Google finally decided about the future of its Chinese search activities. Users visiting the mainland domain (Google.cn) are now being redirected to the Hong Kong domain (Google.com.hk). The reason being that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (中華人民共和國 香港特別行政區) doesn’t have the same filtering of search results requirements as the mainland authorities do.

The very likely next step is that Google.com.hk may be blocked in the mainland. And Google knows this very well: “We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services.”

This is where Google is strategically clever. The company will be able to say that it didn’t completely stop its mainland search activities by its own will; that the authorities blocked them.  They will be able to pose as the unwilling victim (even if they knew exactly what would happen). Thus less questions will be asked about the attitude of a company which speaks as if it was morally superior and pretends to give lessons to a country’s government. It has to be noted that at the same time Google expects big profits from the sales of mobile phones based on its Android software in that same country.

China has a long tradition of strategic thinking and Google’s move will be recognised for what it is. Not more, not less.

Google’s blog post

The Year of the Tiger (虎年) is now more than a week old; but major Chinese websites still wear the auspicious red and yellow colours, sign that the festivities are not over yet. The country is still in the return phase of its annual migration.

Every year on new year’s eve the Chinese Central Television (中央电视台) broadcasts a special live New Year’s Evening (春晚) program. For many, watching this program with the whole family has become part of the new year celebrations. It consists of a series of humorous sketches, performances by famous pop singers, acrobatics (杂技); etc.

With the massive popularization of the internet, this one-time event has now been multiplied in a series of small sequences that live on and can be viewed and reviewed on the net.

All big internet content providers have their dedicated page, where one can watch videos of the different performances from that night. If television provides a sense of synchronicity, where a whole family and most of the country, watches the same program simultaneously; the internet now offers the possibility to delay the viewing of the program and split it accordingly to ones preferences.

If you are just interested to see how Wang Fei (王菲), the famous actress and singer, performed on the stage of the Year of the Tiger program, you can do so. If you have been avidly following the Winter Olympics and didn’t have time to celebrate the new year, you can still catch up.

All big internet platforms are competing in celebrating the new year and offering related services to their readers. Even Google (surprise, surprise,…) is offering a special version of Google Maps, where one can check the train and plane timetables for the period of the spring transportation (春运).

Embedded bellow is a Chinese acrobatics performance from the Year of the Tiger show. The Chinese word for acrobatics, translated literally, means “mixed skills”. Chinese acrobatics are a variety of ancestral techniques and instruments. When done well, the result can be very entertaining:

“Most companies fail during the five first years of their life. Those who survive, won’t last, if they don’t get ill at least once. I believe now is the time, when Alipay begins confronting its problems.” These were the words of Jack Ma (马云), the charismatic founder and CEO of the Alibaba Group (阿里巴巴集团) at Alipay (支付宝)’s annual meeting  earlier this January. Alipay is “China’s leading third-party online payment platform”. Founded in December 2004, it plays a key role in Alibaba’s activities as a provider of online trade and retail solutions.

During the same meeting, Jack Ma also exhorted Alipay employees to be less conservative and criticized the company’s consumer experience: “ If we don’t pay attention to our consumer’s experience, Alipay will slowly die away.” Right now Alipay doesn’t look moribund at all. It is clearly the market leader in China, as is Taobao (淘宝), Alibaba’s online retail website. But Jack Ma knows that e-commerce is developing very rapidly in China. Some have already predicted that 2010 will be the Golden Year (黄金年) of e-commerce.

Under these circumstances, resting on its laurels is definitely not the right strategy, if  the pioneer doesn’t want to be overtaken by new entrants. On the online payment front, Alipay is competing with Chinapay (银联电子支付) a service by China UnionPay (中国银联), the Chinese bankcard association.

The development of e-commerce in China is fuelled by the increasing number of internet users (384 million in 2009), the trend towards a more mobile web, and the fact that companies like Alibaba succeeded in gaining the trust of the consumers.

An example for the high expectations surrounding e-commerce is the recent investment by Legend Capital (联想投资) into 21cake.com. The venture capital subsidiary of Legend Holdings (联想控股), which is also the parent company of Lenovo (联想) invested ten million Yuan into a website, that sells European style pastries online.

