China :: Technology

BEIJING (AP) - China is going after Internet phone services such as Skype in a move to protect the country's state-owned telephone companies, causing alarm among consumers who rely on cheap Internet calls. A notice by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on its website this month says it's working to fight "illegal Internet phone services" but doesn't specify any actions. Experts say companies like Skype operate in a legal gray area and that the notice is a warning to them not to grow too big or to challenge the state-owned telecoms. China, which on Thursday announced its number of Internet users rose to 450 million this year, also has a strong interest in exercising tight control over information, and Skype has been a popular tool with activists and others who want to share information relatively freely. The ministry's move, however, also has business in mind. China has said only state-owned telecoms China Telecom and China Unicom...

by Richard Wachman Saxo Bank's predictions for next year make interesting reading – but will any come to pass? According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the Lebanese philosophical essayist, most forecasting is nonsense since "Black Swan events", such as the near collapse of the banking system, are written off as "highly improbable". With that in mind, Saxo Bank, based in Copenhagen, has published "10 outrageous predictions for 2011," leaving readers to decide whether the forecasts are really that far-fetched. Top of the list is its prediction that Apple will use some of its $50bn of cash to buy Facebook from Mark Zuckerberg. Others are that the dollar will make an extraordinary comeback as China overheats and inflation takes off. As the Asian feel-good factor vanishes, developing countries will use their spare dollars to acquire US government bonds, pushing the 30-year treasury yield down to 3%. Australia will be caught in the Chinese backdraft an...

China's propaganda chief named by US diplomats as the alleged orchestrator of hacker attacks on Google Li Changchun, China's fifth most powerful man, was named by US diplomats as the alleged orchestrator of hacker attacks on Google's email systems last winter. A member of China's ruling politburo, he is the individual in charge of propaganda and censorship and the man behind the "great firewall of China". The Observer reported "a leading politician" was allegedly behind the politically inspired cyber-assault that prompted Google to retreat from China, based on leaked cables produced by the US embassy in Beijing. Li Changchun was named overnight by the New York Times, which has access to the same diplomatic correspondance from the WikiLeaks website as the Guardian and Observer. A well-placed Chinese source told US officials the Chinese governmment "co-ordinated the recent intrusions of Google systems" and that these "closel...

Leading politician ordered attacks after Googling his own name and finding critical articles, US dispatches say The hacking of Google that forced the search engine to withdraw from mainland China was orchestrated by a senior member of the communist politburo, according to classified information sent by US diplomats to Hillary Clinton's state department in Washington. The leading politician became hostile to Google after he searched his own name and found articles criticising him personally, leaked cables from the US embassy in Beijing say. That single act prompted a politically inspired assault on Google, forcing it to "walk away from a potential market of 400 million internet users" in January this year, amid a highly publicised row about internet censorship. The explosive allegation that the attack on Google came from near the top of the Communist party has never been made public until now. The politician allegedly collaborated with a second member of the ...

XXXXXXXXXXXX SUBJECT: GOOGLE UPDATE: PRC ROLE IN ATTACKS AND RESPONSE STRATEGY XXXXXXXXXXXX BEIJING XXXXXXXXXXXX 001.2 OF 002 Classified By: DCM Robert Goldberg. Reasons 1.4 (b), (d). 1. (S) Summary: A well-placed contact claims that the Chinese government coordinated the recent intrusions of Google systems. According to our contact, the closely held operations were directed at the Politburo Standing Committee level. -- Another contact claimed a top PRC leader was actively working with Google competitor Baidu against Google. -- Chinese concerns over the recent Google threat to take down the company's Chinese-language search engine google.cn over censorship and hacking allegations were focused on the service's growing popularity among Chinese Internet users and a perception that the USG and Google were working in concert. -- An appeal to nationalism seems to be the Chinese government's chosen option to counter Google's demand to provide unfiltered web content....

Monday, 18 May 2009, 23:26 C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BEIJING 001336 SIPDIS State for EAP/CM - SFlatt, PPark, AGoodman State for EEB/CIP - FSaeed, SFlynn USTR for AWinter, JMcHale, AMain, TWineland Commerce for MAC Commerce for ITA - IKasoff, JWu EO 12958 DECL: 5/19/2029 TAGS ETRD, PGOV, SOCI, SCUL, ECON, CH SUBJECT: XXXXXXXXXXXXX Ref: Beijing XXXXXXXXXXXXX Classified By: Economic Minister Counselor Robert Luke. Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). Summary ------- 1. (C) CDA spoke by phone with on May 14 to discuss recent pressure by the Chinese government to censor the company's Chinese website, accelerated perhaps by the approach of significant political anniversaries.XXXXXXXXXXXXX averred that the root of the problem was China's Politburo Standing Committee member XXXXXXXXXXXXX who wants the company to remove a link to the uncensored google.com site from its sanitized Chinese version, google.cn. XXXXXXXXXXXXX said Google China has resisted that step as against ...

