InsideGFW

After having moved to Shanghai, I see myself step by step slowly changing into a journalist. If there is one man I would like to become, then it would be Wang Ke Qin.

Wang is the chief journalist of China Economic Times now and is one of a kind unlike other ‘journalists’ in town that hold Marxist views. Some say Wang is the Chinese version of muckraker Lincoln Stiffens due to several big exposés by him including the recent ‘Shanxi vaccine scandal’.

(“Many people will know who Li Ke Qing is (a popular Hong Kong singer), but only a few will know Wang Ke Qin and the Ministry of Health of Shanxi will surely get away” said Li Cheng Peng the famous football commentator and journalist when commenting on the Shanxi vaccine scandal.)

Chinese Media is always strongly controlled by the government with the slogan of ‘Emphasizing positive news’ and ‘The Good of Society Before All Else’, so I was always surprised to see Wang’s stories getting published. Yet, the people exposed easily get away and the muckraker who exposed them often ends badly.

There were some underground stock markets in Lanzhou in 2001 controlled by the local Mafia and protected by the Lanzhou government which did not have legal agreements and licenses to run. By downloading stock data from the Internet and showing them on the big screen for investors, they successfully fooled hundreds of people to use them as agency to buy and sell stock shares where all the money was routed directly into their own pockets.

A text message including his home address and the message “We are going kidnap your daughter and wife from your home.” was sent to Wang on the 7th Feb 2001, 5 days after his new story about the underground stock market got published. A few hours later he received another call informing him that the Mafia is willing to pay five million RMB for his life. Wang had to ask the police to protect his family. ”I have four police officers staying with me and my family for protection.”

This was only the beginning of the bad luck. ”My colleague told me over the phone that I had gotten fired again.” Wang lost his job one month after the Southern-eastern newspaper published his new scoop of ‘the dark side of voting for bad men’ which exposed Ding Xi village’s officials abusing their power and forcing the villagers to vote for bad men in the town. Every village needed to vote for some ‘bad men’ depending on the population of the village. The Governor mandated the village’s population to vote for more than 5 percent representation of ‘bad men’ and beat or arrested those who failed to fill that quota.

”I was shocked when I saw hundreds of farmers kneel down in front of me and said to myself that you must find out what is behind this.” When Wang went to the town for the second time, he had to dress like a farmer and hide his camera and voice recorder in a bag full of straw to get though three blocks as some officers had gotten news of Wang coming to investigate them and thus hired the local mafia to look out for him.

Thank God the Chinese Economic is brave enough to accept him to be their chef journalist after he got fired and that they published his new expose on the Shanxi vaccine scandal as it was really bad quality and some children becoming physically disabled or even dying as a result.

Just right after the Shanxi vaccine scandal went public, China’s biggest and state-run news agency Xin Hua published an article written by a “journalist” from the Xin Hua Shanxi branch’ denying the authenticity of Wang’s story and backing up the Ministry of Health of Shanxi. Half a month has passed since the scandal was exposed, but the government hasn’t taken any action besides covering and hiding. Thousands of children are still being administered the vaccine with continued side effects and China is still too “special” to be shaken by the muckraker.

*Muckraker: a term coined by Theodore Roosevelt and which describes individuals who seeks to expose corruption of businesses or government to the public.

“He is a real Buffet menu in China” people say about Liu Yi Qian.

From time to time people say that the chances to succeed in China are unfair, The government controls all the resources and could easily smash individuals, but the existence of 47 years old Liu Yi Qian seems to be a tough argument to refute. He was born into a normal family and has already become a successful Chinese entrepreneur.

“I will not let any chance of making a great profit slip away” he has said. At his school, teachers always told their students to study hard and every day (study for a better social status) and university students are greatly respected by society, but young Qianyu said to his peers: “You guys keep on studying, I am going to quit school and start making money.”

After quitting middle school he went into the shoe trade for ten years working at a small family factory where he learned that the easiest way to make money is by letting other people do the job. So he taught the workers to make different parts of shoes that he then assembled together. “I could make more than 100 RMB every day.”

