China’s censored Internet. In recent years Internet-based campaigns–efforts that often blossom on bulletin boards and blogs in hours or days–have pressured the Chinese government to release prisoners, launch investigations into scandals such as the kidnapping of boys conscripted into slave labor, and imprison corrupt government officials. “The Internet has empowered the Chinese people more than the combined effects of 30 years of [economic] growth, urbanization, exports, and investments by foreign firms,” says Yasheng Huang, a China expert and professor of international management at MIT’s Sloan School. “China may not have free speech, but it has freer speech, because the Internet has provided a platform for Chinese citizens to communicate with each other.” And that communication can include criticism of the government.

China’s attempts to suppress Internet speech have intensified. But they have intensified partly because there’s so much more material online–maybe overwhelmingly more–for the government to worry about. China’s Internet, like its economy in general, is exploding in size and complexity. The country now has a staggering 384 million Internet users–nearly a quarter of the world total–plus 750 million mobile-phone users, many of whom use those phones to access the Web. That rapid growth of the network, coupled with the remarkable creativity and boldness of its users, is shaping the Chinese Web at least as powerfully as is government repression. “We underestimate the vitality of the Chinese Internet,” says Ethan Zuckerman, cofounder of Global Voices, a blogging advocacy group. “We hear it is censored and therefore assume every page has a red background and text from the central propaganda agency. We badly underestimate how vital and how interesting some of those conversations can end up being. This is now the largest Internet, bigger than that of the United States. Why do we have a blind spot around this? We assume censored means ‘Dead. Lifeless. Artificial.’ What ‘censored’ actually means is ‘really, really complicated.’ ”

A Higher Firewall

The Chinese government operates the world’s most sophisticated national Internet filtering system. Though often called the Great Firewall, it is not one entity but, rather, a mix of strategies. Filters at the ISP level block banned Western websites (including ­YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and the Guardian’s site) and can block websites whose URLs contain any of an ever-growing list of banned keywords related to politically sensitive topics. The government stepped up its efforts in 2009, especially before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4 and the 60th anniversary of China’s National Day on October 1. The regime even unplugged the entire Net in the Urumqi region to block reports of violent protests over the ethnically motivated murders of migrant workers. Finally, the government for a short time required that all computers be sold with porn filtering software known as Green Dam preinstalled. (Faced with international and domestic outrage when it emerged that the filter also blocked political speech–and was buggy and insecure regardless of its intended function–officials announced an indefinite delay.) It was a hacking attack that Google said had targeted the Gmail accounts of human rights activists that precipitated the company’s March decision to stop censoring search results and shut down its site in mainland China.

To get around the blocks, some people use tools such as Ultrareach, Dynaweb, and Tor (see “Dissent Made Safer,” May/June 2009), which enable them to connect to banned websites via proxy computers outside the country. But government censors have increasingly been blocking the proxies, too. And in truth, most Chinese Internet users don’t bother with Western sites at all. Over the past decade, homegrown alternatives to popular Western Web 2.0 sites have become extraordinarily popular. Instead of Facebook, China has Douban, whose users are generally anonymous and gravitate toward topics such as movie and book critiques rather than personal news. Instead of ­YouTube, China has YouKu, which naturally tilts toward Chinese topics. China’s bulletin-board sites–led by QQ, the second most popular website in China and the 10th most popular in the world–are teeming with debates over current events. Hal ­Roberts, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and a leading researcher on Internet filtering and surveillance, says that sites hosted in China account for about 95 percent of page views there. “Whereas a country like Turkey will get upset at a video about the Armenian genocide and block YouTube,” he says, “China blocks YouTube but also gives people YouKu, which is censored, but which they say is better anyway, natively in Mandarin, and run by Chinese people.”

The Chinese government allows these sites to flourish only because they have agreed to censor themselves. But the forbidden topics are not clearly defined, and the extent of the censorship varies. “In China everyone knows there are hidden rules,” says Isaac Mao, a Chinese software engineer and venture capitalist based in Shanghai, who became one of China’s first bloggers in 2002. Criticism of the regime, promotion of democracy, and advocacy of human rights or Tibetan independence are often censored; so is discussion of specific incidents and scandals ranging from the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989 to the Sichuan earthquake scandal of 2008, in which the collapse of many shoddily built school buildings contributed to the deaths of more than 5,000 children. The Chinese government increasingly imposes heavy fines or shutdowns–or even jail time for principals–to make local Web companies follow these implicit rules. A few years ago, a government officer would “call your phone, ask you to delete some article in one day, or in [a few] hours,” says Huo Ju, a computer programmer in Shanghai, who runs a technology blog that is blocked in China. “The Chinese government didn’t close websites or companies. But in 2009, many websites [were] closed. They also delete articles, and they try to control opinion direction.” Meanwhile, the government rewards good behavior. Rebecca MacKinnon, an expert on the Chinese Internet who is now a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, wrote of attending a government event in Beijing last November at which executives from 20 Chinese Internet companies were awarded the 2009 China Internet Self-Discipline Award for censoring themselves in the interest of “harmonious and healthy Internet development.” “China can use offline methods of control,” says Roberts. “At the end of the day, it is more effective to send government agents to people’s doors than to filter the Net.”

