:: from “shanzhai” iPhones to the Shanghai Government bootleg edition of Windows XP, knock-offs and intellectual property violations are a part of life on the Chinese mainland. The below five-point brief provides some context to how Chinese netizens use the Internet to find, download, and share bootleg / pirated content.

why bootleg / pirate content online in China?
A few years ago in China, if you wanted to watch a movie you could go to the nearest supermarket, where a guy with a cardboard box of DVDs would be standing outside the front door. You’d rifle through the collection and pick out a selection of titles that caught your interest, and then go back home and see which ones would actually work in your DVD player. But with increasingly speedy Internet connections in China today and the wealth of content available online, why pay for pirated DVDs of uncertain quality when you don’t have to? More and more Chinese Internet users are no longer turning to the “the DVD guys / shop on the corner.” Movies are just the tip of the iceberg – music, TV shows, animation, games, software, and magazines are all easily available online for free. Sure, there’s something called “copyright law” which makes downloading this content slightly against the law, but everyone else is doing it, and when the government mandates the use of software despite allegations that it contains pirated code (see the recent Green Dam debacle), it makes you wonder how seriously any of this really is. Software piracy has been dropping over the past few years, but is still quite high: According to a BSA survey, China’s piracy rate for software was 80% in 2008, down from 90% in 2004. Arguments can be made that software piracy hurts the domestic software industry, and the same argument could be made for bootlegs in other sectors. But the combination of easy + free makes bootleg information very attractive to China’s netizens, obviously.

what can you pirate online in China?
VeryCD provides a searchable archive of digital information and content along with an active community of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharers. It doesn’t host any of the files itself – instead, it links to files that allow netizens to download bootlegged content from other netizens. The front page of VeryCD prominently features movies and music, but the site indexes a wide range of materials. The categories listed in the sidebar are movies, TV series, music, games, animation, art, software, and “resources,” a category that encompasses anything from instructional DVDs to PDFs of magazine scans. One of the things that VeryCD brought to file sharing was a charter for sharing mp3 collections. Titles, format, tags, and packaging were all standardized, and the idealistic goal of the site’s “MP3! Project” was for “every individual to share two or three albums to establish the largest mp3 music library in the P2P world.” Because the eMule system (see below) does not have any central file repositories but relies on users themselves to share files, participants in the “MP3! Project” are requested to share a few albums long-term so that they’ll always be accessible to other netizens in search of them. Xiami is a music sharing platform. The website provides a substantial archive of music for online listening through Xiami.FM, a music widget, but it also offers Shark, a P2P application designed for sharing music libraries with other Xiami users . Users who download and install the software achieve far better speeds on future music downloads, and they can broadcast songs they possess that are not present in Xiami’s own library to other users. Kugou is a similar service that has been around for years, and there is a wealth of smaller services around as well. A number of services have arisen to serve movies and TV shows over P2P services. Poco’s movie channel and PP365 are two examples; each requires installing a proprietary piece of software that handles the movie download process. There are, of course, legitimate uses of this technology – streaming authorized television programs or movies for which permission has been received, but, it safe to say, that doesn’t make up the majority of use.

how do you pirate online in China? ::
P2P software – an application that transfers files to a netizen’s computer from the computers of other netizens directly, rather than pulling content  from a central location – is frequently used for sharing pirated data. The files indexed on VeryCD are shared through the eMule program, and the site provides its own version of the application: EasyMule. The software registers its own protocol (ed2k) with the users’ web browser so that links to resources are automatically passed to the eMule program, which then searches for the content on other users’ machines. Other eMule-related services include Vagaa (哇嘎), which provides its own application that promises accelerated eMule and BitTorrent downloads, as well as its own proprietary file download service. The China eMule (中国电骡) is an almost identical copy of the Vagaa homepage and offers links to the Vagaa application and shared files but does not seem to be related to Vagaa – a bootleg of a bootleg service? All very dodgy. BitTorrent is another file sharing protocol. Netizens access a seed file (with the extension .torrent), and their BT application connects to a tracker to find out which other users (known as peers) are sharing the file. Once peers are identified, the BT application downloads that file bit-by-bit from multiple users. The BT@China Alliance unifies several dozen smaller BBS discussion forums where netizens post the locations of BT seed files (which can essentially be anywhere). BT@China is searchable by keyword, file name, or “hash” – a unique ID that identifies a specific file for download. Xunlei, also known as “Thunder,” is one of the most popular file sharing services. It’s a combination of proprietary software and a group of associated websites, but it is also shunned by more civic-minded P2P users for enabling “leeching”: the software is designed to allow users to suck bandwidth by downloading from BT or eMule networks without contributing a corresponding amount of uploaded information. This goes against standard / culture of file-sharing etiquette and may result in users of these programs getting banned from central servers. Xunlei also provides a website for online viewing of HD videos served through the software from its own network rather than individual users’ machines. Google owns a small stake in Xunlei, and the software is part of Baidu’s search alliance, which embeds a Baidu search bar into the program. As a testament to its popularity, Xunlei is a perennial entry on Baidu’s rankings of top search terms. It’s currently at #15.

