I realize that scientify data — sometimes — tends to skew towards where scientists want to, but this one is quite interesting: Read More…

China’s dot-com economy grew nearly 63 percent year on year in the second quarter, despite increasing inflation and the effects of the Sichuan earthquake, a Shanghai-based research firm reported recently.

Revenue generated by China’s online search, game and travel providers reached 13.32 billion yuan (US$1.94 billion) in the April-to-June period, iResearch said.

Because of the runup in prices and the natural disaster, the quarterly growth rate was only 14.9 percent.

In addition to the revenue earned by Internet services firms, overall trade volume generated by buyers and sellers also rose during the quarter, hitting 29.1 billion yuan, up 22.6 percent from the first quarter.

Online game revenue, which was influenced by the earthquake, gained 9.2 percent quarter on quarter to 5.08 billion yuan, compared with 13.4 percent growth in the first quarter.

China halted all entertainment services nationwide, including online games, for three days in May to mourn the earthquake victims.

“New-media leaders are outpacing the old-media players as the online media break down the barriers (geography, distribution and content) to make them accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime,” Richard Ji, a Morgan Stanley’s analyst, said in a report.

China’s Internet population recently took the No. 1 spot from the United States for the first time.

On June 30, China had 253 million Internet users, compared with about 220 million in the US, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

There’s even higher potential ahead. Only 19.1 percent of all Chinese are Internet users, compared with 60 to 70 percent in the US, Japan and South Korea.

And the Beijing Olympics, which opens this weekend, provides even more good news. The Games are expected to fuel a surge in online advertising and cyber games, according to the report by iResearch.

The Internet economy will be powered by online advertising for the Beijing event and the advent of third-generation telecommunications services in the world’s No. 1 mobile phone market, iResearch said.

The coming high-speed mobile network will allow handset users to enjoy new and faster data services, such as video conferences and film downloads.

Among the cyber-market segment, Baidu still leads in the search sector, with Alibaba.com dominating online auction services, followed by foreign players Google and eBay. Competition in online games is heating up as many newcomers have entered the fray. Only about 27 percent of China’s online game revenue was contributed by major Internet portals such as Sohu and Sina, according to iResearch findings.

Athletes, officials, spectators and tourists can pick up the Bible or just the New Testament for free during the Olympic Games. Tens of thousands of copies of the Bible, the New Testament and booklets with just the four Gospels (according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) have been printed for the purpose, say officials of China’s Christian society.

News of the printing of the Scriptures should put pay to rumors started by overseas agencies saying the Chinese authorities would not make the Bible available at the Games.

Rev Xu Xiaohong, an official of the Shanghai-based China Christian Council in charge of publishing, says 50,000 bilingual (Chinese and English) editions of the Gospel booklets had already been printed by June. They are on way to six cities hosting the Olympic events in the mainland.

As has been the practice at earlier Games, the Gospel booklets will be available mainly in churches and the Olympic Village in Beijing, and in Qingdao, Shanghai, Shenyang, Tianjin and Qinhuangdao, Xu says.

Places of worship for people of other religions too have been set up in the Olympic Village, Chen Guangyuan, president of the Islamic Association of China has said.

The cover of the Gospel booklet will have the Beijing Olympics logo. “This is especially significant (because) as far as I know, this is the first time an Olympics logo will be used on a religious booklet,” Xu says. “The Olympic spirit and the spirit of living a ‘purpose-driven life’ that Christians believe in come together in the combination.”

Nanjing-based Amity Printing Co, the country’s major printer of the Bible, has printed the Gospel booklets. Its general manager Li Chunnong says 30,000 copies of the New Testament (Chinese-English bilingual edition) are being printed for free distribution during the Games.

The Beijing Christian Council has placed an order with Amity to reprint 10,000 copies of the bilingual Bible edition to be distributed in the Olympic Village, Li says.

Amity Printing is a joint venture of the country’s Amity Foundation and the international United Bible Society.

“This is a major and exciting opportunity. We are privileged to be able to support the Church in China in the publishing of the Bible during the Olympics,” says James Catford, chief executive of the Bible Society.

The society, however, has no plans to provide free copies of the Bible in hotels, according to Xu.

Churches in Beijing have been asked to provide people to man the Olympic Village chapel and hold services and prayers, says Liu Bainian, vice-president of the China Patriotic Catholic Association.

China saw a slowdown in auto sales growth in the first half of 2008, due largely to increasing gas prices and looming restrictions on vehicle operation for better air quality during the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on recently that between January and June 2008, the country sold 3.61 million passenger motor vehicles, a growth of 17.07 percent over the same period a year previous. The growth rate, however, was 5.19 percentage points lower than the 22.26 percent level recorded in the same period last year.

The total included 2.67 million cars, up 16.72 percent and 111,400 multiple purpose vehicles (MPVs), an increase of 4.09 percent. In addition, 224,300 sport utility vehicles (SUVs) were sold, up 42 percent.

