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Subject: china internet
Category: Computers > Internet
Asked by: dj-ga
List Price: $200.00
Posted: 18 Jan 2006 11:23 PST
Expires: 17 Feb 2006 11:23 PST
Question ID: 435051
what are most important statistics and trends in china internet?
largest ventures, services?
most rapidly growing ventures, services?
how are global (not native) services doing? (e.g. yahoo, ebay, amazon,
google)... all except google have acquired "home grown" businesses.
how are native services (sina, baidu, shanda) doing on absolute basis?  relative?
what are imortant trends (cellphone) going forward?
when will majority of web pages be chinese, not english?
government role?  trends?

Clarification of Question by dj-ga on 18 Jan 2006 11:29 PST
would like you to sign up & deliver best efforts answers by 3 pm PST
tomorrow, thursday, 1/19/06.
Answer  
Subject: Re: china internet
Answered By: umiat-ga on 19 Jan 2006 10:24 PST
 
Hello, dj-ga!
 
 Your question is very extensive in scope. I did not get my hands on
this until last night, so in order to meet your deadline, I have
provided some links and excerpts to the most up-to-date information I
could find on such short notice.


*****************************
OVERVIEW OF CHINESE INTERNET
*****************************

For a very interesting report on the Chinese Internet Search Market,
see the following, 36-page publication:

"China Online Search Market Survey Report?2005." (Part I - Beijing)."
August 2005. http://www.cnnic.net.cn/download/2005/2005083101.pdf

==

"China Internet users hit 111 million in 2005." Associated Press.
Updated: 2006-01-18
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-01/18/content_513396.htm

"The number of Web users in China, the world's second largest Internet
market, grew by 18 percent in 2005 to 111 million, the Economic Daily
reported on Wednesday. Some 8.5 percent of the country's 1.3 billion
people now had access to the Internet, the newspaper reported, citing
a survey released by the China Internet Network Information Center.
State media previously predicted 120 Chinese million would be surfing
the Web by the end of 2005 as computers find their way into more homes
and domestic telecoms networks grow. The 2005 gains represented an
acceleration from 2004, when the number of Internet users grew 16
percent to 94 million. More than half of China's Web population -- or
about 64 million people -- accessed the Web via broadband connections,
suggesting a 50 percent increase versus 2004 as China strongly
promotes the development of its broadband networks."

==

See "China becomes second largest internet nation - Percentage of
Chinese surfers grows while US falls." January 2006
http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2148156/china-second-largest-internet

==

China Net Investor: The word "competition" gets a new definition.
http://china-netinvestor.blogspot.com/2006/01/beta-version-of-chinese-msn-search.html

List of main competitors in China's search market: 

Baidu.com - China's leading search engine
Google.com - The world's leading search engine
MSN.com - Bill Gates' empire
Sina.com (iAsk.com) - China's leading portal
Sohu.com (sogou.com) - China's #2 portal
Zhongsou.com - Fidelity, IDG and Legend Capital-backed company.
Alibaba/Yahoo! - China's Dotcom Guru Jack Ma together with web giant Yahoo! 

==

Exerpts from "Notes of China's Future." Notes from David Kirkpatrick?s
Fortune article: China?s Future: A Nation of Geeks?"
http://wen-xin.net/archives/2005/05/26/_notes_of_chinas_future.php

China with: 
350 million cell phone users. 
100 million internet users, its NO.2 behind the U.S.

"Yahoo?s Terry Semel and eBays Meg Whitman say that the China could be
their biggest market within a decade, but they?ll face competition
from Chinese companies."

eBay?s competitors in China: 
Taobao.com: A subsidiary of Alibaba. 
1pai.com: Yahoo auction joint venture with Sina.

Yahoo?s competitors in China: 
Sina, Sohu and Netease: Major Chinese portal sites. 
All of them are among the worlds top 10 Internet sites in terms of traffic. 

Shenda - World largest online game company: 
200 million register users. 
2 million players online at any given time. 