what else can you pirate online in China? ::
There’s niche pirating going on as well, although not much of it is large enough in size to require the use of P2P transfers. Academic publications, for example, can be prohibitively expensive if your university doesn’t subscribe, so communities have sprung up to fill the need for reduced-cost or free academic books and journals. From time to time people will discover loopholes or back doors in online journal archives, and they’ll share the technique on a forum like Pet2008, one of the major communities for academic journal sharing. Other times, a student or faculty member at a university that subscribes to a particular archive will set up a proxy service to allow off-campus netizens access to an on-campus IP address, which will get them into the archive. This is very common. The Yuyu College forum has a page for “free access” that lists a number of these servers. The practice has developed its own economy: payment in virtual currency is required to read many of the posts, and netizens earn credits by posting resources or purchasing them outright, but the cost is far less than what legitimate access to academic archives would require. Namipan is a file host that uses its own proprietary software and protocol, as well as offering slower, less reliable web-based downloads. Users upload files to the Namipan servers, and when other netizens wish to download them, their web browser will hand off the link to the Namipan download application (like many of these programs, the interoperability is seamless for IE users but less reliable for users of other web browsers). All kinds of information is shared this way, from music albums to book scans – a scanned Chinese edition of the mainland China-censored Zhao Ziyang memoir was available on Namipan right after it hit the streets. Damipan (大米盘), whose name seems inspired by Namipan, does not have its own download application but allows users to share files through various protocols, including eMule and Xunlei. Many of the most popular file sharing sites restrict the quantity of data unregistered users can download, and a fair number of them have policies in place that remove pornographic material. So porn is frequently shared through BitTorrent, with the .torrent seed files uploaded to a file sharing site. Or else they’re simply shared through Xunlei. See the movie download sections of overseas sites like 92xxoo or Xiao77 (a well-known site that frequently changes IP addresses and URLs to ensure easy access from mainland porn enthusiasts). For those that thought the Chinese Internet has been thoroughly scrubbed of politically sensitive, pornographic, or otherwise “unharmonious” content, think again. It’s all readily available to the average Chinese netizen.

does pirating in China ever suck? ::
Installing programs designed to facilitate the sharing of copyrighted material has always come with an element of risk. eMule is known to be free of adware and spyware, but because it is an open source program, other providers are able to offer their own eMule packages that may include dodgier add-ons. Apart from coming bundled with adware and dodgy browser redirects, Xunlei’s implementation of its own P2P network came under fire for consuming all of its user’s upload bandwidth: the program would scan a user’s entire hard drive and upload files that other Xunlei users are requesting. Users would unwittingly max out their bandwidth. In the face of widespread user dissatisfaction, the company tweaked the software to throttle uploads. Tuotu (脱兔) was launched by developers who liked the Xunlei software itself but were disgusted by the way the associated service leeched files from other archives. It supports a number of popular sharing protocols including eMule and BT, but doesn’t seem to have any source of income at the moment, or much to distinguish it from all of the rest of the marketplace. One additional problem – more of an annoyance, really – comes when the ISP gets tired of downloaders hogging bandwidth and throttles the standard ports that many protocols use. It’s a game of cat-and-mouse: in response to ISPs placing limits on standard eMule ports, the software now comes with options to choose random ports in the hopes that the ISP will simply ignore the gigabytes of IPR infringing content you’re copying to your hard drive.

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]

:: the topic for this week’s Friday 5 comes from my colleague (and former United States Ambassador to Singapore, 2001 – 05) Frank Lavin, based in Edelman’s Hong Kong office. Thanks Frank. If any readers have any ideas for future Friday 5s, please send through.

Due to China’s digital censorship regime (playfully known as the “Net Nanny”), politics can sometimes be tricky to talk about on the Chinese Internet. On websites affiliated with Chinese state-run / owned media organizations, conversation can carry on freely within the boundaries the sites have set up for themselves, but on more independent venues, Chinese netizens often have to resort to typographical tricks or character substitutions to mention people, places, and events whose names may be deemed “sensitive words” by the Net Nanny. In general, politics as a specific topic is fairly niche – online audiences are just not that interested. However, Daqi’s rankings list for politics forums (时政论坛排行) includes fourteen items. Expanding the view to rankings for “government” forums (政府论坛排行) extends the list to four pages and includes BBS discussion forums on topics such as anti-corruption, rule of law, policy, agricultural reform, and civic society. Below is a snapshot of the political / government landscape online in China – the places Chinese netizens go to converse / argue over politics, government affairs, and political figures.

general politics ::
Beijing’s Utopia BBS discussion forum may be the most well-known forum for debate about domestic and international issues. It tends to slant leftward, and has a special section for Mao Zedong. Leading special topics on Utopia currently include an ongoing critique of neoliberalism and articles on Lu Chuan’s Nanjing Massacre movie City of Life and Death. Marxist Review is a Beijing-based current events forum with an ostensibly Marxist slant. Recent topics include multi-party government, bureaucratic socialism, and democracy in the hands of revolutionary masses vs. the right. School of Athens is a academically-flavored community that slants in a liberal direction, particularly after absorbing many of the members of the liberal Fatianxia law commentary site following its harmonization in December, 2008 (and in fact, many pages on School of Athens imply that it actually is the successor to Fatianxia). Discussion involves the rule of law and civic society. A recent post that reposted an essay on freedom of speech by author Lin Da’s drew a comment thread in which netizens felt that Zhongnanhai (China’s White House) could learn something from it.

