WeChat: the Chinese social media app that has dissidents worried
A woman uses her smartphone in Beijing. WeChat is being tipped as China's first smartphone app to be a big seller worldwide. Photograph: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg via Getty Images Angela Zou hardly writes text messages now.
Nicholas Rombes Section
There are other odd, improbable, tenuous connections, as if Hangsaman had a secret way of speaking to (or through) other artifacts beyond its time. ...more VillainsDjango is not a movie with “villains.”
Tencent's WeChat is a Threat to Everyone
We have written a lot about WeChat, Tencent’s mobile chat app (it’s called Weixin in China). As its user count grows, it’s beginning to get a lot of attention elsewhere, too. Interestingly, though, lots of people see Weixin as a threat. Many of our readers have probably already come across this article in The Guardian, which paints the service as a threat to dissidents in China in part because it can report location data in addition to whatever is being said.
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Facebook Backer Alisher Usmanov Now Focused on China
Billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who made more than $1 billion investing in Facebook Inc. (FB), is now avoiding the U.S. and focusing on China, where the company holds stakes in online-commerce companies. The valuations of U.S. technology companies are too high to justify making new investments, Ivan Streshinskiy, chief executive officer of the company that manages Usmanov’s assets, USM Advisors LLC, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “We’re not investing in the U.S. at the moment,” Streshinskiy said. “People got used to these huge multiples, often forgetting about the basic fundamentals of the business.” The Uzbekistan-born Usmanov, 59, emerged as Russia’s richest man this year following a shift from commodities to technology.
Telecoms Firms Ready for Mobile Payment Services Next Year -
China Mobile, China Unicom expect millions of people to begin buying things such as bus tickets through their cell phones (Beijing) – The country's telecoms operators are preparing to roll out mobile payment services next year that will allow bill and point-of-sale transactions to be completed. China Mobile, the country's largest telecoms operator, is expected to sell more than 10 million mobile phones that have near-field communication (NFC) payment functions in 2013, Li Yan, technology director at the company's e-commerce subsidiary, said on December 6. Mobile payment services based on the NFC standards will become important growth point for the industry, Li said.
Fei Chang Dao: Baidu's New Censorship Policies for Leaders' Names After the 18th Party Congress
Prior to November 2012, Baidu's practice was to restrict all queries containing the name of a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China ("PBSC") to a strict white list of about a dozen websites controlled by the central government and the Communist Party: State Run News Outlets The China Daily (chinadaily.com.cn) The Economic Daily (www.ce.cn) The People's Daily (people.com.cn) The Guang Ming Daily (gmw.cn) Xinhua (xinhuanet.com) China News Service (chinanews.com.cn) State Run Broadcasters China Radio International (cri.cn) China Central Television (cctv.com and cntv.com)
Freedom not at odds with online regulation
Good things should exist forever. An unspoken assumption is that negative elements should be identified and constrained. The Internet is a typical example. It has changed the world, including the lives of Chinese people.
Gougou, Notorious Chinese Pirate Search Engine, Shuts Down
The Gougou.com page right now with its closure notice. It was just a few weeks ago that Gougou.com, China’s most notorious pirate content search engine, was added to the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) report on major copyright offenders. And now the service has finally shut down. Visitors to the site right now will see that the search box has vanished, and there’s just a bilingual notice; in English it says: Gougou.com has been closed down.