XXXXXXXXXXXXX UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BEIJING 001957 SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR EAP/CM - SFLATT, JHABJAN STATE EEB/CIP - SFLYNN, FSAEED USTR FOR AWINTER, JMCHALE, TWINELAND COMMERCE FOR MAC COMMERCE FOR ITA - NMELCHER NSC FOR JLOI EO 12958 N/A TAGS ETRD, PHUM, PGOV, ECON, CH SUBJECT: GOOGLE CLAIMS HARRASSMENT BY CHINESE GOVERNMENT 1. (SBU) Summary. XXXXXXXXXXXXX claim the company's services have been blocked by the Chinese government periodically over the past three years. After users reported on June 18 that Google.cm search engine was not filtering returns for pornographic sites, the government on June 24 again blocked the company's services for 24 hours resulting in the loss of 20 percent of its traffic that day.XXXXXXXXXXXXX believe the real reason for the government's wrath is the company's refusal to remove a link to google.com from the google.cn website. They argue doing so would be in violation of a commitment the company made with Congress. End Summa...

by Josh Halliday Threat to international trade if nothing done about internet restrictions in more than 40 countries, says search engine Google is urging western governments to challenge internet censorship in countries such as China, saying the economic implications of stifled trade will become more grave if nothing is done. "More than 40 governments now engage in broad-scale restriction of online information, a tenfold increase from just a decade ago," the US-based technology giant warns in a policy brief on internet trade restrictions published yesterday. The warning follows an embattled 12 months in China, where Google has had to comply with state censorship rules or risk being kicked out of the world's most populous internet market. Google yesterday denied its policy brief was sparked by developments in China, where the company lags some way behind the native Baidu in the search market, but said the country's government was capable of "arbitrary ...

by Charles Arthur Has the custom version of Android been hacked, or are malware writers targeting Symbian's S60? Photo by opensourceway on Flickr. Some rights reserved Unconfirmed reports suggest that a mobile phone virus is spreading like a zombie plague among Chinese smartphone users - and that it has so affected 1m phones which are costing their users a total of around 2m yuan (£150,000) per day as they send out premium-rate text messages to people in the owners' contact books. A touch of scepticism may be in order: mobile phone viruses are much reported but generally little seen, and while China is a huge (huge, huge) market, the idea that this is feasible there but not in the developed west where mobile phone penetration is higher, and there has been longer-standing use, seems out of kilter. There is one possible reason why this might be happening in China, and not seen elsewhere: China Mobile, the country's largest mobile operator with about 570m subscrib...

from World news: China | guardian.co.uk by Tania Branigan Tianhe-1A capable of sustained computing of 2.507 petaflops – 1.4 times faster than Cray XT5 Jaguar China has overtaken the US as home of the world's fastest supercomputer. Tianhe-1A, named for the Milky Way, is capable of sustained computing of 2.507 petaflops – equivalent to 2,507 trillion calculations each second. The US scientist who maintains the international rankings visited it last week and said he believed it was 1.4 times faster than the former number one, the Cray XT5 Jaguar in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That topped the list in June with a rate of 1.75 petaflops. The US is home to more than half of the world's top 500 supercomputers. China had 24 in the last list, but has pumped billions of pounds into developing its computational ability in recent years. The machines are used for everything from modelling climate change and studying the beginnings of the universe to assisting aeroplane design. Housed...

from World news: China | guardian.co.uk Launch of Map World, which features an expansive view of the Great Wall, could spell further trouble for the internet giant in China A Chinese government body has released its own online satellite mapping service, designed to compete with Google Earth, which could spell further trouble for the internet giant's services on the mainland. Google and China have been at odds since last year, when a serious hacking attack originating from China prompted Google to ultimately withdraw its search service from the mainland. Map World was unveiled by the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping on Thursday. Its homepage features an expansive view of the Great Wall of China, capped by clouds in the shape of the continents. Google had not applied for a internet mapping licence in China, the English-language paper said, but Google's mapping service is accessible from computers on the mainland. Regulations issued by the bureau in May requir...