domestic politics ::
The forums at China.com are known for their nationalist leanings (they were at the forefront of the great Universal Values flamewar in 2008. The “Peace Forum” (和平论坛) sub-board has hundreds of pages worth of posts, most of them dealing with cross-straits Taiwan / Mainland China reunification. Conversations include “Taiwan still calls us Communist bandits,” dealing with a Taiwanese TV program’s interview with a guest who said his father beat him like a “Communist bandit.”  More recently, a May conversation discussed the short-sightedness of people who live in Taiwan, or more plainly, “Taiwan vs. China.” Caogen (草根), a blog host whose name means “grass-roots,” appears to lean left, and is home to sober commentary from noted public intellectuals like Li Changping (李昌平) and Ye Tan (叶檀), as well as other, more radical ideas. The site’s top-ranked blogger at the moment is Song Hongbing (宋鸿兵), author of the conspiracy-minded The Currency Wars, and other bloggers go off in even more unusual directions. A gem from April: “China should accept Mongolia’s request to return to the motherland” (中国应同意蒙古的回归请求) by Xu Zhaokang, who works in the Dongguan Municipal Copyright Bureau. Site-wide, top-ranked articles mostly have to do with assigning blame for the financial crisis and wondering whether the U.S. will collapse as a result. Young China features a May 4 tableau on its splash page alongside the slogan “embody the power of young China,” and continues the May 4 theme with an About-page image of students carrying a “Hello Mr. Democracy” sign on May 4, 1989. The main site is set up as a blog, but there’s also a nascent social networking site and an associated Marxist wikipedia. It’s hosted overseas, and it looks to be the work of one dedicated politics hound, but it’s still represents a political presence on mainland China’s Internet space.

international politics ::
The Chinese Foreign Ministry hosts a foreign affairs BBS discussion forum that dates back to November, 2001 (and still uses the clunky BBS software of that era). Although the last web-chat between a foreign ministry official took place in October 2008, the general interest board is still fairly active, drawing dozens of comments daily. According to the BBS’s information page, it’s only supposed to be open on weekdays between the hours of 10am and 5pm, but many comments are time-stamped outside those times. Newslist.com.cn has an International Affairs BBS discussion forum. Featured forums are aimed at students seeking to test into masters or PhD programs in international affairs, but the bulk of the site’s activity takes place in the Politics Talk forum, whose subject matter spans the globe. The Internet is home to specialized forums devoted to more specific topics in international affairs, such as China’s disputed territory and its relationship with Japan. China Non-Governmental Alliance to Protect the Diaoyu Islands (中国民间保钓联合会) has a BBS discussion forum that has sub-sections for the islands themselves, maritime rights, Sino-Japanese relations, and other related diplomatic and military topics. The China Non-Governmental Alliance to Seek Reparations from Japan has a similar set-up. A lot of discussion on these topics takes place on more general forums; traffic at these smaller websites seems to pick up when major events occur on the world stage.

local government ::
For local politics there are BBS discussion forums attached to the local Chinese government where citizens can voice their thoughts, such as the forum for locals in Nantong (南通) in Jiangsu province. That site has a section for local political affairs, which is split into three sub-sections: consultations, policy suggestions, and web-chats. Policy suggestions range from “ordinary people only want small things,” a complaint about bad traffic on a certain road to a direct appeal to the city mayor, Ding Dawei, about a chengguan (official urban control officers / thugs) without an official registration number who beat up a woman: “Who is beating up the people?” Although many local governments have set up websites, the level of political involvement differs. The city of Baoying has a government website that includes a citizens’ BBS discussion forum which claims 26,965 members, but unlike the previous government site, policy tends to be drowned out by everyday life. Of the more political-oriented conversations, “Responding to a problem” discussed road congestion partly caused by offices belonging to public security and the judiciary. As for government officials themselves, college-educated rural civil servants have a number of BBS discussion forums targeted specifically at people in their position. College Rural Official Forum features discussion boards where they can exchange information about rural governance, improve their skills, and learn the finer techniques of drawing up official documents. Politics-wise, there’s a discussion forum for current events that mostly seems to be concerned with the economic impact of college students choosing to take jobs as rural civil servants.

political personalities ::
Up until this Wednesday, the place to go to satisfy your passion for the PRC President and Communist Party / Military Commission Chairman Hu Jintao and PRC Premier Wen Jiabao was We All Love Hu and Wen (我们都爱胡总温总). On this website, fans could share stories, images, movie clips, and tributes to the beloved Chinese leaders. However, as of 5:17pm June 10, the site’s BBS discussion forum has been “suspended,” with the explanation: “The People Talk sub-board has been deleted.” People Talk was a place for fans of Hu and Wen to talk about their favorite domestic and international leaders. China’s strict rules protecting the image of domestic and world leaders had previously led the website to plead with users not to use photos of leaders in signatures or as avatars. Baidu has a Postbar devoted to the Wen Jiabao fan club, but posting is restricted to members (who number 30), and the last comment was submitted in July 2008. World leaders are a sensitive subject, too. Take U.S. President Barack Obama for example. He has his own forum on Baidu’s Postbar, but updates slowed after his election and ceased entirely after he took office in January. The forum notes that “because of relevant laws and policies,” only members (of whom there are 23) are allowed to post. Obama’s lucky — his forum still has 6,808 posts available for perusal. Ex-president Bush has no Postbar at all, only an apologetic “Sorry, the forum is temporarily unavailable based on relevant laws and policies.”

News link: A feature article posted to the Global Times website last night reported on the shutdown of unofficial fan club websites for national leaders.

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]

:: like China’s “Post-80s Generation” before it, the “Post-90s Generation” is a shorthand for a vaguely-defined demographic group of Chinese people born roughly in the same decade. On the Chinese Internet, however, “Post-90s” has connotations of a young, affluent, urban, alternative aesthetic, and includes among its ranks people born in the mid to late 80s as well — see the reader age poll on FZL8.com which has choices for ages 16-21; 30% of respondents are under 16, and 15-20% were born in the 80s.

