{ design@tive } information design
Michael Anti (aka Jing Zhao) has been blogging from China for 12 years. Despite the control the central government has over the Internet — “All the servers are in Beijing” (also known as “The Great Firewall of China”) — he says that hundreds of millions of microbloggers are in fact creating the first national public sphere in the country’s history, and shifting the balance of power in unexpected ways […]
The People’s Republic of China is building a great economic wall around its domestic online gaming industry. Reuters reports the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) is prohibiting investment by foreigners in the industry, through either “joint ventures, wholly owned enterprises and cooperatives.” […]
Blizzard and World of Warcraft have been having some trouble as of late in China, but this piece of news seems much more foreboding that anything that came before it. Apparently, an anonymous insider says China’s General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has assigned Shanghai’s News and Press Bureau to investigate a joint venture established by NetEase and Blizzard […]
Money is moving in a new direction in China — out: Some Chinese are so eager to turn their yuan into other assets that when an online real estate brokerage organized a tour of foreclosure auctions in the United States, it received so many applications that it had to turn away nearly 400 people. In Shanghai, cash-rich Chinese companies are buying high-yield bonds issued by distressed American companies at a time when most investors are steering clear of bonds even from solid companies […]
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. 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…
Yan Xiaohong, vice-minister of the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC), said on Thursday at a press conference that the authorities shut down 339 illegal websites, confiscated 123 servers and imposed fines of more than 870,000 yuan (about 120,000U.S. dollars) on violators. Despite repeated crackdowns on online piracy, it is still a challenge to protect intellectual property rights: ‘Internet copyright infringement is still very prevalent in the country’, Yan told a press conference held by the State Council Information Office recently, noting that illegal downloading of movies, software and music is the most common form of online piracy…
Culminating a 13-year drafting process, on August 30 the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress enacted China’s first competition law, the Anti-Monopoly Law ( [Fan Longduan Fa] ). It prohibits discriminatory and anti-competitive practices by local administrative and public bodies against products, business operators and investors from other parts of China, and Fines for monopoly agreements and abuses of dominant position may range as high as one to ten percent of the wrongdoing company’s total sales volume in the relevant market during the previous year…