That's a bigger number than all the accounts Facebook possesses ... (not users, most of Facebook accounts are duplucates according to a recent survey). China is BIG ! on the eve of 2011 ... The total number of netizens in China reached 450 million at the end of November, up 20.3 percent year on year, said Wang Chen, head of China's State Council Information Office Thursday. China has seen a rapid expansion of Internet popularity since 1994 when it was connected to the Internet and had the biggest online population, said Wang, at a press conference.

China’s largest search engine Baidu said that its new microblogging service Baidu Talk has grabbed more than 1 million users after being launched three months ago. The new service incorporates Twitter-like features with additional capabilities of a fully fledged social networking platform. Baidu Talk was unveiled in mid-September as a closed beta, with new users joining in through invitation only. The difference between Baidu Talk and other microblogging services comes from the fact that Baidu requires all users to identify themselves with their real names, the feature that has apparently been the site’s main draw, according to Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo. Thanks to the third-party verification, Baidu believes that interactions in Baidu Talk are “more civil,” better mirroring real life. “We don’t walk around in life giving out aliases or wearing masks. We shouldn’t do that in all spaces online. There should be a space where people can interact with their real name,” Kuo sai...

Lawsuit Comes Amid Increased Scrutiny Over Mobile Privacy by Kunur Patel NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Apple and top app developers are facing a lawsuit alleging they’ve been illegally shuttling iPhone and iPad users’ personal data to advertisers without consent. (Bloomberg Businessweek first reported the filing.) The lawsuit seeks class action status against Apple and app developers Pandora, Backflip Studios, Weather Channel and Dictionary.com, which were also named as defendants, for alleged privacy and computer fraud violations. Apple and the other defendants are accused of transmitting personal, identifying information, including app use, to third-party ad networks without user consent. “Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views,” states the complaint. Apple did not respond to requests for comment, while the Weather Channel and Pandora declined comment. ...

Source : Global Times By Sun Zhe Google's web mapping service may be blocked in China next year if the search giant refuses to move its mapping server to the Chinese mainland for official licensing. The State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping has designated March 31 as the deadline for application, and any unlicensed web mapping service providers still in operation on July 1 would be punished, Wu Jiang, the spokesman with the bureau, said Monday. 'There is a possibility that those unlicensed mapping service providers will be closed down or blocked,' Wu said. Online map service providers were required to get licensed with the bureau starting May this year. Non-Chinese web map service providers are required to form a joint venture with a local firm and locate their data server in the Chinese mainland to undergo regular inspections for possible leakage of confidential information. Google Maps is still in talks with the bureau on the license issue, said the bureau's Wu, who d...

Source : Global Times By Zhao Qian Baidu Inc, operator of the nation's most popular Internet search engine, has begun official cooperation with book publishers by charging for its e-book services, a first step in its fight against piracy, analysts said Monday. Readers will be able to purchase electronic books from the Baidu e-book store, a section of the Baidu Library launched late last year. E-books will reportedly cost around 10 percent of the same book in print form. In total, nine categories of books are being offered including lifestyle and technology, while some categories like literature remain empty on the site. The search engine launched its online store quietly over the weekend without any fanfare, presumably due to the sensitive IPR issues involved. Previously users could download e-books and documents via Baidu Library for free with the use of virtual money earned through submitting or sharing documents or books online. The library, which was launched last November, sto...

Photo via New York Times To aid in hunt for fossil fuels and minerals to mine China has evidently entered the arena of deep sea submersible building, which is hardly surprising considering the nation's current thrust towards achieving various feats of technological derring-do. According to the New York Times , Chinese researchers have built a sub intended to descend to 4.35 miles below the surface -- which would edge out "the current global leader" -- and it has already been tested at depths of at least 2 miles (see the video after the jump for proof). But what jumped out at me about the story was the objective of successfully testing such a sub: To explore for hard-to-reach oil and mineral reserves, of course. Yes, just the second paragraph in the NY Times story hits on the practical purpose of having a fleet of such impressive submersibles around: The men, who descended more than two miles...

