Holy crap those are some old stuff. Please at least update your info to the 21st century, man. The country to city migration in China has been going on for a while. I think the hukou system is still technically in place, but from a practical low-income worker standpoint, it might as well be non-existent. That said, I don't know the details of the Chinese hukou policy today. Doesn't really come up in conversations except when Chinese talk about restrictions in the "old days". So there may still be some blockage. Just not nearly to the point you're thinking of.
Politics aside (who hacked who, etc.), as a personal user outside of China, I'm glad Google takes information security seriously. If its cloud services are to take off among middle sized and larger enterprises in the future, Google will need to convince people that their information is safe with Google.
If you don't live in China then your search habits would be different than one that does. Music downloads now represent a tiny and ever shrinking (think 5%) of Baidu's revenue and you really don't need Baidu to find p*rn in China. Wenxuecity is more of a news blog. I don't read it much. No, I call somebody a moron based on moronic arguments and moronic decisions. And I'm quite equitable at it.
Because 2003 is 20th century, man? And MFW, you are not even in my league. I am the Hakeem to your Yao. You should refer to the terms of service for this BBS before resorting to petty name-calling.
Thank you for missing my point entirely. Glad to know you don't give a damn about real life, and think that everything written down must be infallible.
Except the guy says something meaningless to the discussion. Okay... I can agree to that passage. The hukou system is indeed very important to a centrally planned(I assume typo here in your original statement) economy... But so what? Why does that matter... when the hukou system hasn't been strictly enforced for a long time now? Do you understand Chinese? Because I'm sure this stuff is practically all over the web. I'd show you some site myself, except my Chinese reading skills are decidedly mediocre.
Censorship sure sucks, but Baidu more than adequately addresses the search needs of overwhelming majority of Chinese internet users, otherwise it wouldn't have enjoyed such huge usage/popularity advantage in China. For non-regular Chinese language internet users, life can be a lot different without the vibrant google search engine at their finger tips. But you get used to it eventually. I typically spend 3 weeks a year visiting family, relatives and friends in China. I tend to think my google-dependent internet life moves on just fine after the 1st week. The timing of the current google hoopla is indeed fishy. Kinda echo what YallMean was saying, the coverage of google's infringement of Chinese writers' copyrights had been on CCTV4 news for several days before this whiny declaration of google came out nowhere.
^ all aboard the stupid train - the theory that the piracy capital of the universe, an economy built on knock-offs, made google pull out of china because they were threatening them over google books (which the DOJ and EU have already destroyed google over) is crystal clear example of how the Netizenry rationalizes their own fetters, Jackie Chan-style. The state knows best, even when it doesn't. Enjoy captivity!
Thanks for the correction on totalitarian vs. authoritarian. It doesn't change my argument at all. Your posts on this subject are biased. Your replies are emotional, for example calling someone a moron. You have an emotional attachment to defending the Chinese government. And then there's your little quip "Dalai colored glasses." WTH? Nobody with sense believes you're being objective. Far, far more serious allegations than the one Google has levied have been aimed at China for their hacking exploits on governments worldwide. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=10617 http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/include/print.asp?newsIdx=16537 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/08/belgium_india_china_warnings/print.html http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread350381/pg1 A very simple search for news articles in 2008 turned up these reports of attacks on the South Korean military, the Belgian and Indian government networks, and the Pentagon itself. Each time the Chinese government just denies it, and the world moves on. Your condescension (which you stoop to because defending the Chinese govt gets you riled) is duly noted. You are the one who has confused proof with evidence. Any lawyer will tell you that there is a huge difference between proof and evidence. Evidence can be anything- actions, words, photos, recordings, documents, statements, eyewitness accounts, etc. etc. Nothing could be more common in a courtroom than two parties looking at the same evidence and declaring that it "proves" two different things. Your assertion that if there is no proof, there is no evidence, is silly. There are countless times when there can be a great deal of evidence, but no proof. And, too often, the difference between evidence and proof is just an opinion or point of view. Imagine trying to "prove" that hackers organized by the Chinese government hacked your network. What I said earlier stands: The "evidence", which might consist of server logs and such, would be difficult to convert into "proof." It's easy for the perpetrator to say "nope, never happened, I deny everything, those logs were faked." This is one reason why China, and every government in the world with the capability, engages in cyber warfare. What are you talking about? The burden of proof rests on the accuser, Google. My impression of your earlier statement when you said the attack was Google's "excuse" was that you allege they made it up entirely. It seems you are not alleging that Google made it up entirely, and that you believe there was some attack, so I take back what I said. It's consistent. I repeat, Occam's Razor supports the idea that the Chinese government, which is the single party most interested in spying on Chinese human rights activists, is the one that did so. Your rebuttal that they would do no such thing because it is clumsy and too serious ignores the fact that numerous far more serious allegations of cyber attacks have been made by governments all over the world. Cyber attacks are difficult to prove, so you can perpetrate them and then claim innocence after. There's not a doubt in my mind the USA has done and will do the same thing.
I think Baidu does a better job doing Chinese term search than Google, which is 99% Chinese internet users do. NYT ran another article today, which kinda confirm what I suspected. I think this is rather about Google's biz failure in China than freedom fighting. The censorship and all that all exited in China back when Google opened its shop in China in 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/world/asia/15beijing.html?hp
As much as I generally side with the Chinese crowd on these issues, I can't see why baidu's defensible. Baidu rankings are NOT BASED ON RELEVANCY. It's manipulated search data. Think about that for a second. How can that possibly be a good search engine? It's heavily geared towards corporate sites, because corporate sites will pay money for higher ranking. And I assume government sites too because they are the government. That's basically the worst thing you can ask for in a search engine. Anyway, just had to get that off my chest. I generally have no problems with Chinese-equivalent of western softwares. Not a fan of QQ, but I think it's not too bad. I feel youku video qualities could be better, but overall it serves its purpose. The bt sites, news sites, etc. are poorly laid out in terms of format. But that's more of a personal taste. But I literally cannot stand baidu.
Right....nice how you gloss over illegal chinese espionage into their corporate assets as a possible reason. Blame the victim = typical mainlander masochism.
same with Google. Google has filters too. Anti-China stuff will always got high rankings. Pro-China email accounts are not safe on Google either. It is just another form of cold war. Now China really need to focus on Baidu and I believe it will eventually be better than google if Chinese are serious about the war.
I am sure that when you search the term China using Google the first thing that shows up is not the persecution of Falun Gong.
Espionage is always a risk for any business in any country. As I said, Google might be the first MNE to pull out of China using espinoage as an excuse. From what I read, Google seemed to complain more about China's censorship and various other regualations that serverly restrict its operation in China, which in turn translates to higher business cost. As other posters mentioned, while a corporate does have a limited burden of social responsibility, the goal of any public business is to increase share value for the share holders, Google included. So I doubt a decision of this maginitude would pass the board just b/c of some hacking activity that may or may not relate to the Chinese govt.
Why only Google sticks out? We are also talking about allegations of security attacks and misappopriation of source code, unlike the widespread IP priating problem associated with China.
China seems to have a unique problem with sophisticated gangs of "private" citizens hacking into information on the government's behalf that can't be dismissed with a platitude that "Espionage is always a risk for any business in any country."
http://www.chinesehonker.org/ Baidu.com was hacked a week ago too. Don't think Baidu, partly backed by US capital, is pulling out of China.