== 

Read "Top Ten Web2.0 News of 2005 in China." December 22nd, 2005 
http://web2.blogbeta.com/47.html


**************************
NATIVE SEARCH ENGINE NEWS
**************************

Read "There's More Where Baidu Came From - The search engine's runaway
stock may spur Chinese Net IPOs -- and rein in M&A." Business Week
Online. August 2005.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_34/b3948025_mz011.htm

Excerpt:

"How do you say feeding frenzy in Chinese? The moon shot of an initial
public offering by Chinese Internet search engine Baidu.com Inc. --
whose $27-a-share launch on Aug. 4 jumped fivefold, to $154, before
settling back to around $90 -- shattered a five-year record for the
best debut on the NASDAQ. It tapped into a deep investor hunger for
the next Google Inc. -- which has seen its shares triple in the past
year -- and a desire to profit from the Internet in China, where some
100 million people now go online."

"So will Baidu's success unleash a flood of China Net IPOs? There's
good reason for excitement. Broadband subscribers in China last year
more than doubled, to 43 million, and Beijing technology research firm
BDA China Ltd. is forecasting the online advertising market, worth
$208 million in 2004, will expand to nearly $1 billion by 2009.
Although the stampede into Baidu is partly based on the search
engine's similarity to Google, it also reflects optimism about that
potential growth. That's why many analysts are bullish on Chinese
Internet companies. "We will see an expansion of the valuations. Baidu
helped that," says Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy. Indeed, some
Chinese tech companies that have been considering a flotation might
now jump in. "Given the success of Baidu, I'm sure some other Google
look-alikes will be inspired to [do an] IPO," says Khiem Do, head of
Asian equities at Baring Asset Management."
..

"All this doesn't mean Baidu truly warrants its own sky-high
valuation. Baidu, co-founded five years ago by former Infoseek
engineer Robin Yanhong Li, is the mainland's No. 1 search engine, with
45% of the market. But the company earned just $1.45 million on $14
million in sales in 2004. At $90 per share, Baidu's market
capitalization is nearly $3 billion -- which values it at more than
1,800 times 12-month trailing earnings, compared with price-earnings
ratios of 70 or so for Google and Yahoo."

"And Baidu faces intense competition. Its rivals include well-heeled
U.S. search providers such as Google (which owns 2.6% of Baidu),
smaller Chinese search sites, e-commerce players like Alibaba, and
portals Netease, Sina, and Sohu. "We are in the realm of crowd
psychology," says Duncan Clark, BDA's managing director."

==

From "Baidu: Not Just "China's Google." By Simon Burns. Technology
Review. September 2005.
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_14784,308,p1.html

Excerpt:

"What's the leading search engine in China? If you said Google, you're
showing your Western bias. It's actually Baidu.com, whose stock
debuted on the Nasdaq exchange on August 5, raising some $87 million
for the startup. Companies like Baidu are now riding a wave of
investor expectations that Internet searching will become a big
business in China--and that local search companies may understand how
to reach Chinese consumers better than outsiders like Google."

"Those new consumers are, of course, much poorer on average than U.S.
or European shoppers. But there are 1.3 billion of them, and the
Chinese economy continues to grow at about 9 percent per year,
spawning a middle class with real spending power, especially in
coastal cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou. "There are already
about 30 million [Chinese] who can afford to buy luxury goods," says
William Bao Bean, a vice-president at Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong.
"That should grow to 100 million in three years. China is set to
eclipse Japan in spending on luxury goods by the end of the decade."

"An increasing number of Chinese consumers will be finding those goods
on the Web, and both Chinese and international search companies - such
as Baidu, Sohu, Sina, Google, and Yahoo - are scrambling for a piece
of the pie. For the moment, Baidu and Google are in the lead. A recent
survey by the government-controlled China Internet Network Information
Center, showed Baidu with an average market share of 47.8 percent in
China's three largest cities, compared with 33.0 percent for Google.
All other competitors lagged far behind."

"The company's local connections and home-grown business practices are
what give it an advantage over rivals, according to Sun. For example,
Baidu doesn't require clients to use a credit card to pay for their
ads, as Google does.......Baidu also offers an appealing product to
advertisers that Google doesn't: paid search placement, or the selling
of search engine results for particular keywords to the highest
bidder......Finally, Internet companies operating in China are more
accustomed than Western firms to dealing with censorship."

"Foreign companies like Google need to adapt to local conditions if
they are to have any chance of success in China, says Caroline
Straathof, senior director of Investor Relations and Corporate
Communications at the popular Chinese Internet portal Sohu. "Spending
a lot of money is not the solution," Straathof says.


