Subject: Internet surfing its way through China
Internet surfing its way through China
By Kevin Maney Usa Today
http://www.sjmercury.com/news/breaking/docs/076407.htm
BEIJING -- The Internet is at a very different time and place in
China.
The Internet is tiny here -- about 300,000 users. It's under the
thumb of the government, which controls all access, screens content
and makes users register with the police. Yet it's surging ahead,
wriggling out of the government's grasp as mainstream middle-class
families get on line. Tiny Internet startups, many on the edge of
the law, are sprouting in Beijing's high-tech Haidian district. As
AT&T signed a deal Thursday with China Telecom to help boost China's
Internet link to the rest of the world, China Telecom predicted
there will be 3 million to 4 million Internet users in the nation by
2000.
Two recent stops in Beijing say more about the Internet in China
than volumes of official reports. The first is the two-room apartment
of Zhou Jianguo and his family -- Internet users since August. The
second is the cramped offices of U-net, an aspiring Internet company
staffed by recent graduates of Beijing and Tsinghua universities.
Zhou, 45, is upper middle class. He works in personnel at the
People's Bank of China, where he has used a computer for several
years. In 1995, the bank sent him for a course at Stanford
University in Palo Alto, Calif., and he used the Internet for the
first time. Zhou is energetic, animated and patriotic. He speaks a
little English. On a Saturday, his hair is mussed and he wears a blue
shirt, dark pants, socks and sandals that say ``Golf'' on them.
Buzzing around the apartment are his wife, Liu Yan Ping, 45, and his
daughter, Zhou Nan, 11. The apartment, midway up a gray high-rise on
a traffic-clogged street, is jammed floor-to-ceiling with stuff. In
one tiny room are a TV, a piano, several bookshelves and cabinets, a
couch, Nan's dolls, a small Chinese flag and a computer.
Like a lot of PCs in China, Zhou's doesn't sport a brand name. About
two years ago, Zhou bought parts, including an Intel 486 chip, and
had a freelancer put them together. The finished product looks a lot
like any PC you'd see anywhere. Zhou has continued buying parts,
adding more memory and a CD-ROM drive. His PC runs a Chinese
language version of Windows 95 and Netscape Navigator 3.0.
He says he bought the PC to do work at home and track bills and so
his daughter could use educational software. His wife, Liu,
concocted a more compelling application for overcrowded Chinese life:
``We have a lot of things in this room all stacked up,'' she says.
``I register them in the computer along with where they are. If I
can't find something, I look in the computer and it tells me where it
is.''
The family has relatives in Shenzhen, China, and in Canada. Phone
calls there are expensive. Zhou started thinking that e-mail could
save them money. So he looked into the Internet, which had yet to
catch fire in China. The government, suspicious of easy access to
potentially liberating information, kept the lid on until it could
figure out how to control access and block sites. There had never
been much demand, anyway. Even now, far less than 1 percent of homes
in China have a PC. Zhou could have picked from about 40 Internet
access companies in Beijing. Internet access has been available to
home users since 1996, when China's state-run phone company, China
Telecom, first offered home Internet access and let independent
companies re-sell access.
Zhou chose access through Beijing Telecom, the local flavor of China
Telecom. To sign up, Zhou had to physically go to Beijing Telecom's
office. At one window, Zhou signed a letter promising not to violate
a long list of rules, which includes downloading pornography and
using the Net for anti-government purposes. He went to another
window, where he registered with the police. ``I'm sure the police
have some way of controlling the Internet,'' Zhou says
matter-of-factly.
The service costs 100 RMB ($14) a month for six hours of access.
Zhou never goes over the six hours, after which it costs 10 RMB an
hour. Few consumers in China -- including Zhou -- have a credit card,
so they can't just sign for the service. At Beijing Telecom, Zhou had
to put down a deposit of 1,200 RMB for a year. ``It's not too
expensive, I don't think,'' Zhou says -- though it would be
prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of Chinese. Most make
less than 1,200 RMB a month.
Since getting on the Net, the Zhou family has come to rely on
e-mail, but they've done little Web surfing. For one, there is little
Chinese language or China-based content on the Web. Second, there is
only one trunk line that connects all of China's Internet with the
rest of the world's Internet. That's the one AT&T will help expand.
But for now, the connection can be excruciatingly slow. Sometimes,
when people in China think the government has blocked all Western
Internet sites, it's really because the lone pipe is jammed or has
gone down.
Zhou has a 33.6 modem, but pulling in Yahoo's main menu can take
several minutes, eating away at his six-hour monthly limit. Daughter
Nan is not allowed to surf. ``I use the Internet only to write
letters to friends abroad,'' she says.
Does Zhou get frustrated that China blocks some Internet sites? ``I
don't know if any sites are blocked because I don't visit them,'' he
says. Among sites China's government blocks are ``Playboy'' and
``Time'' online magazines. ``They should block some things. People
like us are not involved in that kind of activity. We only want to
do useful things.''
When his wife Liu begins to say something about reading about
politics on the Net, Zhou kicks her under the chair to get her to
stop.