The top-10 brands accounted for 1.76 million units, or 65.86 percent, of the total car sales. They were FAW Volkswagen, Shanghai Volkswagen, Shanghai GM, FAW Toyota, Chery, Dongfeng Nissan, Beijing Hyundai, Guangzhou Honda, Geely and Chang’an Ford.

In June, 588,300 passenger vehicles were sold nationwide, up 15.23 percent over the same month last year.

The total included 433,600 cars, up 13.19 percent, 18,100 MPVs, up 4.53 percent, and 45,200 SUVs, up 49.25 percent.

Analysts with the association attributed the fast growth of SUV sales partly to mounting demand driven by disaster relief.

Experts with the Zhonglian Auto Trade Market in Beijing said most potential auto buyers had taken a wait-and-see attitude and that the market would warm again in late September upon easing of the Olympic auto restrictions.

The parent of China Mobile (0941.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), the country’s top wireless operator, have started commercial trials of a homegrown third-generation wireless standard, TD-SCDMA, in eight cities on April 1, state media said recently. Shares in several Hong Kong-listed equipment vendors, including China Communications Services Corp Ltd (0552.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) and China Wireless Technologies Ltd (2369.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), rose on Friday, as investors anticipate heavy spending on telecoms gear.

The commercial trials will help to improve TD-SCDMA technology, as well as provide better mobile services during the Beijing Olympics, according to Xinhua News agency.

The eight cities chosen for the trials are Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Xiamen and Qinhuangdao.

Five of the eight cities are hosting events for the Beijing Olympics in August. China has promised to provide 3G mobile phone services in time for the Games.

The service features high-speed data transmissions that can allow users to watch videos, play 3D games, and conduct video conferences.

China Mobile would provide 20,000 users with handsets worth 2,000 yuan (282 U.S. dollars) to 4,000 yuan each and data cards free of charge for the trial use, it said. A monthly subsidy of 800 yuan would also be offered to each user.

The first batch of 3G handsets were made by six producers, including China’s Lenovo, Hisense, ZTE and New Postcom, and South Korea’s Samsung and LG, it said.

A company spokesman said the trial service would have nothing to do with the issue of 3G licenses. He did not disclose how long the trial service would last or whether it would be extended to other cities.

The next move will be taken depending on the test results of the trial,” he said.

The company says its TD-SCDMA network could accommodate 8 million users.

China had 565 million mobile phone users by the end of last month, about 43 percent of the population.

The International Telecommunication Union recognized TD-SCDMA as one of the world’s three official 3G standards in 2000. The other two are Europe’s WCDMA and North America’s CDMA 2000.

The Chinese government last year approved the use of the European and American standards in China.

Some western governments and companies have accused China of delaying the issue of 3G licenses to allow its indigenous standard to mature enough to compete with foreign rivals.

But Xi Guohua, Vice-Minister of Chinese Information Industry Ministry said last year that the government would give equal status to WCDMA and CDMA 2000 despite its support for the domestic standard.

Analysts also expect the better-established W-CDMA and CDMA2000 standards for 3G to be launched in China alongside TD-SCDMA, although the timing is not yet known.

Olympus AD on big screen
credits: spiced fish

China’s online advertising market is likely to exceed ten billion yuan (1.3 billion U.S. dollars) this year, a research report said. The figure represents a 114.6 percent increase from the 4.66 billion yuan of last year.

In October, the nation’s online advertising revenues hit 870 million yuan, lifting the market size to 7.5 billion yuan in the first ten months, according to the report from Nielsen, a leading global information and media company.

The report noted that China’s web advertising market will post faster growth in the coming months as the 2008 Beijing Olympics nears and businesses from home and abroad seek to cash in on the nation’s huge purchasing power.

The growth rate of China’s online advertising, one of the most successful business models for Internet firms, was higher than that of broadcasting advertising and magazine advertising.

Sina, Netease, QQ, and Sohu, China’s four largest Internet portals, are big gainers of the robust online advertising growth. Their total advertising incomes exceeded 100 million U.S. dollars for the first time in the third quarter of the year.

The report also shows that entertainment and fast consumable products makers have overtaken financial and property firms as the largest spenders on web advertising.

Apart from brand logo advertising and pay-per-click search engine, China’s online media are exploring new ways for advertising such as video ad, game ad and blog ad, among others.

“The blog advertising is still in its infancy. If successful, it will create more advertising carriers and tactics,” said Du Hong, Vice President of web portal Sina.

“Blogads’ will not work in short period,” cautioned Li Zhuohuan, CEO of jiwai.de, a China’s Twitter-clone microblog community, adding that bloggers that enjoy high readership usually do not want those poorly-made ads to distract or annoy their readers.

Frontiers like bokee.com and blogcn.com did give it a shot, promoting services like “Blogad Revenue Share”, meaning that bloggers will get a slim share of the profit by every ad click-through.

U.S. online ad spend in 2007 is expected to reach 20 billion U.S. dollars, up 26 percent in the first three quarters, according to an Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) report.