Chinese electronics manufacturers are known in the west not so much for their own products for the fact that they are usually used as OEM companies by more established companies from the west. But this close relationship with the giant electronics companies only means that technology transfer happens and these companies benefit from the relationship.

Two companies that are getting a lot of benefits from its role as an OEM are both ZTE and Huawei. These two companies are actually extremely huge and successful companies from the east that are rarely known outside of the region. But both companies have a desire to enter the western market and they are going to do it this year. More →

It looks like China is going to have yet another reason to loathe Google after the search engine giant caught an entity trying to hack Gmail accounts via social engineering.

Through the strength of our cloud-based security and abuse detection systems*, we recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing. This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists. (Official Google Blog)

Although Google isn’t directly accusing the People’s Republic orchestrating these attacks, they did note how unusual it was for those engaged in Phisihing campaigns to target specific users instead of going after the general audience.

Google thwarted the Phishing campaign and is encouraging everyone to utilize their 2-step verification feature to prevent similar attacks in the future.

Note: Is it me, or does it seem like China is either instigating or turning a blind eye when it comes to these types of attacks?

The ongoing riot in Tibet displays China’s Internet censorship prowess at its finest. Other countries pay attention and jot down notes. It turned out blocking YouTube and Google News is just an initial salvo.

BusinessWeek reports the Chinese government has banned journalists and tourist from entering Tibet to control the flow of information. To make matters really worse, there is a stricter measure implemented over the Internet.

All comments in different blog-hosting companies are filtered to be consistent with the news release from state-controlled media companies including China Central Television and Xinhua News Agency.

Even popular search engines like Baidu, Yahoo! China and MSN China are playing safe to avoid suffering the same fate as Google News. These leading sites only add news coming from state-owned media companies.

It goes to show how China is obsessively compulsive when it comes to suppressing freedom of speech and flow of information. However, it should not underestimate the power of the frustrated online mob for it has the power bypass all these controls.

It’s inevitable. Reuters reported that Beijing-based research firm BDA claims China has outpaced US as the world’s biggest Internet market in terms of its users.

However, these are all based on projections and not on actual count. Based on data from China Internet Network Information Center, Internet users in the Great Firewall of China reached 210 million in 2007. Nielsen/NetRatings, on the other hand, records that US Internet population totaled 216 million in the same period.

Analyst Bin Liu said that if you simply assume the growth rates of both markets will remain the same as in 2007, you can easily conclude China is now ahead of US. Though China will certainly outpace US, this projection fails to factor in market trends shaping this industry in both countries and simply assumes all things to be equal.

The saying “truth is stranger than fiction” applies to China. Though it is notorious for suppressing online freedom, a new report reveals that children in China are more likely to be exposed to online dangers compared to children in the US, France, Brazil and Japan.

Conducted by Symantec Corp among 4,600 online adults and 2,700 online children, it turned out about 50% of the Chinese children 8 to 17 years old have received inappropriate materials online. Aside from that, 41% said they have talked to strangers online about sensitive and offensive topics like sex.

These numbers are strikingly worse compared to the US where only 16% received inappropriate materials and a meager 4% experienced talking about sex to online strangers.

No one earth would be very devastated to hear this report than the powerful Chinese authorities. Of course, the initial reaction is denial. According to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) director Liu Bin:

I don’t think China’s Internet environment is worse than in other countries. But the lack of proper protection systems, especially in Internet cafes in rural areas, does increase the chances of children being exposed to danger on the Internet.

Well, I think this will motivate China to apply more pressure online and vex the already aggravated privacy groups.

via ChinaDaily

One of the sure-fire ways to vex the always watchful Great Firewall of China is an Internet sex scandal involving its famous celebrities in Hong Kong.

This might be one of the reasons, aside from public castigation, why popular actor and hip-hop artist Edison Chen apologized to the public and vowed to leave the show business indefinitely. But for perverts, he’s the sex god of China these days.

In case you don’t know, Chen was in the movie The Grudge 2 with Sarah Michelle Gellar. Ok, never mind. Back to the main issue.

According to Chen, those 1,300 sex and sexually suggestive photos of 6 famous celebrities were stolen when he went to a computer repair shop to fix his lustful laptop. It was later uploaded on the Net by one of the shop’s crew.

To date, this scandal has led to 10 arrests for distributing explicit photos – a big deal if you’re in China since pornography is a mortal sin there. China even censured its local search engine Baidu.com for allegedly helping spread these photos.

Then again, 1,300 private photos? Wow!

China has become exceedingly efficient in busting online pornography. According to a news report, the government proudly announces that it closed down 44,000 porn sites, made 868 arrests and penalized almost 2,000 people connected with this operation.

Today, China has the 2nd biggest online population composed of 210 million people. Given this massive force, Chinese president Hu Jintao believes pornography is a big threat to social stability so strict measures are needed to control its flow.

Recently, the ever suppressive China announced its plan to limit video-sharing sites to state-controlled companies. I feel sorry for those Chinese perverts but the good news is there is light at the end of this oppressive tunnel. Xinhua reports this whole anti-pornography campaign will loosen up after the prestigious Olympics in September.

Despite Google’s attempt to be more Chinese-like with its controversial “Guge” name, it is not enough to surmount the power of Chinese search engine Baidu.com.

According to several interviews conducted by Pearl Research, the awareness level among Chinese youth demographic remains relatively low compared to Baidu. Moreover, Baidu’s first-mover advantage combined with its strong local tie-ups makes it a formidable foe.

“I believe that Google will continue to face challenges in competing with Baidu in the Chinese search engine market. Baidu’s lead is mostly a result of its Chinese brand, early market entry, strong entertainment functions and other youth-friendly features. However, many of our panel believed that Google offers a robust product with more relevant and precise search results.” said Allison Luong, Managing Director of Pearl Research.

The game is not yet over for Google. Despite the flaws cited above, its accuracy and depth of information enable the company to foster strong brand loyalty among its current users.

Berggi has entered into a three-year strategic partnership with SINA Corporation of China to jointly develop and market consumer mobile portal services in China. The partnership comes at the close of a stunning first year for Berggi, which has already amassed close to 2,000,000 registered users for it mobile services worldwide since April, and is adding more than 15,000 new users a day.

The partnership aims to develop and deploy ad-supported mobile services to the Chinese consumer mobile market. China is the largest mobile phone market in the world and the number of mobile subscribers is projected to reach 600 million by 2010. China is already the world’s second largest market for web usage. The first service developed under the partnership agreement – a mobile email service – will launch later this month.

Following Google’s recent investment in Tianya.cn, Google China Blog Search goes live today.

Said to be self-censored, this blog search returns results that are controlled such that they adhere to China’s local laws, regulations, and policies. For example, sensitive search queries that do not comply with certain laws will not properly return results, but will instead display a place-holder image that explains why the results do not show.

Google is still in the process of tweaking its algorithms to fit China’s desired censorship parameters. But for now, it’s up and running.

Via Google Blogoscoped.