In hopes of helping everyone better understand this sometimes odd and detached demographic, the five categories below provide a rough outline of the image and characteristics conjured up in the minds of today’s Chinese netizens by the term “Post-90s.”

non-mainstream culture ::
Remember in the early part of the decade when Han Han and other young celebrities born in the 1980s were hailed as representatives of a new, “alternative” sub-culture in China? For the post-90s generation, the term “linglei” (另类, meaning: alternative) has been replaced with “feizhuliu” (非主流) which means something like “non-mainstream,” but it still refers to an “alternative” sub-culture, only one that is expressed by today’s teens (See here on Baidu Baike for a current in-depth discussion of the phenomenon). Fashion-wise, “non-mainstream” combines goth and punk elements with styles borrowed from trendy Korean and Japanese youth culture. Hallmarks of the “non-mainstream” photo: looking up at the camera, the subject (usually a teenage girl), often wearing clunky glasses, opens her eyes wide, purses her lips, and flashes a V-sign. Trendy consumer products are often visible in frame (see the “conspicuous consumption” below). In full length photos, toes are pointed inward to give the impression of innocence combined with reluctant exhibitionism (example). Often, text or cartoony images are Photoshop’d in, or the subject’s eyes are enlarged to make her look even more like a character from manga or animation (example). That example comes from a whole gallery of similar images that have been entered into a “Cool” contest on 360Quan. More angsty and emo are bloody, apparently Photoshop’d self-mutilation images. They’re not incredibly common, but their shock value has made disproportionately representative of the crazy moodiness of China’s Post-90s generation.

argot ::
“Martian” language is a form of online writing that prizes linguistic and typographical playfulness: it combines abbreviations, letters, and numbers, with character combinations that correspond to pronunciations drawn from different Chinese dialects or tones of voice. It’s been around for a while, and is generally associated with online youth culture. The Huoxingwen BBS discussion portal has forums for various dialects, software that translates back and forth from standard written Mandarin to Martian, and conversation exchange. The Martian dialect most closely identified with the post-90s alternative subculture is “brain damaged writing” (脑残文), which is essentially standard Mandarin written using the most obscure characters possible. Traditional and rare variant characters are only the beginning: wrapping characters in other radicals, using duplicate and triplicate forms, and finding seldom-used characters that have a common character as a minor component are all valid techniques. Pinyin and English get rendered in Greek or Cyrillic. In its extreme stages, brain damaged writing literally splits the characters apart and builds them out of isolated radicals and phonetic symbols, example: ロ艾~~还媞叧リ冩 莪ㄋ，亻尒看，叧リヌ寸莪ㄖㄅ噫苋那庅茤，ㄝ子媞册リㄋロ巴 is an expansion of 哎，还是别提我了。你看，别对我的意见那么多。好是删了吧.

haunts ::
Although it would be misleading to assume that China’s Post-90s only hang out in one space on the Internet, 360Quan is a major focal point for post-90s teenagers, as evidenced by its overall “alternative” aesthetic and the tagline “young, stylish SNS” in the title bar. PK is a big activity on 360Quan: users can challenge each other head-to-head and vie for votes from the 360Quan userbase. PK categories include “alternative culture” (非主流), “sunniness” (阳光), “figure” (身材), “beauty” (美丽), “being cool” (搞酷), and “on the street” (街头). 360Quan also provides space for online “clans” (家族), ad-hoc groups of users linked by common interest or mutual acquaintance, a large number of whose names use Martian and brain-damaged writing. A wealth of similarly-targeted BBSs and social networks, successful and otherwise, can be found simply by searching for “90后” (meaning: post-90) in Baidu or other large search engines. Post-90s Home is one of the larger ones. Douban.com is also host to various post-90s communities, including The Nineties, with 1,281 members, and People of the Nineties with 1,190 members at time of writing. The BBS format and general tenor of Douban means that these forums feature some interesting discussions of post-90s identity – what does it mean to be part of that group?

conspicuous consumption ::
For better or for worse, China’s post-90s generation is seen as fairly materialistic. Born into an age of relative abundance, today’s urban teenagers seem entirely comfortable with consumerist culture, which they embrace fully without the ethical or cultural guilt shown by earlier generations, to the point that showing off wealth and possessions in online photo sets is a fairly common practice. A recent thread in the post-90s forum on Sina’s Women’s Channel asked members how much they typically spend on their clothes, in order to dispel the myth that they are a generation of spendthrifts. Brand-names pop up throughout the thread, and one netizen who claimed to be a 15-year-old girl attending high school in the US reported her current clothing and handbags were worth 37,030 RMB, generating a follow-up profile piece. Another post-90 girl won the moniker Sack-Girl (麻袋女) for carrying a bag full of cash to this year’s Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition. Her blog, “International Aristocrat,” expresses disdain toward Shanghainese and the Auto exhibition itself.

mockery ::
Inevitably, there has been a backlash. Baidu’s Postbar has a high-traffic “anti-alternative” BBS discussion forum where members post examples of post-90s culture to mock the generation. The top post for the time being is a poll: “What do you hate most about alternative culture?” The choices (which include “A disgrace to Photoshop,” “Pigeon-toed and costumed (fake Japan-esque + fake punk),” and “fake cons, fake CK”) sketch out a rough picture of how “alternative” is seen in the popular imagination. Chun Baba turned his acerbic barbs onto alternative post-90s in a (hilarious!) fake news broadcast that rounds up some of the Photoshop abominations mocked on the Baidu post. Another video blogger cooked up a widely-reposted 17-minute-long rant blasting the worship of Korean and Japanese culture that inspires post-90s alternative fashion. Finally, Douban hosts the “Post-90s Who Are Not Like Post-90s” group whose 288 members announce that they are not “alternative” and that they “wear their clothing properly,” unlike the widespread image of “punky” and “rebellious” post-90s kids.