In the mid 1980s, taxis were really rare and the people in the cities were always waving their hands to try to catch one even with the possible charge of 50 to 60 for a three to four kilometer drive. So he spent 16,000RMB to get a driver’s license and bought two cars to run a taxi business with his brother for two years. Then after that he opened a shop in Yuyuan market.

The Chinese stock market first opened in the early 90′s when the people did not understand stock and trade very well, so some of stocks’ price went sky high. Liu took this chance and bought 100 shares of the Yuyuan market at 100 RMB per share, and sold it one year later when the price was 10000 RMB per share.

After he found out that money is the easiest way to make more money, he started reselling stock licenses (it’s like a lottery, if you get the right number you would have the right to buy stock) in 1992. From calculations he discovered that ten percent of the licenses will get the right number and could be sold for the price of 6000 RMB. So he bought a lot of licenses at the price of 30 and sold those with the right numbers for 6000 RMB and made a fortune.

After saving up enough capital, he started his own company Xin Liyi. This was a holding company with four employees and it’s only function was to buy corporate shares not available to individuals. With this company he controlled the shares of several holding companies and insurance companies which helped him to increase capital and buy more companies. Now he is the #256 richest man in China according to the Hurun rich list of 2008.

There is a story about how when once a government official wanted to have an interview with Liu at the Shangri-La hotel in Shanghai and where he had turned up wearing a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers, the mayor had felt really uncomfortable about it. “They gave me a suit and shoes and made me wear them” said Liu.

Liu also seems to be very much a family man. Every day he will go back to his home to see his wife and son. “I always felt uncomfortable when I was not at home” Liu said. “My wife looks out for the family a lot and in my office there are pictures of my wife and mother hanging everywhere” he added in addition.

“Yes, I made a lot of money from the stock market, but the largest profit I ever made is from art. I do not know anything about art. “I bought this because I wanted to have it; I want to take it away from other people and I like this kind of feeling” Liu said after buying a 4,365,000 RMB ancient Chinese painting.

Some people say that Liu is the living example of the Chinese dream, as even within such an unfair society, Liu has achieved his dream and become a tycoon.

But what liu says about this? I interviewed him last day and when I asked him does he think the Chinese young man could achieved their dream now, he told me ‘No, time is different now, at my time everybody is the same, nobody had the money and we all had the same basis, but it is different now. The society was already finished its classification, people who born with nothing do not have that kind of chances anymore.

Top Floor Circus @Modernsky Festival’08      Welcome to Shanghai

This is a song about what the Shanghainese think about the EXPO. I translated it into English. Below is the YouTube link and English lyric.

Year 2010 is an important year for Shanghai and China. The Expo will be held in Shanghai. This is a worldwide festival and a great opportunity for China’s development.

