KJ BLOGOLOGY

Virtual China www.virtual-china.org/
(From KJ #66)

This site in blog format tracks interesting material appearing on Chinese-language Internet. An eclectic mix, attracting specialized readership, so comments on postings tend to be informed and substantive.

ABOUT THE BLOG:
“Virtual China is an exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China. The topic is also the primary research area for the Institute for the Future's Asia Focus Program in 2006. IFTF (www.iftf.org) is an independent, nonprofit strategic research group with more than 35 years of forecasting experience based in Palo Alto, CA.”

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Lyn Jeffery is a cultural anthropologist and Research Director at the Institute for the Future where she leads its Asia Focus Program. She is the co-editor of China Urban: Ethnographies of Contemporary Culture.

Jason Li is studying engineering & education at Brown University, and has spent summers at IFTF & Microsoft Research Asia.

TEN-YEAR FORECAST: ASIA FOCUS
Over the next few decades, Asia will emerge as the leading center of the manufacturing economy, of innovation in select arenas of science and technology, and of new markets for companies worldwide. It will also bring an outlook to the world stage that is neither Western nor traditionally Eastern, but something entirely new. And this outlook will shape everything from the global economy to the global Internet.

Each year, the Ten-Year Forecast Program will take an in-depth look at a special feature of the emerging Asian landscape that is critical to understanding the future. Using a combination of ethnographic research and forecasting methodologies, the Asia Focus Program will build both an ongoing resource for making sense out of the growing body of research on Asia and also an ongoing network of people committed to developing the Foresight-to-Insight-to-ActionTM model for Asia.

FOCUS 2006:
VIRTUAL CHINA AND THE CHINESE-LANGUAGE INTERNET
In China, Internet use has grown by over 300% in the last five years, with more than 100 million Chinese creating their own Virtual China. This “other Internet” is founded on linguistic, visual, cultural, and regulatory features that differ from today’s dominant English-language Internet. And as it grows over the next decade, the Chinese Internet will rival what most people in the West think of monolithically as the Internet.

This year’s Asia Focus project will delve into the real user experience of the Chinese Internet, whether those users are Chinese youth, rural or urban Chinese entrepreneurs, or global companies trying to reach new Chinese markets online. Using ethnographic techniques, the study will compare both current practices and future expectations among these groups to understand where opportunities — and conflicts — are likely to emerge. The result will be an online map of the emerging world of Virtual China, with links to places and perspectives that will provide insights for anyone with a long-term interest in China’s influence on the global scene.

March 21, 2007
memedia: collective Chinese wisdom
http://memedia.cn/

Check out the new Chinese weekly online magazine, Memedia, a cooperative effort among over 100 (and counting) prominent Chinese bloggers. It looks like a blog but at present is a weekly, with hopes to eventually become a daily. So far, issues no. 1 and 2 offer super condensed, link-heavy news about web, tech, media, and international events — it’s a mirror of the collective wisdom of the participants, with links leading back to blog posts on their own sites. Memedia describes itself as follows:

“Coming from the combination of three terms, Me/Meme/Media, Memeda will provide interesting things, important things, diverse things, for us to enjoy together... This is an open, collaborative project.”

March 21, 2007
personal rights: another Chinese housing hold-out




On March 19 the China Legal Daily published what it claims is the first interview with the woman who owns the house. Her demand? To be given an apartment in the new building that is going up on the same spot, with comparable square footage to the house she now lives in. This will be impossible, says the developer. According to Chongqing law, says the article, there are three possible ways to compensate owners in this type of situation: 1) provide housing on the same spot; 2) provide housing in another spot; 3) provide a sum of money. The city is only willing to provide Ms. Wu, the resident, with the third option, but she is not willing to accept a sum of money.

Because the two parties cannot come to an agreement, they have not budged since relocation at the site started in September, 2004, although excavation of the worksite is already well underway... "On January 11, 2007, the developer brought an administrative action against Ms. Wu with the department responsible for relocation, the Chongqing Jiulongpo District Housing Management Bureau. The result was a demand for the resident being relocated to voluntarily move within 15 days and to return the house to be demolished by the developer. If the party being relocated does not agree with this ruling he or she can file a suit with the Chongqing Jiulongpo District Court within 3 months or apply for a reconsideration within 60 days from the Chongqing Jiulongpo District Government or the Chongqing Municipal Housing Bureau.

Ms. Wu's response to the Legal Daily reporter: “I simply won't accept this mistaken ruling!”

The Jiulongpo District Housing Management Bureau says it will apply for a legal ruling to institute forced relocation.

See also IFTF’s Future Now: Emerging technologies and their implications for the future, at http://future.iftf.org/

It offers a daily smorgasbord of links (not only from Asia), such as The Atlas of Ideas
(www.demos.co.uk/projects/atlasofideas/overview):

Mapping the new geography of science
“Since 1999, China’s spending on R&D has increased by more than 20 per cent each year. India now produces 260,000 engineers a year and its number of engineering colleges is due to double to 1,000 by 2010. According to Thomson ISI, Asia's share of the world’s scientific papers rose from 16 per cent in 1990 to 25 per cent in 2004. At the same time, there is a growing flow of multinational R&D to the new knowledge centres of Shanghai, Beijing, Hyderabad and Bangalore.”

“China in 2007 is the world’s largest technocracy: a country ruled by scientists and engineers who believe in the power of technology to deliver social and economic progress. Right now, the country is at an early stage in the most ambitious programme of research investment since John F. Kennedy embarked on the race to the moon. But statistics fail to capture the raw power of the changes that are under way, and the potential for Chinese science and innovation to head in new and surprising directions.”

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