SOHU
=====

From "Sohu.com Spreads Its Web." BusinessWeek Online. DECEMBER 12, 2005 
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_50/b3963172.htm

"With China's vast Internet market in high gear, some pros are rushing
to snap up shares of the big operating companies in the Chinese Web
world. One such is Sohu.com (SOHU ) (SOHU), which trades on the
NASDAQ. It is No. 2 in online ad revenues, offering content, brand
advertising, search services, online game services, and e-commerce
through its seven Web portals.....Sohu, she says, is jumping on the
new trend in online advertising. It's moving away from traditional
portal sites and focusing instead on "vertical" sites that cater to
specific markets or products that draw bigger ad dollars. She puts the
value of its Web properties at $1 billion to $1.2 billion, compared
with its market cap of $600 million. Hou figures Sohu will earn 75
cents a share in 2005 on sales of $107 million, 87 cents in 2006 on
$134 million, and $1.07 on $188 million in 2007."

=

See Summation of SOHU 3Q05 Earnings results:
http://chinastockblog.com/article/4085


SINA
====

Summation of Q3 2005 earnings results
http://chinastockblog.com/article/3972


BAIDU
=====

See what Baidu's founder Robin Li has to say:

Read "The man behind China's answer to Google: accused by critics of
piracy and censorship," by Jonathan Watts. The Guardian. December
2005.
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,16781,1661644,00.html
 
==

"Baidu Announces Financial Results for Third Quarter of 2005."
http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=773452&highlight=

=

See "China's Richest Prefer Baidu over Google - Report's findings
contrast with the U.S. where wealthier people are more likely to use
Google." By Sumner Lemon IDG News Service. 1/2006
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/12/73839_HNchinasrichest_1.html

==

Read "China's Baidu to stay independent -CEO," By Doug Young and David
Lin. 11 Nov 2005. http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=50995

"China's leading search engine, Baidu.com Inc. , intends to stay
independent forward, its chief executive said on Friday, quashing talk
of a future takeover by partial investor Google Inc. ...."


*************************************
NON-NATIVE INTERNET PLAYERS IN CHINA
**************************************

MSN

See "Beta Version of Chinese MSN Search Available." From ShanghaiDaily
http://china-netinvestor.blogspot.com/2006/01/beta-version-of-chinese-msn-search.html

"MSN'S Chinese Website will soon launch its own search engine...."

==

YAHOO

From "Yahoo! China has 8 months to better Baidu or it's 'game over,'
says Alibaba CEO." Nov. 2005
http://www.interfax.cn/showfeature.asp?aid=7313&slug=ALIBABA

"Yahoo has eight months to become a better search engine than Baidu or
Yahoo will have a hard time surviving in China, said Alibaba CEO Jack
Ma, whose company took over all of Yahoo's China-based assets in
August....."In Q1 2005, Yahoo's share of China's search market was
about 32%, as measured by search queries, trailing Baidu, China's
search leader, by roughly 5%. Google was in 3rd place with 19%,
according to iResearch."

==

GOOGLE

See "Google Poses Strong Challenge to Baidu in China." Press Release.
January 18, 2006. http://www.keynote.com/news_events/china/06jan18.html

=

From "Google to launch two projects targeting China market - report."
Forbes.com 9/13/2005
http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2005/09/13/afx2222743.html

Google Inc plans to launch two projects that target the China market
within three to six months of setting up its mainland research and
development center, possibly focusing on wireless, e-commerce and
entertainment, the South China Morning Post reported, citing court
documents. The Hong Kong-based newspaper said Google has identified
improvement of its Chinese-language search results, MP3 search and
mobility as key areas of development needed to close the gap with
mainland rivals such as Baidu.com. The research center is scheduled to
open in the fourth quarter."

==

EBAY

See "Is eBay Losing China?" Posted by John Yunker. Corante. Dec. 20, 2005
http://www.corante.com/goingglobal/archives/2005/12/20/is_ebay_losing_china.php 
"According to Shanghai Daily eBay is dropping its fee for online
stores, matching competitor Taobao.com's free offering. ... According
to the article, eBay China is hosting just 10,000 cyber stores as of
the end of Q3 compared to 1 million hosted by Taobao.com. eBay was
missing the mark when it thought that small business owners would
shell out US$62/month to host a store when other small business owners
weren't paying a dime."

