Per Karlberg

bits and pieces

Google considers pulling out of China due to human rights and freedom of speech concerns

Voice, Loyalty, Exit:

"We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."
[...] We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

googleblog.blogspot.com >> new-approach-to-china

It will be VERY interesting to follow how this plays out. Definitely non-evil.

Update:
See continuous follow-up at: http://twitter.com/kaiserkuo

Censoring seems to be disabled although "uncensored" result seem to have high pagerank crowding out "new" sites. However, Tankman can be found via google.cn, try the mis-spelled query "tianamen", screencapture below:

Screencapture: tianamen Google.cn

Update 2:

Details about the attack:
wired.com >> threatlevel >> google-hack-attack/

Details about the vulnerability:
iDefense >> Adobe Reader and Acrobat JpxDecode Memory Corruption Vulnerability

Private equity i Kina blir mer kinesiskt

"What’s changed? PE firms grew large and successful raising and investing US dollars,  and then taking Chinese companies public in Hong Kong or New York. This worked beautifully for a long time, in large part because China’s own capital markets were relatively underdeveloped. Now, the best profit opportunities are for PE investors using renminbi and exiting on China’s domestic stock markets. Many of the first generation PE firms are stuck holding an inferior currency, and an inferior path to IPO. "
[...]
In the end, success in PE investing comes down to one thing: maximizing the difference between your entry and exit price. This differential will often be twice as large for investors with renminbi as those with dollars. The basic reason is that stock market valuations in China, on a current p/e basis, are over twice as high as in Hong Kong and New York – or an average of about 30 times earnings in China, compared to fifteen times earnings in Hong Kong and US.
[...]
For PE firms, the stark reality is: if you can’t enter with renminbi and exit in China, you cut your profit potential in half."


"If given the freedom, of course, any PE investor would choose to exit in China. The problem is, they don’t have that freedom. Only fully-Chinese companies can IPO in China. It’s not possible for Chinese companies with what’s called an 'offshore structure'"

Läs hela artikeln på chinafirstcapital.com

Chinese social media landscape

It's interesting to see how very different the social media market is compared to the one we take for granted in the west.

Read more at:
sinotechblog.com.cn

Kina uppsida och nedsida

Newsweek - Everything You Know About China Is Wrong

"Beijing has been feted for uniquely steady helmsmanship in financial storms. So perhaps it's natural for forecasters to assume that the Chinese supertanker of state is not turning sharply now, particularly since it continues to grow rapidly even as other economies sink in the recession. Yet this crisis is different—bigger and more damaging than any seen in generations—and it is exposing limits and forcing change in just about every key piece of the China model: the supremacy of the one-party state, the smart economic management, the export-driven growth, the emerging consumer class, the burgeoning private sector, the headlong focus on growth at any environmental cost, and the drive to build world-class companies."

Det går att ana skadeglädje och formuleringarna är inte alltid så objektiva, men det är ändå intressant att höra, i många fall, pålästa personer uttala de reservationer som finns mot the China way.

NYT - Beijing’s Air Is Cleaner, but Far From Clean

"Roughly four million vehicles clog Beijing roads, seven times the number about 15 years ago. On any given day, another 1,500 new vehicles join the crush. So it is no surprise that Beijing has some of the worst air pollution of any big city on earth.
No, the surprise is this: Beijing’s air is actually getting cleaner. China may have a hard-earned reputation for long-neglected and fearsome environmental problems, from poisoned rivers to chemical-belching smelters. But the nation’s capital, Beijing, is trying hard to clean up its dirty air."


picture courtesy of NYTimes.com.
Kanske motsatsen till den andra artikeln. Kul att höra lite positivt om miljöarbetet i Peking.

Kinesiska män letar för gäves efter svensk hemlig lesbisk stad

Efter ett missförstånd eller någon slags önsketänkande rapporterade den kinesiska statliga nyhetsbyrån Xinhua om en sluten, hemlig stad i norra Sverige där 25000 kvinnor lever under skandinaviskt syndiga förhållande. Staden sades vaktas av två blonda vakter som tar hand om alla som vill komma in i staden.

22476.jpg
bild från the local

Ryktet/myten/nyheten är rolig i sig, men dessutom har detta resulterat i att svenska turistbyråer blivit nerringda från Mittens rike och att svenska internetleverantörer har upplevt trafik nära maxkapacitet, eftersom en massa kinesiska män försökt ta reda på mer om Chako Paul City eller Shakebao (沙科保市), som staden tydligen heter...


Axplock:

TheNextWeb - How Chinese men searching for “village of hot lesbians” broke the Internet in Sweden

Shanghaiist - The complete story of the fabled Swedish Lesbian City

The Awl - China Reveals Secret Swedish City Of Woodworking Lesbians

Kinesiska webentreprenörer

Med 338 miljoner nätinvånare, en helt egen uppsättning webfavoriter och ett av de mest entreprenöriella kulturerna i världen är det konstigt att det inte sägs och skrivs mer om kinesiska web-startupper.

Före detta Googlechefen Kai-Fu Lee har filat vidare på planerna för sin entreprenörsinkubator, Innovation Works. Här är en bra artiekel från GigaOM om upplägget och möjligheterna:

Kai-Fu Lee Talks Up His Post-Google Plans

"At Innovation Works, Lee aims to provide a home for budding Chinese entrepreneurs, one that will foster ideas and quickly bring them to market. (With over 338 million users, China’s Internet market is by far the largest in the world.) So far, Innovation Works has received some 7,000 resumes from eager Chinese entrepreneurs.[...]

Though e-commerce accounted for just 7 percent of the Chinese Internet market five years ago, its share has since grown to 25 percent. Chinese web users were initially wary of purchasing things online due to fears of online scams, but e-retailers like 360buy.com and Ctrip.com have since come up with creative payment methods, Lee noted, such as payment upon delivery, to gain trust from consumers.

[...] Rampant piracy has rendered software virtually non-existent in the country, he explained, so gaming companies began charging people to play online, storing their game data in the cloud and sending China’s online gaming industry ballooning to $20 billion from $10 million in 1998."

Forget cloud - box computing is the future, Says Baidu CEO

The vastly admired Robin Li, presented the box computing concept at Stanford University today. Upon booting up a netbook och phone, the box is available instantly, before the OS or a browser and the functionality is similar to the frontpage of baidu.com. The box is the future of web for Baidu.

I have to admit that I don't fully understand the benefit. The concept is either very smart or quite stupid. And as for "before the OS or a browser": I have access to a browser within a second after opening a Macbook or starting a iPhone - today, pre-box computing.

See this article at GigaOm: The Future of Web According to Baidu
Chinese coverage:
China tech news: China Baidu.com Publishes "Box Computing" Platform
China daily: Baidu's 'box computing' fails to impress experts
and an interview by wsj.com from last week:
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