Chinese sources: 马云:支付宝很多问题太过保守 要勇于承担责任; 2010是中国网络购物“黄金年”; 传马云批评支付宝用户体验

It is now less than hundred days until the opening of the Shanghai World Expo 2010 and the Thailand pavilion is already letting visitors in. We are talking here about the virtual online version of the Expo. Thailand is the first country to open its virtual pavilion.

Virtual pavilions are replicas of the actual pavilions. When you visit the online version of the Shanghai World Expo 2010 and walk by the Thailand pavilion, you now get the possibility to click on “enter”. This will take you into the Thailand pavilion. Once in the pavilion, the visitor can walk around, get explanations about the pavilion’s theme, watch videos, etc.

The theme of  Thailand’s pavilion is “Thainess: Sustainable Ways of Life”. The pavilion is separated in three halls, each of them dedicated to a specific concept:

• “The cycle of life by the water”
• “Trade and interaction with foreign states as impetus for development and progress”
• “Sufficiency Philosophy as guiding light towards sustainable peace and harmony”

If nothing replaces an actual visit to the “real” World Expo, the online version can give the visitor a taste of it. Since visiting the whole Expo and all the pavilions would take many days, the virtual Expo can help you choose the sites you actually want to visit. It also serves as a complement to the “real” Expo by letting the visitor enter pavilions he wouldn’t have the time to visit otherwise.

Given China’s size and population, these kind of virtual events could in future play a role in mitigating traveling time and expenses. By visiting the online Expo, one feels not completely left out of an event, which would otherwise be out of reach for many.

Not all capabilities of the virtual Expo are accessible yet. The “Future City”, which will let online visitors interact with each other is not open yet. The Shanghai World Expo 2010 is officially opening on the first of May.

Following are  some thoughts and observations about the state of Google’s affairs in China. Statements are uttered, allegations are made, lots of speculation everywhere; but it seems much too early to draw any conclusions.

- Two big communications by Google about its China (ex?) activities in the same week. The two announcements couldn’t have been more different in tone and language.

• 1. Google’s letter to the Chinese Writers Association: apologies written in Chinese.
• 2. Google’s blog post “A new approach to China”: a statement, written in English, that Google has been led to “review the feasibility of its business in China”.

Big organisation, different departments, different people could explain for these differences.

- In its blog post Google names attacks on Gmail accounts. For these reasons, Google says it is no longer willing to work with the Chinese government in filtering its search results. The causality is not straightforward and nowhere in its blog post does Google say who was behind the attacks. Of course it is strongly suggesting. If this is the reason why the company is willing to go so far as to pull out of the country, why not be more direct?

- As noted by some commentators, Google’s business in China hasn’t been extremely successful.

- Google is an organisation, that has its own vision of the world, clearly split between Good and Evil. By giving itself the injunction “do no evil”, the company attributes itself the supreme power of judging between Good and Evil.

- If Google pulls out of China, will this mean no more Android based mobile phones in China? What would Dell and others say?

- How do Google’s CEO recent declarations about privacy fit with all this?

to be continued…

So Google wrote a letter to the Chinese Writers Association (中国作家协会). It was posted on January 7. and arrived the 9. at the association’s office. Written in Chinese characters, as one would expect, the letter is signed by Erik Hartmann, chief representative for the Asia-Pacific region of the Google Books Strategy and Liaison Department (谷歌图书战略合作部亚洲区首席代表). The writers association posted a photocopy of the document on its website.

In the letter Google mentions “different initial knowledge” (最初的认识不同和) and “differences in Chinese and US understanding of copyright” (中美两国版权法律制度的不同了解), which led to actions on their part that dissatisfied the Chinese authors.  The company also acknowledges that it didn’t communicate enough with the Chinese authors. Google says that for these reasons it is “willing to express its apologies to the Chinese writers” (谷歌愿意为此行为向中国作家表示道歉).

Google’s letter came in response to publicly expressed complaints by the writers association about the internet company. On the 18. November 2009, the writers association asserted that Google had been scanning books by Chinese authors without authorization, and that for this reason the Chinese Written Works Copyright Society (中国文字著作权协会) had met several times with Google without any satisfactory result. Therefore the writers association expressed three requests towards Google:

• 1. That Google gives to the writers association within one month the list of books written by Chinese authors that have already been scanned.
• 2. That Google stops scanning books by Chinese authors “without having received the legal rights to do so” (未经合法授权).
• 3. That Google comes up with a proposal of compensation before the end of year 2009 for the Chinese writers, whose works have already been scanned.

