After talks broke down earlier this year between Apple and China Mobile over the (non-pirated) introduction of the iPhone, Apple's concession to non-U.S. carriers that they don't need to share revenue has apparently restored progress with the world's largest carrier.
This comes as China's government reports mobile accounts are nearing the 600 million mark. China Mobile alone has more than 400 million accounts. These numbers don't mean there are that many people with cell phones, however. I and many others have multiple SIM cards. I use one for visiting friends, but others use second cards, which can be purchased for under 10 USD, to keep various types of calls separate.
China Mobile said Friday the main obstacle keeping iPhone out of the world's largest mobile phone market had been cleared now that Apple has dropped its revenue-sharing demands.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said this week he would like to see the device introduced in China later this year, and a senior China mobile executive confirmed the two companies were back in talks.
"We've broken through the biggest obstacle and we are negotiating at the working level," Gao Songge, deputy director of China Mobile's general department, told AFP.
Now if only the U.S. iPhone would allow choice of carrier...
Talks about how to bring the iPhone to China have moved from hard-line negotiations to the logistics phase, Reuters is reporting.
During an interview at the Worldwide Developers Conference, Jobs hinted to CNBC that Apple might soon add China to its list of countries where the iPhone will become available. But working out the details of exactly how that will happen hasn't been easy.
Now, talks with Chinese wireless carrier China Mobile have cleared their biggest hurdle, Apple's insistence on setting up a revenue-sharing agreement, according to Reuters. Apple has reportedly given up on that idea in favor of a model by which the carrier will subsidize the phone up-front, like the deal Apple now has with U.S. provider AT&T and the vast majority of its carrier partners around the world. That has allowed the two companies to move forward with plans and move on to working out the logistics. However, there is still no timetable for when the iPhone will be released there, a China Mobile spokeswoman told Reuters.
Sinobyte commenters have raised two good questions about Internet freedom during the Olympics, set for August 8 to 28 in Beijing. I'm going to give the best kind of answer available for each: an educated guess.
I had written about "free Wi-Fi," which hasn't yet really started working, but is slated to be available during the games in some key areas of the city.
Commenter DangerousOffender asks: How "free" will the access be? Will users be able to access the entire internet, or will it be censored?
I was referring, of course, to "free of charge," but this is a good question. In recent years, no public internet connection has been completely unfiltered. Censorship works in a few different ways: some Web sites are simply blocked at the IP level, making it impossible to access them without a proxy; certain sensitive terms in pages, if detected by filters, can cause the connection to be disrupted; and sensitive terms that appear as part of a URL can trigger a similar disruption.
In the lead up to the Olympics, many online limitations have been relaxed. Access to BBC News was restored. Blogspot has been unblocked, blocked again, and is presently available from this connection in Beijing. English Wikipedia is available, but Chinese Wikipedia is still blocked. After pressure from the International Olympic Committee, the Beijing committee has promised fewer restrictions, but since some ISPs do the censorship themselves to avoid trouble with authorities, any "opening" may not trickle down to every connection.
Rumor has it, anyway, that top hotels full of foreigners and journalists will have unfettered access. I doubt this will be a citywide phenomenon, let alone a national loosening.
JeffW42 asks: How monitored will it be? Will your e-mails be reviewed for "offensive" material, and username and password stored for later reference?
While we have some guesswork to do on censorship, there's even more to do on surveillance. Let's focus on capability and relevance.
Capability: Chinese authorities are viewed by many around the world in governments and other fields as highly capable in infiltrating computer systems. While the Chinese government denies it every time, U.S. authorities say attacks of various kinds have come from China. What's more important is this: We know the government has access to the gateways between China and the rest of the Internet. It should be assumed that, just as any traffic can be filtered for keywords, any traffic can be more closely monitored.
Relevance: The fact that authorities could capture your traffic does not necessarily mean your passwords could be captured. A properly configured SSL-based password system, standard on most websites, should make password capture very difficult if not impossible. Though I am not a security expert, my sense is that this sort of surveillance would be a very low priority for Chinese authorities.
On the question of reviewing e-mail for content, it seems highly unlikely that e-mail would be blocked. If you're planning a big protest or something, however, expect that you and your buddies are on some kind of list for closer monitoring. Simple measures can make all communication much more smooth and quick during high-filtering periods. Users of Gmail, for instance, found that while a normal HTTP connection was extremely slow during the recent unrest in Tibet, using SSL by typing in https://mail.google.com/ (the added "s" is the key) made the connection faster, and e-mails containing sensitive terms were delivered more consistently.
