China’s Internet growth challenges country’s political elite

2011 was also a year that saw the increasing social might of Chinese microblogs, Twitter-like engines of public opinion that often challenged the authority of state-sanctioned news. The number of microblog users quadrupled last year to nearly 250 million, the China Internet Network Information Center said in its recent report.

Known in China as weibo, microblogs enable users to post short messages with links that can then be read by subscribers. Their speed and scope creates difficulties for government censors, who have had more success blocking foreign websites including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter using filters, often called the Great Firewall of China.

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1119172—china-s-internet-growth-challenges-country-s-political-elite

Microblogs were instrumental last year in exposing government mishandling of a deadly high-speed rail collision in the eastern city of Wenzhou and alleged corruption in the southern village of Wukan.

My name is Liliana Galvis and currently I work as a research assistant at my home university. I’m eager to learn about economic model (regional or individual) in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Do you have any information on the matter?

How the West is wholly missing China’s geopolitical focus

China is capitalizing on vast space for influence to its west in Central Asia - not in Asia-Pacific as perceived by the West.

http://oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/09/how_the_west_is_wholly_missing_chinas_geopolitical_focus

Case in point: China’s choice of Turkmen, Kazakh and Uzbek gas imports, over importing from Russia, has forced Russia’s Gazprom to reassess its regional strategy. While Gazprom’s price negotiations with Moscow have slogged on over the last five years…five years, the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) has cobbled together and upgraded largely existing transportation infrastructure to create the China-Central Asia gas pipeline. The resulting shift in the region’s energy geopolitics reflects China’s rise.

Chinese Websites and Users in a Panic over Phishing, Hacking!

China search giants Baidu and Sohu working with Chinese government and financial institutions to prevent further phishing attacks.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/30/us-china-internet-idUSTRE7BT07M20111230

The Global Times newspaper on Friday described the state of Internet security in China as “very dangerous,” saying that public data leaks had “struck Chinese society’s alarm bells.”

Details below…

China Reveals Space Plans Through 2016

China has already said its eventual goals are to have a space station and put an astronaut on the moon. It has made methodical progress with its ambitious lunar and human spaceflight programs, but its latest five-year plan beginning next year signals an acceleration.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/29/china-reveals-space-plans-through-2016/

China village ends 3 months protest after government compromise

Residents of Wukan, in southern Guangdong province held protests over the death of activist Xue Jinbo, whose family rejects the Chinese government’s position that he died of natural causes after he was arrested for protesting against the seizure of farmland for development.

Opening up — China’s Answer to the Past and Future

While China is steering through spectacular yet complicated economic transformation during which ideas clash and wrangle, there is little debate that an open and market-based economy with respect for laws and rules are the cornerstone of its past miracle and the elixir of future prosperity. Interesting related article

China to overtake US economy in 2026

China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in 2026, according to new forecasts from Goldman Sachs, a decade after the bank’s Jim O’Neill predicted the ascent of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies. The bank says in a new research paper that the ‘Great Transformation’ of the global economy is now ‘more than halfway complete’, a process that has been ‘reinforced’ by the global financial crisis.

http://citywire.co.uk/money/goldman-sachs-china-to-overtake-us-economy-in-2026/a550329

Below, the IMF predicts it will happen much earlier that 2026.

U.S. students dig up China’s nuclear secrets: A group of Georgetown University students has translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, obtained restricted Chinese military documents and waded through hundreds of gigabytes of online data and concluded that China’s nuclear arsenal could be many times larger than experts believe.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2016901031_chinasecrets01.html

The Chinese have called it their “Underground Great Wall,” a vast network of tunnels designed to hide their country’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear arsenal.

Move over William Shatner. China blasts off into space and makes it back safely after testing the docking mechanism of an unmanned space craft. This is part of an ambitious effort by China to complete a manned space station in less than 10 years. But lest you think that this is the start of a new space race, the official Chinese press assures us that “The concept of a ‘space race’ is now obsolete. International cooperation is the future trend and rivalry between so-called space powers will inevitably give way to more friendly cooperation.”

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-11/14/c_131246478.htm