It is in response to this last deadline, which the writers association accepted to stretch one more week, that Google wrote its letter to the Chinese Writers Association. According to this letter, the first request has already been partly met. As for the two other, Google promises, that it will have a deal proposal (处理方案) and a framework for an agreement (协议的框架) before the end of March.  Google adds, that it is striving to get a signed agreement during the second quarter.

As Google says in its letter, these kind of dealings are a first for the company.

The writers association supports writer Mianmian (棉棉), who formally indicted Google, because of copyright issues. It also said, that, if Google fails to deliver a solution within the promised timeframe, it would continue to be active protecting copyright.

Google has already met three times with the Chinese Written Works Copyright Society. The society communicated on its website that Google asked to postpone the fourth meeting, that was planned on January12. The society says it agreed to postpone the meeting.

The Chinese Writers Association is a founding member of  the Chinese Written Works Copyright Society, along with top government entities, elite universities and research centers.

Chinese sources: 谷歌向中国作家书面道歉 承诺不收录未经授权作品; 中国作家协会发布维权通告：要求谷歌尽快赔偿

Information has filtered on Monday 4 of January , that Baidu (百度) will create a new website dedicated to  online video. According to reports on various Chinese news sites, the project is well under way and should launch around this March. It is also said, that for this purpose Baidu will build a new company and that they already have raised 60 million dollars from investors.

Baidu, offers a popular internet search engine, among other services, and also has the biggest Chinese web based ad network. It  is not completely new to the video business, since it already has a video search.

Online video is quite a crowded space now in China and it is not only about sharing private videos. Many TV programs, soap operas. etc are available on these platforms. Youku (优酷)’s CEO has been quoted saying that during the next two months his company would probably sign an agreement with one of the US major film studios to offer its movies on Youku’s website.

Other contenders in the online video business in China are PPStream, Ku6 (酷6), PPLive and Tudou (土豆). Most of these companies are saying that they will be profitable in coming years (mostly through advertising). Many have plans to eventually get listed overseas. Even the Chinese Central Television recently launched a new platform to watch their content online.

Baidu’’s financial situation is quite strong and there were some speculations, that it would enter online video by buying another company. But it seems they decided to start from scratch. The fact that they are late to the game is not necessarily a disadvantage, given their size and strength. It also allowed them to wait until the industry became more mature and the rules in terms of copyrighted content more precise.

Chinese sources: 百度进军视频行业本周揭幕 搜索流量变现提速; 百度控股新视频网站：龚宇任CEO 细节本周宣布; 优酷称希望三年内实现盈利及海外上市

In four month, the World Expo (世博) 2010 will open in Shanghai (上海). Located on both sides of the Huangpu (黄浦) river and organised under the slogan “Better City, Better Life”, the expo is thus linking together the older and the newer parts of Shanghai.

If you can’t wait to get a glimpse at what the site and the several pavilions will look like, you can visit Expo Shanghai Online. Described as “a revolutionary solution to innovate the traditional way of presenting a world exposition”, the English version of this virtual expo is now open for online visitors.

 When you visit the website, you get the possibility to create an account or login with your QQ ID, if you have one. QQ is a series of online services (email, instant messaging, social networks, etc) by Shenzhen (深圳) based company Tencent (腾讯), which is a technological partner of the expo.

Right now, Expo Shanghai Online looks like a street view map, where one can walk by the different pavilions and get a short audio introduction for each of them by expo mascot Haibao (海宝). There are also night view, panorama and bird’s eye view options.

But in future the website should get much more interactive. Exposing countries or organisations will be able to offer 3d versions of their pavilions. This will give online visitors the possibility not only to walk by the pavilions, but also to enter them and visit them like “real” visitors. France for example has announced, that its virtual pavilion will open on the first of May, the official opening day of the Shanghai World Expo 2010.

Visitors will be able to create their own character and interact with each other; events will be broadcasted live on the website; etc.

Another important aspect is that the online expo will continue to exist even after the expo on the ground closes.

 According to some predictions, the biggest chunk of the content available through the technology of the internet will soon be in Chinese. This is no surprise, considering that China has more than 250 million users, and that this number is bound to get even bigger.

With every language comes a specific set of habits and behaviours. How is the web used in China? What are the favourite tools?  What are the latest innovations? These are all questions that technological China is actively covering.

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