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]

:: netizens in China have a wealth of online choices for obtaining information about cars. Prospective buyers and auto enthusiasts alike can find news and reviews of the latest models on blogs and in special-interest BBS forums, and if they want to make a purchase, there are sites to help them find both new and used cars that suit their requirements. Once they’ve bought a car, they have ample space to discuss their car owning experiences or, should something go wrong, seek help and advice. And a number of brands have taken advantage of blogs and online games to increase their exposure among netizens.

cars on blogs ::
Moyan Qingfeng is an auto commentator associated with Sina’s Auto Channel. He blogs about new models and keeps an eye on industry trends. Recent posts have followed the decline of the mainland’s auto market, which he says is nothing to be surprised about. He’s also associated with Way of the Car, an auto community website that features BBS boards, blogs, and auto analysis. Li Xiang, founder of community website PCPop and car portal Autohome, keeps a blog that’s mostly about cars, although he does muse about entrepreneurship and other unrelated topics from time to time. Xiao Cheng is a Dandong-based auto commentator. His blog is mainly concerned with reviews of new models, and his posts are widely redistributed across the Internet. In blogging-related activities, Sina’s own blogging platform features an application called “I’m Car Crazy” that allows netizens to put up a widget on their blog that displays a car they’ve “purchased” through the system. New users are given a certain number of credits to start with, and they can accumulate credits by posting in Sina forums, answering surveys, or completing other tasks. With more credits, they can purchase better cars. The “Auto Mart” section contains real-world specifications of the different vehicles that are available for “purchase.” Once netizens have purchased a car, they can take part in online games like racing against their blog friends. Popular SNS app Kaixin has a similar game called “Parking Wars” (requires registration) that features lots of different car models.

general auto BBS discussion forums ::
There are lots of places to find information about cars online. All of the major web portals have auto channels featuring the latest news, ads, and pretty pictures, and a number of major standalone sties are devoted to car information. Autohome. One of the biggest auto-specific websites on the mainland. Has its own stable of reviewers and commentators, one of whom, Meng Qingjia, went along on a press tour of China’s Antarctic research station. His trip was sponsored by Nissan X-Trail.  PCAuto claims to be the second-largest auto-related portal on the mainland. One interesting feature, in addition to comprehensive BBS forum and blog offerings, is a fuel economy blog that aggregates netizen data to come up with the most fuel-efficient cars. XCar is another major portal with sub-forums for practically every (sometimes random) interest imaginable. The self-guided holiday sub-forum has over one hundred users, and is a popular venue for people to share experiences about their own travels to faraway places such as Kunming, Tibet and Xinjiang. Several threads are started each month and generate frequent replies. China’s auto-related websites include organic communities and small startups as well as major sites operated by large media companies: CBS Interactive runs the buying sites Cheshi and Go Car, as well as the XCar portal, by virtue of its 2008 acquisition of CNET Networks. PCAuto belongs to Pacific Online, which owns a network of special-interest websites.

making a purchase ::
Che168 is a forum designed to be a comprehensive buyers’ guide to the auto market. It’s part of a network of online buyers’ guides that includes IT website IT168 and has connections to Autohome and mainstream portal PCPop. A clever search function that lets netizens weight the importance of various traits (such as safety, efficiency, economy, brand, and power) on a sliding percentage scale. GoCar (购车网) is a no-frills car buying website. Front and center is a search box for country, make, price range, and style. There are sub-sites for Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shandong, detailed information on a wide range of models, and tools for figuring out loan and payment numbers. Data comes  from a selection of online partners as well as relationships with offline dealers like Oriental Foundation International Auto Mall. The site is connected to XCar forums, so it does not host a local BBS. Cheshi (车市), which belongs to the same company, is more focused on information and buyers’ guidance, and features an active BBS which hosts sub-forums devoted to popular makes and models. The site also has a list of expert agents who are available to answer buyers’ questions. Judging from the response rankings, visitors to Cheshi are interested in new cars: the repair, rental, and second-hand experts have very few questions directed at them. Taotaocar (淘淘二手车网) is a website founded in 2007 to facilitate the buying and selling of used cars. It’s set up like an automotive version of the online auction house Taobao, and offers model- and price-based searching options and special sub-sections organized by location. Advertisements (or partner links) are from various used car dealers. Another technique for buying cars is group purchasing. Prospective buyers seek volume discounts by approaching car dealers as a group, and they frequently organize themselves using the Internet. Netizens find other interested purchasers on web forums, but the actual discussion mostly takes place off the web using tools like Tencent’s QQ messaging software (see this CIC narrative for details).

websites for car owners ::
Netizens who own cars have a wealth of online forums to choose from. Most comprehensive auto forum websites have sub-boards where owners of particular models can congregate; some of them also have sub-boards devoted to particular geographic regions. Independent sites cater to specialized interests. Pochezu (破车族), or “Jalopies,” is an auto forum aimed at existing car owners. Rather than focusing on the latest models, information on this site concerns auto maintenance and repair, tricks for keeping a car looking good, and directories of after-market services and destinations you may want to drive to. Car owners interested in tuning their vehicles can visit Modi-Auto, a community devoted to the art of improving car performance. Started in 2004 as a bare-bones BBS by tuning enthusiasts, it has grown into an archive of relevant news and information with an active discussion forum attached where newbies and experts can talk tuning. Another way car owners get together is through driving tours. Car Trips is a specialty forum devoted to organizing self-guided driving tours and sharing experiences and photos. Netizens discuss routes, lodging, and destinations, and sometimes arrange group excursions.