"Could Taobao be doing to eBay in China what Yahoo! did to eBay in
Japan? To eBay's credit, it has registered a few million more
individual users than Taobao, so it's way too early to make any clear
predictions. Although this sudden change in business model is not a
sign of strength, it is a sign that eBay isn't going to go without a
fight."

=

See "Bay Eachnet Formally Introduces Skype To Promote Online
Transactions." China Tech News. January 10, 2006
http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=3410

"eBay (EBAY) Eachnet has formally introduced Skype into the Chinese
market to help increase the online trading volume between buyers and
sellers...."

==

AMAZON

From "Advice from Jeff Bezos to Amazon.com Investors: Patience," by
Rob Hof. BusinessWeek Online. May 17, 2005.
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/05/advice_from_jef.html

"When CEO Jeff Bezos talked about the e-tailer's fledgling operations
in China, he noted: "This is an investment that will take many years
to succeed." Then he showed a slide that indicated how many of its
international operations still aren't selling nearly the breadth of
products as the U.S. unit. "There's years and years of work ahead of
us to continue to build out these categories," he said."


**************************
CHINESE INTERNET TRENDS
**************************

The following article provides an interesting overview:

"Top 10 IT news in 2005." Shining Time. 2005-12-6 
http://www.urlchina.cn/shownews.asp?id=117
  
"This year many stories broke in China's IT industry that were not
expected such as Web 2.0 and podcasting. At the same time, things long
expected never happened like the issuing of 3G licenses and a Telecom
Law. Shanghai Daily has chosen 10 highlights of the year that will
most likely influence Chinese IT industry in future."

Read further for trends...

==

Internet television, gaming, blogs, video, and podcasts...

From "China's Internet Sector 2006 Preview." China Net Investor. Dec. 23, 2005
http://china-netinvestor.blogspot.com/2005/12/chinas-internet-sector-2006-preview.html

Online Gaming Is Hot:

"Online game developers and operators will be another bright light in
China's technology industry in 2006, as early leader Shanda
Interactive Entertainment Inc. (SNDA) reportedly plans to spend $20
million in 2006 to promote its new EZ game console platform, and
investors watch carefully for early results of this somewhat
controversial hardware strategy. Another question is Shanda's
long-term strategy of moving mature online games to free operation to
encourage spending on "virtual items," and whether other leading game
companies will follow Shanda's lead."

"The Yahoo-Alibaba combination is likely to leverage its technology
prowess into a run at the online gaming space, either as a game
operator or in related areas such as online commerce in virtual items.
And investors overlook Tencent's recent entry into the online game
space at their peril, considering the company's apparent ability to
dominate nearly any Internet sector it chooses to touch, based on its
massive population of instant messaging users."


Online video, blogging networks, podcasts, and IPTV:

 "The wildest area of China's Internet in 2006 is likely to be the
massive conflagration of online video, blogging networks, podcasts,
IPTV and other new media that promises to guide the near-term
direction of the media sector in China. Yahoo, Google, Sina.com Inc.
(SINA), Baidu, Sohu.com Inc. (SOHU) and Netease are likely to lead the
charge in these areas, chased by upstarts like Bokee.com, Toodou.com
and countless others."


Internet Television
====================

From "Internet TV preps for China prime time," By Junko Yoshida. EE
Times. Jan 31, 2005
http://www.commsdesign.com/news/tech_beat/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=59100528

"Internet Protocol-based TV is coming soon, but perhaps not to a home
near you. It's more likely to show up at Weimin Bai's house in China
first. Bai, the divisional director for broadcast and television in
China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII), is one of a number of
Asian government leaders who are embracing the technology. IPTV
represents "a good opportunity to enhance the Chinese government's
goal to integrate three different networks - telephone, Internet and
cable," Bai said in a recent interview with EE Times.

"China's high hopes for IPTV as a vehicle to push the government's
"convergence" agenda extend so far that the government is changing its
laws to allow the rebroadcast of TV content over IPTV. Bai, while
declining to comment on the specifics, acknowledged that such a
fundamental overhaul in broadcast regulations is already in progress."