A little perspective
Much is made of China's Internet restrictions. A few things of note, before one seizes on this as unique. I'm not trying to argue that the restrictions are good, but I think a lot of people take this phenomenon and turn it into an anti-Chinese trope without placing it in a bit of a context.
- A study found that most Chinese approved of government controls over the Internet.
- Several students at elite universities I have met in Beijing had no idea there was any censorship.
- The U.S. government, for example, is not exactly free of programs to monitor its citizens' communications.
- China has a lot of surveillance cameras, but so does Britain.
Now, if you can get a visa to China, come on over and enjoy the games. I hear lots of the hotels are wide open.
Members of a hepatitis B support group in China, numbering about 300,000, lost their online forum in a Chinese crackdown on civil society. Now some say they may be forced into taking drastic measures, even during the Olympics.
In an unusually prominent threat of collective action in China, Lu Jun, who ran a recently blocked site for carriers of hepatitis B, said some disgruntled members may be planning protests during the Olympics, according to the Financial Times:
Mr. Lu, who heads a rights group that has helped carriers sue companies such as IBM and Foxconn for discrimination, said the Web site was a gathering place for sufferers who had little other opportunity to vent their frustrations, or find support from doctors and fellow patients. By shutting it down, the Chinese government risked pushing patients to take drastic actions, Mr. Lu said.
"A common refrain in the messages we have received from members since the Web site was shut down is: 'I love my country, but my country doesn't love me,'" Mr. Lu said.
(The site) "In the Hepatitis B Camp" was first shut down by the government last November. On Tuesday, Mr. Lu said an official had told him at the time that the closure was due to the upcoming Olympic Games. Mr. Lu managed to reopen the Web site by moving it to an overseas server, but Beijing last month began blocking access to the Web site within China, just 10 days after government officials participated in an event for World Hepatitis Day at the Great Wall.
As I was pining for the good ol' days of predatory Microsoft, I read that the Jekyll side of Microsoft never really left. From All Things D:
In a status report filed with Federal antitrust regulators yesterday, Microsoft said it had done much to comply with its 2002 antitrust consent decree....
In the states, perhaps. But apparently not in Asia. Because not 24 hours later, China's State Intellectual Property Office said it's investigating the software giant for discriminatory pricing. And according to the Shanghai Securities News, it may sue Microsoft under a new antitrust law scheduled to go into effect Aug. 1.
Let me make sure I understand this: China has long benefited from stealing Microsoft's software. Now it's considering suing because Microsoft charges too much for the software it pirates?
Apparently, China's State Intellectual Property Office may be organizing a group of companies to sue Microsoft for using its market power to charge high prices in China, where the cost of Microsoft's software can easily exceed the hardware costs for a new PC.
But isn't this the land of piracy, where Microsoft's software is basically free, whatever the list price may say? Microsoft has used piracy as a strategic weapon in China. It's somewhat ironic to see China complaining about Microsoft's pricing. Does the government have an alternative in mind?
UPDATE: China's anti-piracy agency is now denying an investigation into an antitrust suit against Microsoft, the AP reports.
"Our office has never conducted research on monopoly behavior aimed at any enterprises," the [agency] said. "And at present we have no plan to conduct this work."
Right hand, meet left hand.
China's State Intellectual Property Office on Thursday denied reports that Microsoft and other software behemoths were under investigation, according to an Associated Press report.
The antitrust agency's statement was a response to a Wednesday report by the Shanghai Securities News saying the Intellectual Property Office was investigating allegations that large software companies were using their market position to gain favorable pricing, as well as curtail research and development by local Chinese companies.
The Chinese news agency also reported that some local companies were contemplating filing antitrust lawsuits, based on a new law that is set to take effect August 1.
Although the Shanghai Securities News did not cite Microsoft, specifically, in its report, it quoted a source, who referenced Microsoft and its pricing practices.
The system for ordering, paying for, and issuing Beijing Olympic tickets has had many kinks, the latest of which may be the middle name question.
A Wall Street Journal blog reports that people found a Bank of China branch unwilling to issue tickets to some foreigners because the registered name lacked the middle name present on the required passport. Without an exact match, you're nearly out of luck. Just like getting on a plane in China.
The iconic Olympic sites in Beijing
(Credit: Graham Webster)Or that's what the report says. It's a blog post based on a single anecdote from an anonymous foreign friend in a foreigner-rich neighborhood in Beijing who ended up arguing for two hours and is still a little paperwork away from getting the tickets. The post also contains a claim that Monday was the first day that tickets ordered online could be picked up, which does not seem to be true based on anecdotes I've heard from other foreign friends, whom I will keep anonymous.