China’s users filter themselves, too. The Tianya.cn bulletin board, with more than 35 million members, manages a kind of wiki-style self-censorship. Posts are ruled on by communities of “board masters” (ordinary users elected by other members); if they cut a post, the poster can appeal to a higher-tier editor in a complaint forum. A board master can be dismissed if enough people complain. This in some sense mirrors the way Chinese society works, and Donnie Dong, a Chinese lawyer and Internet scholar who is now a fellow at the Berkman Center, says it is readily accepted. “The reality is that the condition in China has changed the structure of the Internet into something distinct,” he says. He calls it the “Cinternet”; Xiaomi and some others call it the “Chinternet.” Either way, says Dong, “the law, including statutes and the ‘living law,’ is making and changing the code.”

Protests go viral

But this living law has neither checked the overall expansion of Web access nor stanched the online activism that tests the limits of censorship–especially on internal Chinese sites. The Chinese search engine Baidu offers discussion forums that–although cleansed of political topics–are extremely popular. One day last summer, an anonymous member posted something on a Baidu forum devoted to the online game World of Warcraft, and it became an Internet meme: Jia Junpeng, your mother wants you to go home to eat. The cheeky, mysterious sentence received seven million hits and 300,000 comments on the first day. People built humorous dialogues around it; graphics made it appear as if the command had been uttered by Barack Obama, Saddam Hussein, or Chinese military officials posing for a formal Communist Party portrait.

Then the goofy phenomenon took a sharp political turn. Around the time the post originally appeared, a famous blogger named Guo Baofeng was arrested for posting allegations of an official cover-up in the brutal rape of a 25-year-old woman named Yan Xiaoling in Mawei, a district in the city of Fuzhou. She later died of her injuries.

Before his incarceration, Guo managed to squeeze off a couple of short blog posts. “I have been arrested by Mawei police SOS,” read one. Even in repressive China, there’s no law against exhorting people to go home to their mothers. Bloggers began calling on people to send postcards to the Mawei police: Guo Baofeng, your mother wants you to go home to eat. Similar messages sprouted on bulletin-board sites. A few days later, Guo was released; he later attributed his freedom to the Internet-generated “postcard movement.” The use of Web 2.0 in the Guo case “is fascinating, and it is also revealing about some of the general features of online social activism in China today,” says Guobin Yang, a sociologist and China Internet scholar at Columbia University. “Compared with the student movement in 1989, where people had large-scale gatherings, today’s activists work on special issues, like calling for the release of a particular person or dealing with corruption or environmental pollution through very creative means. Much of this is happening on the Internet, with a lot of impact.”

Sometimes the Chinese Web simply amplifies citizen outrage, forcing government action. In 2007 a local newspaper in Henan province reported a kidnapping scandal: boys were being snatched to work as slaves in brick kilns. The issue failed to excite the interest of national authorities until a woman posted a letter about it on a local online bulletin board. The letter was cross-posted to Tianya and went viral, garnering 580,000 hits there and many more on other forums, according to an analysis of the case by Yang. The attention prompted the central government to investigate and prosecute two people. And in Nanjing, amid anger over high housing prices, local bloggers broadcast the fact that Zhou Jiugeng, a former director of a government property-management bureau, was driving to work in a Cadillac and wearing an expensive watch. The revelation led to an investigation–and an 11-year prison sentence for Zhou, who was found to have been accepting bribes.

Even lawyers and judges are testing the limits. Anne Cheung, a law professor and Internet researcher at Hong Kong University, says she and her colleagues are finding previously unheard-of criticism of the regime. One lawyer, Xu Zhiyong, often blogs about the plight of citizens who try to lodge legal complaints in Beijing but end up in secret jails. Some government officials are criticized by name. Criticism of the Chinese Communist Party used to be “a sensitive area,” Cheung says, “but now, somehow, the authorities will tolerate that.” In general, “if you have the courage to raise your voice, then you may be able to get something out of the Internet and Web 2.0,” she adds.