==

From "China Looks to Internet-Based TV." NewsFactor Magazine. January 2006
http://www.newsfactor.com/news/China-Looks-to-Internet-Based-TV/story.xhtml?story_id=1010038ZR9UD

"Experts in China are appealing to the radio, film, and television
authority and to the telecom authority to join hands in developing
IPTV in China, which is expected to have a bright future. China is
projected to become one of the largest IPTV markets in the world,
depending on its current 50 million computer owners, 348 million
telecom subscribers, 100 million Internet users, 400 million
television sets, and an estimated one billion television viewers with
150 million cable TV subscribers......"

==

Read "China Telecom to boost Internet TV in 2005." Last
Updated(Beijing Time):2004-12-30
http://en.ce.cn/Business/Enterprise/200412/30/t20041230_2714768.shtml

==

"Sohu.com To Launch Internet Television Station." China Tech News.
Dec. 22, 2005. http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=3341



***********************
MOBILE PHONES IN CHINA
***********************

From "Advanced 3G mobile phones gain momentum in Asia," By Yukari
Iwatani Kane. Reuters. January 18, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011802084.html

"After years of empty promises, advanced mobile phones are finally
enabling the use of phones in new ways. So-called third-generation
(3G) phones -- differentiated from first-generation analog models and
second-generation digital devices -- are capable of accessing the
Internet, sending and receiving video and downloading data at high
speeds."

..Elsewhere in Asia, operators in Singapore, Australia and Taiwan are
just launching 3G services while China, the world's largest mobile
market, is expected to issue 3G licenses this year.

==

From "Next hot trend for cell phones: Reading?" Associated Press. March 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7232995/

"In the latest versions, cell-phone novels are downloaded in short
installments and run on handsets as Java-based applications. You're
free to browse as though you're in a bookstore, whether you're at
home, in your office or on a commuter train. A whole library can be
tucked away in your cell phone -a gadget you carry around anyway."

"Cell-phone books are also gradually starting to get traction in China
and South Korea..

==

From "China Has the Highest Number of Mobile Phone Subscribers." Nov. 2005
http://sifybroadband.techwhack.com/296/061131-china-has-the-highest-number-of-mobile-phone-subscribers/

"An official report by the state media from Beijing has said that the
number of mobile users in the country has touched 376 million at the
end of September. By the end of last year, the country had 25.7 mobile
phones for every 100 Chinese. This itself exceeds the global average.
By the end of this year, the number of mobile phone users in china is
expected to touch a high of 380 million..."


***********************************
CHINESE LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET
***********************************

 I was unable to find any future projections for "when" the majority
of Chinese internet pages will be offered in Chinese. The following
articles do touch on the issue of Chinese language on the web,
however:

An opinion:

From "Will China Build a Separate Internet?" Posted by John Yunker.
Corante. January 2006.
http://www.corante.com/goingglobal/archives/2006/01/02/will_china_build_a_separate_internet.php

"China has been making a lot of noise lately about wanting "root"
control over the Internet. That's clearly not going to happen anytime
soon, nor should it happen. But what if China simply decided one day
to create a "Chinese Internet" as an alternative to the pesky Internet
that it can't control?

This is what naming expert Naseem Javed suggets might happen in this
essay. Here's an excerpt:

"For now, English is the big mama of the business language on the
global scene, but on the spoken side, Chinese is the big papa. In a
few years, as every second person in China gets a business portal,
they will become dominating e-commerce players dwarfing the West.
China would need its own independent control of how it will play the
access game, decide on local languages, suffixes and come up with its
own registration and trademark dispute policies rather than wait for
annual memos from ICANN."
..
"But Naseem does raise a very important point -- for Chinese speakers,
the Internet is far from user-friendly. The major obstacle is the URL,
which is still limited to ASCII (Latin) characters. The folks at ICANN
and IETF are working to upgrade the DNS to Unicode, but this will take
time. There is a workaround in use that allows Web users to input
Chinese characters as a URL which is then transformed into ASCII
characters behind the scenes (known as "Punycode") but I'm not sure
how widely used this system currently is."

"Until the Internet is truly global, that is, until it fully supports
Unicode, I suspect we'll have many more countries and Web users
unhappy with its usability.'