And yet, Zhou and his family say they've clearly felt the power of
the Internet. ``It's not possible to restrict the Internet in China
in the long term,'' he says. ``For people like my daughter, this
will follow them wherever they go. They are more open to new ideas.
It will help with freedom of speech.''
Welcome to U-net Haidian Road, in the Haidian district of Beijing,
is an electronics carnival. A constant flow of cars, bicycles and
pedestrians jockey for position on the broad avenue. Twelve-foot-wide
shops packed next to each other sell computer parts, printers, modems
and whole systems, many of them made in China. A shop called Dr. Gold
advertises a Pentium 166 megahertz machine called Golden Baby for
6,450 RMB -- less than $1,000.
On the 12th floor of a glass office building in the middle of this
cacophony are the offices of U-net, one of the dozens of startups in
China searching for a way to gain some traction in the Internet
industry. It's a struggle.
Twenty worn desks are parked inside cubicles of an odd pinkish
nature. PCs sit on many desks. Around a corner is a high-powered
computer server from Sun Microsystems and a router from Cisco
Systems -- the engines of U-net's Internet access business. To the
side is a conference room of dirty white walls bearing a large map of
China, a tile floor and a bare table. Zhang Xinhua, 21, U-net's head
of marketing, brings tea in thin plastic cups. He's joined by Zhu
Zhuoming, 40, the general manager. The other employees are under 25.
U-net has been in business three years. It has 400 subscribers and
loses money on them all.
China Telecom has an absolute grip on the Internet. It is the
biggest Internet access provider. All other companies that want to
sell Internet access have to essentially re-sell China Telecom
service. Part of the deal is that no company can charge more for
access than does China Telecom. China Telecom charges its customers
12 RMB per hour. U-net has to pay China Telecom 10 RMB per hour for
each connection. To try to lure customers, U-net sells access at its
cost -- 10 RMB per hour (about $1.40). ``All ISPs in China lose
money,'' Zhu says.
To get service from U-net, customers would go through the same
process Zhou Jianguo went through at Beijing Telecom, signing the
forms, registering with the police and making a deposit. U-net
charges a 100 RMB fee to open an account. For 200 RMB, U-net will
come to your home to install the software.
Will the Internet business become more open and competitive in
China? Manager Zhu shrugs and just says, ``I've heard the policy will
be changed.'' What money U-net makes comes from helping businesses
use computer networks. It has, for instance, connected 15 Beijing
hotels in a network so they can share information. ``For now, we
concentrate on business customers,'' Zhang says. ``It's more money.''
As Zhou and Zhang talk about some of their activities, it seems that
they are unclear which are perfectly above-board and which skirt
China Telecom's rules. That's not unusual, say China watchers: China
Telecom has been known to suddenly change the rules in its favor or
decide to enforce rules that have long been forgotten. A couple of
times during the conversation, Zhu asks that something not appear in
print for fear of repercussions from China Telecom.
If all that makes U-net sound like a difficult, depressing place to
work, it's not, the employees say. They are as gung-ho as the staff
of a Silicon Valley startup. ``I came here because I believe the
Internet will be prosperous and I love it very much,'' says Zhang,
who is small, wired and wearing a flashy checked sport coat. He and
his colleagues are some of the nation's brightest young computer
minds, and they are pouring their lives into this wobbly little
enterprise.
---------------
Also in this issue:
- Internet surfing its way through China
BEIJING -- The Internet is at a very different time and place in
China. The Internet is tiny here -- about 300,000 users. It's under
the thumb of the government, which controls all access, screens
content and makes users register with the police. Yet it's surging
ahead, wriggling out of the government's grasp as mainstream
middle-class families get on line.
- A computer site that makes fun of old people
Old Folks' Home page. Is it humor or hate-mongering? Whichever, the
University of Memphis calls it free speech. Junior Kevin Murphy is
creator and curator of The Old Folks' Home page on the World Wide
Web.
- Sex and the Wired Senior
Who was the hottest couple on TV this fall? Forget Scully and Mulder
and their cold-fusion chemistry. No one captured the sultry smolder
of eros better than the frisky sexagenarians smooching their way
through the Fallon McElligott ad for Miller Lite, which managed to
shake up more status quo in 30 seconds than a thousand slackers
mealy-mouthing On the Road in a wash of acid jazz.
The spot's earnest, snowy-haired paramours would make great poster
children for Loveseat, a Web resource dedicated to the frank
discussion of seniors, sex, and intimacy, launching Monday at Third
Age.
- High-Tech Medicine Making Wireless Connections
PASADENA, California - If scientists at Huntington Medical Research
Institutes have their way, pilots of the future may fly planes simply
by looking in the direction they need to steer. They shouldn't blink.
Huntington researchers are working on using a wireless device inside
the human body.
- New Lists and Journals
* WorkInProgress - Improving Quality of Life
* FUTUREBASIC - Discussion of BASIC programming on the Mac
* MUSIC-MINISTRY - Discussion of Christian Music Resources
* ASSOCIATED_MUG - Associated Macintosh User Group Deals
* Water Online - Water and Wastewater issues and information
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