The leading social networking site in China, renren.com, started out as a blatant Facebook clone – but it now has tens of millions of users. Despite obvious similarities to Facebook, there is one significant difference from the U.S. in how Renren and other Chinese SNS are used. The bread and butter of these sites is social games using virtual items. Indeed, Farmville originated in China!
In this first post of a series, we outline the most popular social network sites in China. In follow-up posts, we’ll look at Twitter clones, …

Chinese online travel service provider Ctrip.com has announced that it will compensate consumers for any differences in online booking prices.
Ctrip.com said that, from March 10, 2010, all the room rates it provides on its website for hotels in China will be the lowest available. If any consumers find room rates lower than those on its website, it will pay them compensation to the value of three times the price difference.
This is the first time ever that a travel service provider in China has promised to compensate consumers for price …

Chinese authorities have warned major partners of Google’s China’s based search engine that they must comply with censorship laws even if Google does not, an industry expert with knowledge of the notice said Sunday.
Chinese government information authorities warned some of Google’s biggest Web partners on Friday that they should prepare backup plans in case Google ceases censoring the results of searches on its local Chinese-language search engine, said the expert, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation by the government.
The warning was the latest indication that …

In view of the hardening of positions on both sides, Google reportedly has chalked out a detailed strategy for closure of its search engine in China, and it is almost final now as the talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent deadlock since January of this year. The Chinese government on Friday warned the US based search company, that it was not prepared to compromise on internet censorship with Google in China.

To recap on what happened, it was December last year when the Google – China …

ChinaTravelTrends.com, new interactive platform for China outbound tourism, launched in Berlin, with backing of PATA

Chinese affluent citizens increasingly like to travel abroad, but distrust official information.
With more than 50 million outbound travellers expected to leave China in 2010, the Chinese outbound market is attracting more and more attention of destinations around the world.
As part of the ITB Convention 2010, a workshop organised by the German-based COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute and the Chinese company Dragon Trail, presented Social Media Marketing as the most …

Ctrip.com International Ltd. (Nasdaq: CTRP | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) assures customers that they will get the lowest price for online booking of hotel rooms and promises compensation if they are cheated.
The promise is made in partnership with hotel chains at home and abroad, including …

China’s online travel booking users in 2009 reached 30.24 million, increasing 77.9 percent from the previous year, according to a report released recently by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
Ctrip, the one-stop China travel service, also says its number of members has reached 30 million.
Online travel booking in 2009 saw rapid development and has become a highlight of the tourism market. According to statistics released by the CNNIC, online travel booking users in 2009 increased 77.9 percent to reach 13.24 million. The growth rate is second only to online payment …

Yahoo and Chinese Yahoo

Sex is definitely the universal theme for Chinese websites, from the major portals to small sites. It is very interesting to compare a US portal with a Chinese portal site to see the difference on this topic. It happens Yahoo is a good example for this since Yahoo has a Chinese Yahoo (Yahoo China) and it is comparable to other major Chinese portals, such as Sina.com.
There is no sex on the front page of Yahoo at all. You basically don’t see any ads or words related to …

Baidu.com:
Baidu (百度) is the Chinese Google. It dominates Chinese language search with about an 80% market share and is one of the biggest sites worldwide. As a local Chinese site it censors it’s search results. Like Google, Baidu offers a number of services apart from search, including Maps, documents, MP3 search, Baidu Space (a social network with over 100 million users) Baidu Encyclopedia, (China’s largest encyclopedia by users) and is launching a new video site called QiYi.com in March.
QQ.com
QQ is a portal that runs a number of services, most notably …

Chinese online travel website company eLong Inc. reported its unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2009.
Total revenues at eLong.com for the fourth quarter increased 18% year-on-year to CNY106.9 million and net revenues increased 18% year-on-year to CNY100.9 million. Operating income in the fourth quarter was CNY2.4 million compared to operating loss of CNY10.3 million in the prior year period. Net income in the fourth quarter was CNY1.0 million compared to net loss of CNY8.2 million in the prior year period.
Total revenues in 2009 …

The state-owned newspaper The Global Times has run a particularly open article about the extensive controls on the internet within China and their effect on users and Internet companies. If you’re pressed for time to read the whole thing, DigiCha posts some choice quotes.