Internet Consensus?

A swiftly growing Chinese Internet; restrictions by the central government; a degree of collusion with those restrictions among Web companies and the public, so long as they are not onerous to business; a calculation by the government that permits some dissidence: all this might amount to an Internet version of the Beijing Consensus, a catchall term for alternative models of economic development that take China’s success as an example. The Chinese government has a long tradition of managing dissent. And Cheung thinks the two trends–growing governmental control of the Web on the one hand and online growth, creativity, and activism on the other–will continue pushing and pulling on each other for some time. Progress toward Internet openness “may be incremental, not moving in a linear direction,” she says. “I would say this is consistent with Chinese style–loosening sometimes, but tightening sometimes. You can’t really predict.”

To break the stalemate and tear down the Great Firewall, some activists and members of Congress have advocated that the West push on two fronts. One is purely technological: make available far more proxy computers, those neutral IP addresses in other countries from which users in China can access an entirely open Internet. But that would be costly–and in any case most Chinese use only Chinese sites, which are subject to self-censorship, not network-level blocking. The second tactic is to apply pressure through Western companies that are deeply involved in the Chinese Internet–companies that provide the routers, the filtering software (variations on the technology that filters pornography and other content in other countries), and the PCs that Chinese consumers buy. The Global Network Initiative (GNI), a consortium of corporations, academics, and human rights groups that formed in 2008, is working on a voluntary code of corporate conduct to support free speech and human rights, but to date only Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have signed on (the latter company after it gave Chinese authorities data on activists named Li Zhi and Shi Tao, resulting in their imprisonment). “It’s better to join the GNI before you get stuck with a Yahoo case … rather than wait until they are yelling at you in Congress and calling you moral pygmies,” says MacKinnon, a cofounder of the GNI. But as MacKinnon pointed out in a recent blog post, these ideas go only so far; the only Chinese anticensorship techniques that will work on a large scale will be ones generated by the Chinese themselves. Zuckerman adds that well-meaning Westerners would do well to at least become familiar with Chinese online norms and customs. “Until we understand what Chinese users like and want and use, it’s hard for us to understand how we would design alternatives to censorship that are likely to succeed,” he points out.

That’s where activists such as Xiaomi fit in. “Some people will wonder who is doing this, and why,” she said, speaking to me through her secure Skype connection. Her motivations, she explained, are the same as those that drew her, as an undergraduate in 1989, to the democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. She recalls a Woodstock-like experience, with people singing and falling in love as they camped out. She left on May 28, 1989–one week before the crushing response by Chinese tanks and soldiers–and went on to earn an MBA at a U.S. school and prosper as a software consultant. “In my generation, most of us have done well. We caught the opportunity of China’s booming economy,” she said. “But there are dreams that are not fulfilled yet. We had them for more than 20 years, and things are still getting even worse and not better.”

Huang, of MIT, argues that the protestors of Tiananmen might never have imagined seeing the criticisms of policies and officials that are online today. “We should measure progress in China not by protests on the streets and availability of news on protests, but by the involvement of the Chinese citizens in policy discussions,” Huang says. “By the latter yardstick, China has made huge progress, thanks largely to the Internet. The Internet is already changing China, and it will change the country for the better in the future.” China’s Internet, like its society and economy as a whole, might move fitfully and incrementally toward greater freedom. Because as activists like Xiaomi grow more creative–and the Great Firewall grows more sophisticated–the Chinese Internet is simply … growing. And even Xiaomi, who experiences the Great Firewall firsthand and is less optimistic than Huang, believes that the wall “eventually will fail.”

Source: MIT Technology Review (April 15, 2009)

China’s Internet Paradox is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Is there a similar site widget as “AddThis” or “ShareThis” for social bookmarking and social sharing?

This widget  has exactly the same name “AddThis” on org.cn. AddThis.org.cn provides social bookmarking and social sharing website widget for publishers as well as browser plugins for Internet users (under development).

As shown above, the social bookmarking and sharing widget allows visitors to share the site content to 49 services (17 shown in the above screenshot).

The subscription widget allows visitors to subscribe to the website content by RSS, instant messengers, and twelve other services.

Widget Plugins for Wordpress and Z-blog (an ASP blogging platform) are also available.

QQ Shuqian, 365Key, Sina ViVI and Baidu Soucang are popular bookmarking services  in China.

Source: China Internet Watch (January 4, 2010)

Chinese Social Bookmarking Widget is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online