My home is on the Bund

Which Huang Pu river surrounds

Oriental pearl stands

At the sound of the bell

Girls walking on Huai Hai Rd

They are the most beautiful ones of the nation

Chewing you Tiao and da bing

We are small citizens

Welcome to Shanghai, welcome to shopping in Shanghai

But don’t forgot bring money

Shanghai welcomes you, the Olympics was nothing special

Let’s meet again at the Expo

Don’t say we are cheap

I invite you to Xin Tiandi

Drinking beer and being drunk

Let me show you how generous I am

Fifty-six nationalities in China

We are a big family

Just ask if you encounter trouble

It serves me right as I’m the richest

Welcome to Shanghai, welcome to shopping in Shanghai

But don’t forgot to bring money

Shanghai welcomes you, the Olympics was nothing special

Let’s meet again at the Expo

The Metro is running underground and skyscrapers are all over the place

Tract mansions build up the Huang Pu river side

But I only have three square meters to live on

Next time when you meet me I will be in the countryside

I could never go shopping at Zhongxin Futai Henlong square

The street vendors all got banished from Jinan Xiaoting Xiangyang Rd market

The crayfish price in Taining Rd is getting higher every year

We have to go and eat the Anhui food at the corner

Welcome to Shanghai, welcome to shopping in Shanghai

But don’t forgot to bring money

Shanghai welcomes you, the Olympics was nothing special

Let’s meet again at the Expo

Welcome to Shanghai, welcome to shopping in Shanghai

We don’t have the culture, but we have the money

Shanghai welcomes you, the Olympics was nothing special

Let’s meet again at the Expo

Welcome to Shanghai, welcome to shopping in Shanghai

But don’t forgot to bring the money

Shanghai welcomes you, the Olympics was nothing special

Let’s meet again at the Expo

Welcome to Shanghai, welcome to shopping in Shanghai

We don’t have the culture, but we have the money

Top Floor Circus @Modernsky Festival’08

Shanghai welcomes you, the Olympics was nothing special

Let’s meet again at the Expo

From the previous article you have gotten a brief idea about the three China mobile telecommunication tycoons. This article will show why almost 90% of China’s 3G network users are running this new 3G technology on a 2G device or a PC.

It seems like the three tycoons have a bright vision for China’s mobile market, which also fits in with the research done by Google saying that 60% of the world’s new mobile phone users will be coming from Asia and in particularly China, as the biggest country in Asia with the largest population. And, they hold the view that the one, who gets the biggest market share today, will be the only one who still will be here tomorrow.

So regardless of the expenditure, they try to attract customers to use their 3G services by providing free phone packages to customers, eliminating roaming fees, cutting down on the cost of long distance calls, offering better deals to existing 2G subscribers, etc

Using these kinds of measures and huge investments on advertising and marketing, they got a lot of subscribers to switch to or take up their 3G services. However, a large percentage of the people are those who just get the cheap mobile phones with very basic functions and a 3G plan subscription as it is usually more competitive than existing 2G plans. There are people who changed from having an ADSL connection to using a 3G dongle. Also there are people like me just want to avoid paying the roaming fee by using the 3G network.  I am also going to change my 2G plan to a 3G one next month because the price will be cheaper, but I will be running this on my BlackBerry 8520 which is not a 3G phone. None of these people actually have a 3G device or use the 3G network. They just simply changed to 3G and use it as a 2G network without knowing what they can do with it.

The above gives you a better idea about the 3G market in China. But for what do the Chinese people use their mobile phone? How many people are using smart phones? Stay tuned for next week’s part 3.

According to statistics from January 2010, there are 73 million people using mobile phone services in China. Secondly, research done by Google shows that 60% present of new cell phone users will come from Asia and it is therefore becoming more and more important to understand China’s Mobile Telecoms market. This article will be the first one of a series to try to help you got a better idea about how the new 3G policy changed the market share of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom; what kind of cell phones are the most popular ones; what the Chinese use their cell phones for; what differs in cell phone use between cities and the country as a whole; what aspects are the most complained about, as well as the close relationship between the Telecom companies and China’s national security department.

How the new 3G policy changed China’s Telecommunications market

Since January 2009, the 3G license was first released to the three China state-run Mobile companies: China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. China Mobile gained 3,900,000 3G subscribers which is just a little bit more compare to China Unicom’s 3,595,000 and China Telecom’s 3,005,000. You may think those number are enormous but the truth is that there are more than 90% of 3G network users using the 3G service on a 2G device or even on a PC and have no idea about what they could do with this brand new 3G network(in “How the Chinese use their cells”).

How did this happen? To help you understand this typical Chinese phenomenon, here’s a small lecture about the 3G network and a brief history of the three tycoons. Before 2009, there were 7 state-run companies competing in China’s Mobile Telecoms market. They dominated different sectors, with China Telecom dominating the southern parts of China, China Unicom dominating the northern parts of China and China Mobile dominating the mobile phone handset market and no competition between them. In order to accelerate competition and stop wasting money on rebuilding the 3G networks, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) reorganized these 7 conglomerates into the 3 nationwide tycoons: China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.

