China

Google is giving itself about five years to unseat Baidu.com's dominance for Internet search in China, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday night.

"We would like to aspire to be a market leader in five years," Kai-Fu Lee, president of the Google's Greater China operation, told the Journal. Google also is examining possible investments in social networking and mobile Internet services, he said.

Chinese authorities in January announced they would ban ultrathin plastic bags, and make customers pay for reusable canvas grocery bags, in an effort to reduce waste.

A Beijing Review article quotes a Hangzhou supermarket manager on the old days, when shopping didn't produce billions of bags worth of waste that will biodegrade only after 200 years, if at all.

"When I was a child, my mother always took me to the vegetable market with a bamboo basket. She put a bowl in the basket for holding bean curd. When we bought sugar powder or salt, the sellers would … Read more

The inventor of the increasingly ubiquitous Pleco Chinese-English dictionary software for Palm and Windows Mobile devices said the company is "very seriously considering developing" an iPhone version.

In an interview in April's China International Business (not yet online), Michael Love tells of developing the 6-year-old product and how it's getting popular enough that many foreigners in China are buying PDAs or PDA phones just to use Pleco.

I, for one, would not have bought my Windows Mobile-running HTC Touch if not for this program, and untold dozens of my Beijing friends and acquaintances are carrying around … Read more

From my connection in Beijing, Blogspot has again gone offline. The transmission stops on a Chinese ISP server.

I was able to get through using proxies. Anyone else, or is this just me? Blogspot had reemerged two weeks ago after years being blocked almost continuously.

Does posting censorship workarounds help the censors? That's the question I've been mulling for the last few days. I asked for your comments, and the verdict is in: Almost no one thinks we should keep these tricks to ourselves. I agree.

I started grappling with this question after I posted a now-defunct workaround for Mainlanders to access the still-blocked Chinese language Wikipedia. After a commenter posted the link on Sinobyte, I featured the link in the post. Then the commenter, Ted Chien, wrote me concerned that having the workaround posted would lead to the authorities blocking it. I … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Wearing T-shirts reading "Free Tibet," hundreds of protesters raised their fists here Tuesday to protest the Beijing Olympic torch relay's arrival to the city. Most were from the Bay Area, but some came all the way from New York and Canada to mark their opposition to the Chinese government's plans to carry the torch through Tibet and to the summit of Mount Everest.

SF Team Tibet, a coalition of Tibetans and human-rights supporters that organized the event, is calling on corporate Olympic sponsors Samsung, Lenovo, and Coca-Cola to withdraw their support of the torch relay. … Read more

The World Cyber Games, probably the largest global video game tournament, announced Tuesday that it will hold the grand finale of its 2009 event in Chengdu, China.

The 2007 tournament was held in Seattle, while the 2008 final will be held in Cologne, Germany, this November. But that has been known for some time.

The news about the 2009 event is notable because it adds credibility to China as a home for serious video game playing and players. The news comes shortly after the Championship Gaming Series--a professional video game league--announced that it would be opening a training facility and … Read more

Chinese-language search engine Baidu has an unusual new mascot atop its home page: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

A cartoon version of Obama is depicted next to a donkey, the Democratic party emblem. He's holding a net as though casting it, and attached to the end of the net is a computer mouse--get it? It's the Internet.

This is part of a "person of the month" feature that Baidu has instituted since November, the blog Shanghaiist explains. Each month, Baidu selects a real-life or fictional personality who has ranked high in its search queries. … Read more

Chipmaker Intel has doubled down on China, announcing Tuesday that it has launched its second venture capital fund for the region.

Intel Capital China Technology Fund II is a $500 million fund that will focus on investments in start-ups doing work in areas such as wireless broadband, media, telecommunications, and "clean technology."

Over the past five years, the Chinese government has been trying to promote innovationand is working on developing a Nasdaq-like market for young companies.

"Given the success of the original China Fund--with investments in more than 28 companies--it is time to renew our commitment," … Read more