Douban, a Chinese social networking service website, received $10 million in venture capital from its second round of fundraising on January 25, after raising $2 million in 2006. Photo: CFP
He couldn’t take it anymore.
When Hong Kong writer and poet Liao Weitang found his online photo album had …

China’s Internet has seen rapid progress in both technology and expansion of users since it officially gained connection to the international network 16 years ago. Following are the key facts about China’s Internet development:
In April 1994, China achieved its full-functional connection to the Internet by opening a 64 kbps international dedicated line to the Internet, and was then officially recognized as a country with full functional Internet accessibility.
In May of the same year, China’s first web server and the first set of web pages were launched by a research institute under Chinese …

The online video business in China is seeing explosive growth, as Chinese consumers learn how to capture and watch video and as Chinese advertisers seek to boost their branding. Several several emerging Chinese companies are scrambling to exploit it — so far, few U.S. companies are there.
Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine company, said today it has raised $50 million from private equity firm Providence Equity Partners to pump into Baidu’s new online video unit. The unit, a separate corporate entity called Qiyi, is licensing premium video content and running ads …

Just how big (or small) a market would Google leave behind were it to pull out of China today? Last month, China Internet Network Information Center, the country’s official domain registry and research organization, reported that by the end of 2009, the number of internet users in China had touched 384 million — more than the entire population of the United States. That’s an increase of around 50% over 2008. Moreover, 233 million Chinese — twice as many as in the previous year — accessed the Net on handheld devices, …

China says at minimum 70 million people will visit the Shanghai World Expo this year; local government authorities are dangling whopping numbers like 100 million.
That’s an average of more than 380,400 people descending on the site on each of the expo’s 184 days, starting May 1. Around 20 million tickets have been sold, organizers say, and to underscore their confidence in demand they are sticking to plans for gradually increasing the cost of daily admission, now “benchmarked” at 160 yuan, or $23.50.
The government even suggests some visitors might prefer to …

In case you’ve missed it, China’s irrepressible shanzhai enthusiasts have been at it again, using imitation to pay tribute to Google.
Since Google’s Jan. 12 announcement that it might withdraw from the Chinese market, two knockoff Web sites have appeared in China bearing an intentionally uncanny resemblance to Google sites.
Goojje.com, a spoof of Google’s Chinese site, was reportedly founded by a female college student in Guangdong and put together by a group of about 20 people around the country, according to Chinese media. Its Chinese name (谷姐, whose Mandarin …

Despite controls, Web plays key role in connecting, organizing Chinese citizens
The Internet plays an increasingly vital role as a forum of public opinion in China as other forms of media remain under tight Communist Party control, though government restrictions on the Web will likely intensify, experts said at a recent INTERNET IN CHINA SYMPOSIUM held in Tokyo.
The recent threat by the U.S. search engine giant Google to pull out of the world’s most populous market over alleged cyber attacks and censorship has once again highlighted China’s policy of controlling content …

When Google threatened to quit China, most of the focus was on human rights and the country’s extensive system of internet censorship, the Great Firewall. China rebuffed such criticism. Countries that censor political speech on the internet are quick to point out that western nations also have laws governing content online, some of it political.Germany bans neo-Nazi symbols on German internet sites. The state of South Australia recently attempted to ban anonymous political speech online in the lead-up to elections. China said it was its sovereign right to set limits on internet activities. …

China’s online tourism market is booming as an increasingly wealthy middle class travels for pleasure and the use of credit cards and the Internet soars, analysts say.
As millions of people pack their bags for Lunar New Year holidays, the busiest travel period of the year, many will have booked their trips home online, according to Chinese Internet research and consulting firm iResearch.
Revenue from online flight, hotel and package tour bookings will hit 4.75 billion yuan (695.8 million US dollars) in 2010, up 27 percent from last year, iResearch says, with …

www.chinatraveltrends.com, COTRI and Dragon Trail are inviting all visitors
to the ITB in Berlin to a China Outbound Tourism workshop during the ITB 2010 – March 11th at 4.30pm to 5.45pm in Hall 7.1.
As part of the ITB Convention Destination day the China Outbound Tourism Marketing Forum @
ITB Berlin 2010 will look at “Social Media Tourism Marketing – The Example of China”.
The Chinese Outbound market is one of the few source markets which continued to grow even during the global economic crisis. Social Media are increasingly important especially for the younger, …