China Mobile seems to have the worst standard pursued in China by the Chinese Academy of Telecommunications Technology (CATT), Datang and Siemens AG as an alternative to W-CDMA and an attempt to not depend on western technology, but has retained its GSM customer base. China Unicom retained its GSM customer base but relinquished its CDMA2000 customer base, and launched 3G on the globally leading WCDMA (UMTS) standard. The CDMA2000 customers of China Unicom went to China Telecom, which then launched 3G on the CDMA2000 1x EV-DO standard. This meant that China would have all three main cellular 3G technology standards in commercial use. Finally in January 2009, MIIT was awarded licenses for all three standards，TD-SCDMA to China Mobile, WCDMA to China Unicom and CDMA2000 to China Telecom.

These three standards both have highlights and disadvantages, which theatrically made those three new tycoons have the same basis from which to launch their 3G network services.

China Mobile with its TD-SCDMA has the biggest GSM customer base of 52.7 million out of 73.6 million as can be seen in the statistics from January 2010. But the TD-SCDMA standard doesn’t have many dives to run it, as China is the only country using it so there won’t be many factories interested in making suitable dives for a much smaller market compared to the worldwide standards W-CDMA and CDMA2000. China Unicom got the super hot worldwide standard of W-CDMA to help its customer base increase and a not so great deal with iPhone which really hasn’t sold a lot(due to the missing WiFi module). Still its endless negotiations with Apple and rumors may be a plus to its future developments, but it lost the entire CDMA customer base to China Telecom with only some GSM customers left making up far less in numbers than the other two companies. China Telecom was the weakest competitor among them, but has got the evolutionary standard CDMA2000 which has a huge advantage compared to the revolutionary standards TD-SCDMA and W-CDMA that aren’t backwards compatible to pre-existing 2G networks in that it only needs software updates whereas the revolutionary standards require huge investments to build all-new networks and frequency allocations as well as to maintain the old 2G network systems not to mention the GSM customer base transfer from China Unicom. Those facts together make China Telecom a tough opponent to deal with.

From the above you may get a brief idea about the current mobile market situation in China. Stay tuned as next week will bring you part two.

Since 3 June 2009, while Twitter been blocked in China, its number of users has grown from twenty thousand to more than forty thousand and its focus point has changed from Linux and Technology to hot political issues and human rights actives.

Seems like the Great Fire Wall (GFW) isn’t doing its job that well as by blocking Twitter, instead the number of Twitter users is increasing and the discussion is changing to lean to more sensitive issues. Just last month Chinese Twitters made #GFW the first tag on the trend list by re-tweeting it together. That action makes a lot of people start to become aware of the Internet Censorship in China, by asking ‘What is ‘GFW’ and is Twitter being blocked in China?’, ‘How can there still be Chinese Twitter users?’

Twitter is probably the biggest problem and challenge that the GFW ever faced. After the URL and DNS to its official site got blocked and DNS poisoning on 3 June 2009, Chinese Twitter usage increased through existing users spreading the word about third party Twitter sites through applications such as email, MSN, and even QQ which has got over a hundred million users in China. To block the action by China’s GFW, almost 90% of old Twitter users got back online and along with them they brought a lot of new users.

2 months after the first instance, GFW in addition blocked a lot of third party sites including the most famous itweet.net and Open Source site dabr.co.uk. As an almost immediate reaction, Chinese Twitter users discovered more than 10 other unblocked third party sites and built hundreds of Twitter sites within and without the GFW by using the Open Source code from Dabr and Twitter APIs.

In China, Twitter has become the most free and sensitive place in the Chinese world as Chinese Twitter users are providing endless third party Twitter API proxies for themselves to make Twitter the most hard to block social media.

As a result, you can now see firsthand accounts on the World of Twitter of very sensitive news as well as reports on human rights movements in China. You can also access the stories of really personal lives of over forty thousand high social status Chinese citizens including but not limited to human rights activists; open minded students from universities and middle schools; conscientious business men; easy going celebrities and out of the closet gay groups as well as Chinese governors and their relatives.

This has all been made possible by Twitter’s open API and decentralisation policy making it an impossible mission for GFW to track and block all access to it, something which Jack Dorsey the founder could never have predicted.