The Tianhe-1A Supercomputer NVIDIA Earlier this week China unveiled the world’s fastest bullet train, and today it boasts the world’s fastest supercomputer . Unveiled earlier today, the Tianhe-1A supercomputer has set a new performance record at 2.507 petaflops via 7,168 NVIDIA GPUs and 14,336 CPUs, unseating the Cray XT5 Jaguar at Oak Ridge National Labs as the world record holder. Tianhe-1A was designed by the National University of Defense Technology in China, but like the XT5 Jaguar it will be operated as an open access system for high-powered, large scale scientific computations. Costing $88 million, Tianhe-1A weighs 155 tons and consumes 4.04 megawatts of electricity. That sounds like a lot of power, but for what Tianhe-1A is capable of it’s actually pretty efficient. By integrating GPUs (graphic processing units) versus CPUs (central processing units, or your basic microprocessors) cuts power co...

In this photo released by China's Xinhua news agency, a China Railway High-Speed (CRH) train enters Bengbu south railway station, a stop in Anhui province on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line, on Friday. Photo: AP. A Chinese passenger train hit a record speed of 302 miles per hour (486 kilometers per hour) on Friday during a test run of a yet-to-be opened link between Beijing and Shanghai, state media said. The Xinhua News Agency said it was the fastest speed recorded by an unmodified conventional commercial train. Other types of trains in other countries have travelled faster. A specially modified French TGV train reached 357.2 mph (574.8 kph) during a 2007 test, while a Japanese magnetically levitated train sped to 361 mph (581 kph) in 2003. State television footage showed the sleek white train whipping past green farm fields in eastern China. It reached the top speed on a segment of the 824-mile (1,318-kilometer)-long line between Zaozhuang city in ...

China "hijacked" 15 per cent of the world's internet traffic for 18 minutes earlier this year including highly sensitive email exchanges between senior US government and military figures, a report to the US Congress said. China "hijacked" 15 per cent of the world's internet traffic for 18 minutes earlier this year, including highly sensitive email exchanges between senior US government and military figures, a report to the US Congress said. Photo: REUTERS By Heidi Blake 8:08AM GMT 18 Nov 2010 A state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm re-routed around 15 per cent of all web traffic through its own servers during a brief period on April 8, the report said. The incident has raised fears that China may have harvested highly-sensitive information from re-routed emails. Another theory is that it could be testing a cyberweapon that could disrupt internet traffic from foreign servers. The traffic included email exchanges from websites of the US Senate and the D...

When you think of a housewife, your mind conjures up stereotypical images of home-cooked food, a loving home, and clean linens. In China, this congenial image is being perverted from loving homemaker to international smuggler . According to a recent report, customs officials have detained 14 housewives suspected of smuggling electronics into China. The seized bounty reportedly includes 88 Apple iPads and 340 mobile phones, a treasure trove estimated to be worth of 950,000 yuan ($143,000 USD). One suspect had 85 mobile phones in her possession; 65 were strapped to her waist and 20 more were concealed in her handbag.These women were chosen by professional smuggling rings because of their unsuspecting appearance and were being paid a mere 200 yuan ($30 USD) per run to smuggle items into China. The Chinese grey market is a multi-billion dollar industry with smugglers using creative means to bring highly coveted devices into the country. The iPad 3G is at the top of this ...

China breaks the world record for the fastest passenger-capable train. At 486 kph (302mph) it's more than double the fastest train in America. China's record-setting train STORY HIGHLIGHTS The unmodified commercial train hits 481.1 kph (nearly 300 mph), state media says That tops the previous record by 64.5 kph (CNN) -- A Chinese high-speed train broke a world record Friday for fastest unmodified commercial train, reaching speeds of up to 481.1 kph (298.9 mph), state media reported. According to China's official Xinhua news agency, the new-generation CRH380 moved as fast as a low-cruising jet-plane during a trial run on what will become the country's rail line between Beijing and Shanghai. The previous world record was set by China in September, when a train on a Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed line hit a speed of 416.6 kilometers per hour, Xinhua said.

China launched a state-sponsored, Twitter-like service called Red Microblog Wednesday, the first step in a plan for local governments to master new media. Beyond its superficial characteristics, Twitter ( ) users wouldn’t recognize China’s new microblogging service. Its first posts are mostly party-line cheerleading, extolling the virtues of Chairman Mao and tweeting philosophical ideas that would be more at home at a self-help seminar than a Twitter feed. For example: “Those who go with the flow are forever going up and down in the waves; only those who go against the wind fearing no hardship, can reach the other side fast.” “I really like the words by Chairman Mao [Zedong] that ‘The world is ours; we should work together.’ “ The nascent service ran into a technical glitch on its first day, as new member registration wasn’t working yet. Given the Chinese government’s close supervision of the online activities of its population, users of this new “Red Twitter” are cert...