Either way the issuance of tickets has been quite a trial for some. At least a few friends who live in Beijing found that their U.S. bank cards flagged the purchase when they charged Olympic tickets, thereby canceling the transaction and, you would think, nullifying the tickets. That would be fine if it weren't unusually hard to get tickets in the first place.
People waited online in virtual queues for ticket orders to be issued just after individual batches became available. If you were lucky enough to get a ticket, you would hope Visa, one of the Olympics' primary sponsors ("but they don't take... " well you know the rest), would be more inclined to accommodate unusual transactions in the form of tickets to the Games.
But after all, the oddest story I have heard is that one person went in to collect the tickets anyway, despite the bank having canceled payment. And, with no apparent dispute over middle names, the tickets were issued. It's just that no one ever paid for them. Oops.
The Journal post I am sure is based on a real incident, but the mistake is in thinking any individual experience is generalizable. These things just aren't going consistently.
Two U.S. congressmen who are longtime critics of China's human rights record have accused China of compromising computers that had information related to political dissidents.
Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, says four of his computers were compromised beginning in 2006. New Jersey Republican Chris Smith said two of his computers used for the global human rights subcommittee in the House Foreign Affairs Committee were compromised in December 2006 and March 2007.
"My suspicion is that I was targeted by Chinese sources because of my long history of speaking out about China's abysmal human rights record," according to a transcript of Wolf's statement before the U.S. House on Wednesday.
Wolf requested that House leadership ask the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to brief members of Congress on the threats of laptops, cell phones, and mobile devices when traveling, particularly to countries where access to information is tightly controlled by the government.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang denied the accusations, according to The Associated Press.
"Is there any evidence?...Do we have such advanced technology? Even I don't believe it," Qin said during a regularly scheduled news conference. "I'd like to urge some people in the U.S. not to be paranoid."
The charges follow allegations made late last month that Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a laptop left unattended when Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez was in Beijing in December. The information from the laptop was allegedly used to try to break into Commerce Department computers.
Chinese hackers are also believed to have been behind several attempts to get information from top government groups around the globe, according to the Virtual Criminology Report (PDF) released by McAfee last year.
In April, the Overseas Security Advisory Council released a China 2008 Crime & Safety Report that said:
"All means of communication--telephones, cellular phones, faxes, e-mail, text messages, etc., are likely monitored. The Chinese government has access to the infrastructure operated by the limited number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and wireless providers operating in China. Wireless access to the Internet in major metropolitan areas is becoming more and more common. As such, the Chinese can more easily access official and personal computers. The Chinese government has publicly declared that it regularly monitors private e-mail and Internet browsing through cooperation with local ISPs."
Larry Wortzel, chair of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, sums it up this way: "There is a high likelihood--virtually 100 percent--that if an individual is of security, political, or business interest to Chinese...security services or high technology industries, their electronics can and will be tampered with or penetrated," USA Today reported.
The days of tissue-thin tickets collected by human attendants are over in Beijing's underground. Riders on Monday were greeted by electronic ticketing with automatic gates.
When Beijing's Line 5 debuted in October last year, riders found out what they could expect, as new electronic gates were installed but not yet unfurled. Travelers in Asia will recognize the mechanisms from Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Beijing's new subway ticketing system was previewed with the opening of Line 5 in October 2007. They came into service June 9, 2008.
(Credit: Graham Webster)Besides removing the human factor from ticket sales and collection, a feat accomplished already with debit-based ticketing cards that have been in place for quite a while, the system puts Beijing in league with advanced systems that can use rider data to adjust service.
According to People's Daily:
As the new system requires passengers to check in and out electronically, it records precisely their entry and departing stations. This enables us to accurately record passenger flow on each line and station.
"The subway company can adjust train schedules to ease traffic. This is especially important when the Olympic Games are held in August in Beijing," Zhang said.
I'm looking forward to giving the new system a shot this week.
The U.S. government is looking into allegations that Chinese officials snagged a laptop left unattended by a top U.S. official there, copied the data and then used it to try to hack into U.S. government computers, according to a report by The Associated Press.
The incident is alleged to have happened during Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez's trip to Beijing in December, unidentified sources told the AP. Gutierrez told the wire service he couldn't comment on an ongoing investigation.
Since then, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, known as US-CERT, responded to computer network break-ins at least three times, the report says.
"The Pentagon, State Department and Commerce Department all have been victimized by widespread computer intrusions blamed on China since July 2006," with the Commerce Department even having to unplug itself from the Internet, as a result, the article says.