online branding / marketing ::
The Other Blog is a MINI-branded blog hosted on Sina. It features the latest ads for the Mini Cooper S standard and Clubman models surrounding blog posts related to design, art, and other trendy topics the brand wants to be associated with. Blog post contests are another way for brands to increase their exposure in the digital space. In 2008, Toyota held a contest for bloggers on Tencent’s QQ platform to promote its new Corolla model. Owners were asked to write about the joys of Corolla ownership or tell of their experiences with the car, with the winners receiving a GPS system, a netbook, a gas card, or other car- and travel-related prizes. In 2008, Anhui’s JAC Motors partnered with Sina to place its Rein SRV into a driving game. As part of the promotional campaign, net gamers competed in a series of elimination rounds with the ultimate winners getting the use of a Rein vehicle for one year, a laptop computer, or other high-tech prizes.

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]

:: the latest CNNIC report was published today. Unlike previous reports, this edition also includes detailed statistics about the Hong Kong and Macau internet markets. Download the full report (Chinese only) as a PDF here, or as a MS Word document here. See below for a translated summary of the report’s more salient points. Unless otherwise noted, the data below represents averages across all demographics. For “deep dive” figures, see the original report – it’s rich with in-depth analysis and data slicing.

• 298 million netizens (the largest Internet market in the world…its unlikely this will ever change)
• 41.9% YoY increase in users (up from 210 million in January 2008)
• 22.6% penetration (i.e. 22.6% of China’s entire population is online), YoY increase from 16%; compared against global average of 21.9%; other leading markets (U.S. 72.5%, Japan 73.3%, Korean 70.7%)
• 90.6% of netizens access the Internet from a broadband connection (270 million netizens)
• 39.5% of netizens access the Internet from mobile phones (118 million netizens)
• 28.4% “rural” netizens (up from 25.1%)
• 71.6% “urban” netizens (down from 74.9%)
• 52.5% male, 47.5% female (compared to 57.2% male, 42.8 female in January 2008)
• age demographics: 0.4% under 10 (down from 0.8% YoY), 35.2% between 10 – 19 (up from 27.6% YoY), 31.5% between 20 – 29 (down from 38.1% YoY), 17.6% between 30 – 39 (down from 20.5% YoY), 9.6% between 40 – 49 (up from 8.1%), 4.2% between 50 – 59 (up from 3.3%), and 1.5% 60 or older (up from 1.4%)
• education levels: 5.4% with elementary or lower (down from 6.7% YoY), 28.0% with up to middle school (up from 21.1% YoY), 39.4% with up to high school or basic technical training (up from 36.0% YoY), 13.9% with advanced technical training (down from 18.7% YoY), 12.2% with a bachelors degree (down from 12.2% YoY), 1.0% with a masters degree or higher (down from 1.4% YoY)
• 5.5% of netizens (not including students) are unemployed, laid off, or have lost their jobs (down from 11.9% YoY)
• 2.3% of netizens are farmers, fisherman, laborers, etc.
• 2% of netizens are retired
• 6.4% of netizens are freelancers
• 7.3% of netizens run small personal businesses
• 2.0% of netizens industrial or service industry workers
• 2.6% of netizens are migrant workers
• 33.2% of netizens are students
• 10.3% of netizens work for the government or state / government-owned enterprises
• 4.5% of netizens are manager-level at enterprises / companies
• 15.0% of netizens are middle / junior-level at enterprises / companies
• 8.7% of netizens are technology professionals
• monthly income levels: 1.5% with zero income (down from 4.4% YoY), 26% make less than 500 RMB, 16.2% make between 500 – 1000 RMB, 16.0% make between 1000 – 1500 RMB, 13.8% make between 1501 – 2000 RMB, 13.7% make between 2001 – 3000 RMB, 8.0% make between 3000 – 5000 RMB, 2.9% make between 5000 – 8000 RMB, 1.9% make more than 8000 RMB
• there are 287.8 million Web sites registered in mainland China (compared to 150.4 in January of 2008)
• Web “age” vs. time online: netizens that have been using the Internet for 8 or more years spend 26.4 hours online a week; for 6 – 8 years, 19.9 hours a week; for 4 – 6 years, 16.2 hours a week; for 2 – 4 years, 13.8 hours a week; for 1 – 2 years, 12.4 hours a week; for less than 1 year, 12.7 hours a week
• overall time spent online (average): 16.6 hours a week (compared to 16.2 in January 2008)
• access points: 78.4% of netizens are getting online from home, 42.4% from Internet cafes, 20.7% from work / office, 11.3% from school, 2.7% from other public locales
• access devices: 89.4% of netizens are getting online with desktop computers, 27.8% with laptop computers, 39.5% with mobile phones (this will likely jump dramatically over the next 12 months with the introduction of 3G in China), 1.4% with PDAs / other handheld devices
• 39% of netizens can’t work or study without the Internet
• 59.1% of netizens feel that without the Internet their “entertainment life” would, uh, suck
• 69.3% of netizens feel “taking care of matters” with the help of the Internet reduces personal annoyances
• 61.8% of netizens say that they first learn of major news from the Internet
• 64.6% of netizens say that when they have questions / inquiries, will first turn to the Internet for answers
• 65.4% of netizens say they have met “many” new friends on the Internet
• 82.5% of netizens say the Internet has strengthened their relationships with friends
• 19.9% of netizens say they feel “more alone” since the advent of the Internet and their use of it
• 29% of netizens say they feel the Internet has taken away from time they would otherwise spend with their family
• 47.5% of netizens say they use real / honest information when filling out online registration forms
• 27.6% of netizens say they feel safe conducting business transactions online
• 41.9% of netizens say that the Internet is the main channel by which they express their opinions
• 76.9% of netizens say that since starting to use the Internet, they pay more attention to social matters / affairs / etc.
• 78.5% of netizens are accessing news media content online (up from 73.6% YoY)
• 68% of netizens are using search engines (down from 72.4% YoY)
• 18.6% of netizens are job-searching online (up from 10.4% YoY)
• 56.8% of netizens are using email (up from 56.5% YoY)
• 75.3% of netizens are using IM (down from 81.4% YoY)
• 54.3% of netizens have / own a blog (YoY numbers n/a)
• 35.2% of netizens (actively) update / maintain blogs (up from 23.5% YoY)
• 30.7% of netizens use BBS / discussion forums (YoY numbers n/a)
• 19.3% of netizens use social networking sites (YoY numbers n/a)
• 62.8% of netizens are gaming (up from 59.3% YoY)
• 83.7% of netizens are accessing music conent (presumably downloading) (down from 86.6% YoY)
• 67.7% of netizens are accessing Internet video content (down from 76.9% YoY), with the under 30 age demographic account for the bulk of this usage
• 24.8% of netizens engage in e-commerce (up from 22.1% YoY)
• 3.7% of netizens sell goods online (YoY number n/a)
• 17.6% of netizens are processing payment transaction online (up from 15.8% YoY)
• 5.6% of netizens make travel bookings online (YoY numbers n/a)
• 19.3% of netizens engage in online banking (up from 19.2% YoY)
• 11.4% of netizens are trading / buying / selling stocks online (down from 18.2% YoY)
• 16.5% of netizens engage in online education (down from 16.6% YoY)