==

From 'Chinese Portal Sohu Launches Upgraded Search Engine." China Net
Investor. 11/2005. http://china-netinvestor.blogspot.com/2005/11/chinese-portal-sohu-launches-upgraded.html
 
"Sohu.com Inc. (Nasdaq: SOHU), China's leading online media,
communications, search, mobile value-added services and commerce
company, today announced the launch of Sogou Version2.5, a new product
upgrade for Sohu's proprietary search engine, Sogou......"As a result,
Sogou 2.5 will have the largest Chinese language search database in
the world. Sogou 2.5's advanced technology also triples page crawling
speed and improves the speed of page updates to 100million per day."

=

From "MSN expects China to be top five market by 2010." Nov. 2005.
China Net Investor. http://china-netinvestor.blogspot.com/2005/11/msn-expects-china-to-be-top-five.html

"Chris Dobson, general manager of digital marketing sales at MSN
International, told Reuters the software giant intended to ride that
growth while taking a larger share of the country's nascent but
booming $500 million online advertising market."

"In May, the software giant launched MSN China, a Chinese-language
portal with content provided by local partners. The portal is run by
Shanghai MSN Network Communications Ltd., a joint venture Microsoft
established with Shanghai Alliance Investment Ltd. Microsoft has said
the portal will offer far more communication, information and content
than available through the MSN services, such as Hotmail and
Messenger, it already runs in China...."

==

From "Digital China is booming," By Jayanthi Iyengar. Asia Times. Feb 2004
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FB18Ad01.html 

There are two sides to digital China. On one side is a country that
systematically represses content and free expression, using law and
technology to aid it in this process. On the other side is a country
that has embarked on the China Wide Web project, which aims at
creating in a short time as much nation-based, Chinese language
content as possible


*************************************
GOVERNMENT CONTROL AND THE INTERNET
*************************************

Read "The Great Firewall of China: A vast security network and
compliant multinationals keep the mainland's Net under Beijing's
thumb. But technology may foil the censors yet." By Ben Elgin and
Bruce Einhorn. Jan. 12. 2006
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060112_434051.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech

"It's no secret that Western Internet companies have to hew to the
party line if they want to do business in China. Google (GOOG), Yahoo!
(YHOO), and scores of other outfits, both domestic and foreign, have
made concessions to China's censors. The latest high-profile example:
In December, Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN shut down a Chinese blogger's site
at the government's request....."
  
==

See "Chinese surfers reject political control." IT Week. Nov. 2005
http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2146756/china-net-political-freedom?vnu_lt=itw_art_related_articles

"The vast majority of China's internet users want to be free to
discuss and read about politics online, but also believe that people
should be protected from pornographic and violent content, according
to a recent survey funded by a US foundation. Only eight per cent of
Chinese surfers believe that political content should be controlled,
down from 12 per cent in 2003....."

==

"China tightens web censorship." ITWeek. September 2005.
http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2142763/china-tightens-web-censorship?vnu_lt=itw_art_related_articles

==

Read "Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005: A Country Study.
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/

==

Gaming regulations:

"China cuts off gamers." ITWeek. August 2005
http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2141570/china-cuts-gamers?vnu_lt=itw_art_related_articles

"China is limiting the amount of time gamers can spend online in an
attempt to cut down the phenomenon of marathon gaming. According to
reports from China's Interfax press agency, from October the
government will introduce penalties for those who play an online game
for more than three hours. Once the time limit has been reached the
characters in the game start to lose their powers and, after five
hours, games will flash up a warning message every 15 minutes..."

=

"China cracks down on online games." ITWeek. Nov. 2005
http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2145570/china-gamers-face-restrictions?vnu_lt=itw_art_related_articles

"...The new regulations, which include tight limits on playing time
and a ban on underage players in violent games, were announced earlier
this year, and the government plans to begin full enforcement early
next year...."

====


I hope the information I have provided will meet your needs in
accordance with today's deadline.

Sincerely,

umiat 

Search Strategy

China Internet
trends in China internet
China internet statistics
success of Baidu China
about sina internet 2006 OR 2005
future of Sina China
chinese internet targeted to be in Chinese language
language AND china web project
China AND cell phone trends
Amazon.com AND China
eBay AND China
Internet television in China
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