Imagethief

Last year the Ministry of Information Industry, China's technology and Internet regulator, announced that it would implement a rule requiring all bloggers to register their real names. Last week MII changed its mind, apparently in response to lobbying from the technology industry. Now the question is, will the new decision stick?

My wife spent last week rebuilding her computer's software from the ground-up, starting with a drive re-formatting and complete OS reinstall. Her troubles started soon after we connected to the DSL network in Shanghai.

My CNET Asia blogging colleague, Doug Crets, is too modest to blow his own horn. So I'll blow it for him. Go check out his article on the ethical woes of "American Internet companies in China" in the Asia Sentinal. Doug doesn't pull his punches:

Tech giants operating in China don't stress the ethical principles they follow in other parts of the world, particularly in the United States and Europe. Lured by the massive, rapidly expanding market, the Chinese Government can take advantage of companies' desire for profit to compel obedience and use the technology to disenfranchise users. Far from opening up the Internet in China, the actions of Google and others have been a disheartening case of Western companies getting in line with the restrictive practices imposed by the Chinese state on their own large--and dominant--Internet players, like Baidu, the leading search engine.

The article also includes comments from always thoughtful Rebecca MacKinnon. Check it out.

There have been a few reports recently lamenting the price of Internet access in China. The China Daily has now got around to publishing an article comparing the cost of Internet access in China to several developed countries and to India. The results? Well, from where I'm standing, China looks like a bargain. But, then, I'm pretty prosperous by Chinese standards. And fairly happy about that.

David Wolf at Silicon Hutong, one of the China's best biz tech blogs, has heard what Yahoo's! Jerry Yang has to say about forming an online advertising exchange in China. And he is not impressed. Wolf recalls a long list of inglorious Yang missteps in China and then writes:

Any other executive with a similar track record would have been reassigned, if not fired, long ago.

And now Jerry wants Yahoo! China to be in the advertising exchange business.

Dave at Mutant Palm, one of the better blogs in China, has noticed something interesting on the search engine run by Tencent, one of the gorillas on the Chinese Internet and the company behind the ubiquitous QQ instant messaging program. They have a search engine called SoSo (搜搜) In Mandarin, "sou" means "search").

A research house in China is defending the country from accusations of software piracy, saying the picture is not nearly as bad as has been portrayed by "some international organizations" (read: The Business Software Alliance, or BSA).

So, do they have a leg to stand on? Not so much, I'm thinking.

Caijing is arguably China's best business magazine. Under editor Hu Shuli, it has in the past few years earned a reputation for solid journalism and ethics that are beyond reproach (a big deal in a country where journalism scandals are depressingly regular). This month the cover story is Google's fortunes in China. Conveniently, Caijing translates some of its editorials and articles into English every month, including this two-parter on Google. The articles suggests that Google could be turning itself around here, but they also show that the company remains prickly about its status in China.

Two quick ones for the road because I am going on vacation for 10 days and really need to get out of the office right now. But these were both worthy of posting.