If anything more should be included or if anyone spots an errors in my translation, please let me know in the comments section. Thanks.

[UPDATE: for a more robust English translation of the entire CNNIC report, link here]

// AjS

:: according to the latest CNNIC report (published twice a year), there are now 298 million Chinese netizens. Download the report (Chinese only) as a PDF here, or as a MS Word document here. 56minus1 is working to summarize / translate the report’s most salient points. Watch this space, more coming soon.  // AjS

:: be authentic, don’t get burned.

Whether you are an individual user or a company / brand, participating online must be done within a certain code of conduct. Authenticity, honesty, and transparency are core principles of online citizenship and digital ethics. Not playing by the rules can have serious consequences.

Chinese netizens don’t like being the victims of deceitful or unscrupulous attempts to influence their opinion or grab their attention…and they aren’t afraid to speak up about it. Underhanded marketing / PR practices are, rightfully so, often met with angry backlash from the online community.

Astroturfing, seeding, spamming, bogus campaigns / information / content, “fifty-cents gangs,” etc. don’t get by shrewd, eagle-eyed Chinese netizens…they are quick to pick up on anything unnatural or phony, and react fiercely. Marketers and PR professionals must contribute value, not spam or lies, when engaging online audiences.

Below are five examples (from MANY) of those that didn’t follow the rules and got burned online in China…if you would like to add to this list, please feel free to do in the comments section.

1. Roewe Kavachi wins a fake award
In February, 2008, a news post, “Roewe 1.8T Kavachi engine wins international award,” popped up on domestic car BBSs. The post contained a screenshot of an English-language website, “Car News,” announcing the “2008 Best Engine Awards.” However, Car News was not a legitimate website: it was shoddily put-together, and its registration information matched that of an employee of EnergySource, a marketing firm hired by Roewe. Most netizens thought it was a viral ad concocted by Roewe, although others said that the ease with which it was debunked suggested that it was a poor attempt by one of Roewe’s rivals to discredit it. The company’s reputation took a hit, regardless. The original posts have been removed, but here’s a Beijing Business Today article that includes a screenshot of the fake site. Once the mainstream media picked up on the hoax, the exposé was republished on auto and general-interest forums, which mocked Roewe and netizens who had initially believed the Car News post ().

2. Woyo.com’s viral video
In April, 2008, an extremely wealthy woman named Lan Dong started posting a series of videos in which she spoke disdainfully about the quality of China’s post-80s and post-90s generations and claimed to have taken actor Takeshi Kaneshiro as a lover. Lan’s videos drew huge traffic as young netizens assembled to blast back at her criticisms. However, instead of being a real symptom of the generation gap (Lan was born in the 1970s), the whole thing turned out to be a ploy for publicity by SNS website Woyo.com. Netizens, particularly post-80s and post-90s who were the target of Lan’s insults, were incensed and started anti-Woyo campaigns, while others mulled the possibility of a lawsuit against Woyo and its parent company, Shanghai Blessed Technology. Netizens used “human flesh search engine” techniques to identify the exact location of the office where the videos were filmed: Lan worked at the company, which had designed the viral videos to increase its own name recognition. Since Woyo’s target audience is precisely the people Lan insulted in her videos, it seems to have been operating on the principle that all publicity is good publicity. A major donation to the Sichuan earthquake recovery effort got the company back in netizens’ good graces, although lingering suspicion from the Lan Dong affair led many to see the donation as yet another opportunistic attempt at self-promotion.

