China, Intel, open Net cafes
p2p news / p2pnet: Communist China has jailed more people for posting online than anywhere else.
It’s also one of the few countries that’s managed to ’sanitise’ the Net by blocking access to all criticism of the regime, “while at the same time expanding it (China has more than 130 million users),” says, Reporters Without Borders.
But it not only survives, it prospers, thanks largely to almost unlimited financial and technical support from the likes of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and legions of other hard-core commercial operations. And it keeps its surfing population well-and-truly straight-jacketed by relentlessly policing everything that happens online, and shutting down ‘unlicensed’ Net cafes.
Or put another way, “China recently has taken several steps to clean up its ‘fledgling and troublesome’ cafe business, where poor operating conditions have led to major problems,” says CNET News, quoting the China state news and propaganda agency, Xinhua.
However, that applies to certain cafes only. Others are OK, as long as they’re strictly and tightly controlled.
Enter Intel.
It and Chinese wireless Net company Tom Online on Tuesday announced a partnership to “promote a positive image” of “China’s Internet cafes,” says CNET.
TOM already has one deal going with eBay’s Skype, and now it and Intel and are introducing 13 Intel i-Cafe Music Studios, the first of which was opened last weekend in Zhengzhou in Henan.
“The cafes will be equipped with Intel’s digital home entertainment technologies, where budding musicians can publish their songs directly to the Web via Tom Online’s music platform, called Wanleba,” says CNET. “Fans can then download the songs to their laptops, mobile phones and other wireless gadgets.”
The story doesn’t say if the new China P2P Application Promotion Alliance will be involved, but, “Nearly all of China’s 110,000 Internet cafes will be consolidated under the management of larger, mainly state-owned companies in the next three years, according to an October report,” says CNET.
“The government is concerned about the sudden popularity of such cafes, which are gathering places for online gamers and those seeking Web information outside of official sources, in a country where many still cannot afford PCs or Internet access.”
Thus, “Companies said to be getting into the business are mainly state-owned,” says the story. “They include telecom providers such as China Unicom, Great Wall Broadband Network and China Netcom.”
Also read:-
unlicensed’ Net – China’s summer surfing crackdown, June 21, 2004
CNET News – Intel opens Net cafes in China, November 29, 2005
eBay’s Skype – Simplified Chinese Skype, September 5, 2005
P2P Application Promotion Alliance – China goes p2p, November 2, 2005
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If you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
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