3. Sanlu pays Baidu for “PR protection”?
After the melamine milk scandal broke, a document surfaced in which Teller, a Beijing-based PR agency, advised Sanlu to take advantage of Baidu’s “PR Protection” which, at the cost of 5 million yuan, would ensure that Baidu search results for Sanlu would be scrubbed of negative information. indicated that Sanlu had already handed over a down-payment, and suggested other strategies the company could use to manage the scandal. All three companies denied having such an agreement, and Baidu denied the existence of any “PR Protection” plans that would affect search results. However, A Powerpoint file later surfaced that described Baidu’s crisis PR package for managing conversation on its own BBS platform. The episode indicates the sensitivity of China’s netizens to evidence that companies are conspiring to withhold information and manipulate public opinion. Baidu took a hit over the incident as many netizens announced that they were switching to Google.

4. Yili and the news portals
Other dairy companies were implicated in the same melamine scandal. Based on odd search results, netizens suspected that Yili Dairy had paid news portals to keep its company name from being associated with the melamine scandal. At first, articles about the scandal re-posted on sites like Sina separated the characters in its name with a space (伊 利), which search engines handle differently from the single word 伊利. Shortly after netizens began discussing this, the spaces were taken out. However, a non-printing character had been inserted into the HTML code between the two characters: 伊利. This would not affect how the company’s name was displayed, but it still prevented it from turning up in search results. (As reported by the Southern Metropolis Daily). The substitutions were incredibly widespread and not particularly subtle: even instances of 伊利 that did not refer to the dairy company were altered. Although a number of news portals were involved, the first examples and screenshots came from Sina, which bore the brunt of netizen outrage.

5. DoNews
Sometimes the scandal works in reverse. Liu Ren, a well-known IT entrepreneur and a senior executive at IT news and blogging portal DoNews, was arrested in October for threatening to write negative stories about other Web sites unless they paid him “PR fees.” Qihoo, a well-known Web site featuring a popular Q&A section, had been the focus of vicious, largely-fabricated attack articles published on DoNews until it started paying the fees. However, Liu’s demands skyrocketed, and eventually Qihoo got the police involved. The revelation of Liu’s extortion scheme drove many former DoNews users away from the site.

// AJS

:: Chinese netizens enjoy playing with language online. They make up new words, insert alphabetic and numerical abbreviations between Chinese characters in their posts, write backwards and upside down to trip-up the censors, and trade catchphrases with wild abandon.

To outsiders, however, conversations full of acronyms, ancient characters, and allusions (sometimes quite obscure) to Chinese culture / history is quite difficult to understand.

To help with the “decoding,” below are some basic explanations of frequently-used vocabulary by Chinese netizens:

visual pun: “囧” [pronounced “jiong,” in this case; other times pronounced "jing"] ::
After becoming widely used online in China, the past couple of months have seen this character explode into mainstream media / culture. It’s been splashed onto the cover of books and magazines, in advertisements, and on clothing. The obscure Chinese character 囧, which originally meant “bright,” looks like someone gaping in astonishment, so Chinese netizens reinterpreted it as a general response of helplessness or gloom. Sam Flemming of CIC talks a bit more about it here. Also, a number of well-known Web sites have sprung up around 囧 culture: 阿囧 | 囧客官方 | 囧人王国 | 囧的官方网站. Some other online visual examples of 囧: .

catch-phrase: “economize: drink maotai” ["节约点，喝茅台" pronounced "jie yue dian, he mao tai"] ::
[Warning, this is very funny] The latest online catch-phrase was inspired by a report about a government official in Sichuan who beat up a liquor seller for overcharging on a bottle of Maotai alcohol. The explanation given: “Director Cao wanted to economize, because money is tight at the personnel bureau and he still owes money for house repairs.” Chinese netizens are always quick to pick up on hypocrisy, particularly on the part of local governments – the irony of a bureau director claiming to want to save money by buying China’s most famous brand of alcohol (and beating someone up over it) was too good to pass up. [link]

visual Pun: “槑” [pronounced “mei”] ::
An obscure alternate form of 梅, plum, the character 槑 is formed from two characters, which means “dull / stupid / foolish.” Chinese netizens use it to refer to anyone who is especially slow-witted. Because it kind of looks like two people standing next to each other, it shows up quite a bit in cartoons and image macros alongside 囧. Another adapted character, 雷 (“thunder”), is used to mean “shock.” For something especially shocking, the character is tripled to produce this character: 靐 (pronounced “bing”). [link] [link]

describing the opposition: FQ, JY, BS ::
When Chinese netizens aren’t having fun playing with catch-phrases and characters, they’re likely arguing with each other, employing shorthand / acronyms to refer to their opponents (and themselves too). FQ means 愤青 (pronounced “fen qing”), “angry youth,” and is used dismissively to refer to ultra-nationalist netizens (of which there are plenty). Some FQ have tried to reclaim the term as a badge of pride. On the other side are JY, 精英 (pronounced “jing ying”), “elite”: intellectuals who tend to be liberal and supportive of universal values. A third abbreviation, BS for 鄙视 (pronounced “XX”), “despise or disdain,” is tossed around by netizens on both sides of the aisle.

modifier: “山寨“ [pronounced “shan zhai”] ::
The word 山寨 literally means “mountain fort” or “village,” but is also used as a modifier meaning “knock-off,” to describe off-brand / fake products manufactured in small, tucked-away shops in Chinese villages. Some of these no-name brands have begun to advertise using celebrity-lookalikes as spokespersons. Knock-off F4, knock-off Emil Chou, and knock-off Jay Chou have all turned up in advertisements, drawing mockery from Chinese netizens. The term is even being applied to Chinese remakes of foreign TV and movies.

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]