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DealBook: China’s Changing Internet Landscape

May 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

WELL WIRED The number of Internet users in China is expected to pass 600 million in 2013.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe number of Internet users in China is expected to pass 600 million in 2013.

China was on vacation much of last week for the May 1 Worker’s Day holiday, but executives at two of China’s most important online companies were busy completing a deal that could reshape the country’s Internet.

Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce and online payments firm, announced that it had bought an 18 percent stake in Sina’s Weibo subsidiary for $586 million in a deal expected to jump-start Sina’s revenue through social commerce. Weibo, a microblogging service somewhat akin to Twitter, is one of China’s biggest social networks. Think Amazon or eBay investing in Twitter.

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China’s top three Internet companies, known as the BATs, are Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Baidu, listed on the Nasdaq market, has a market capitalization of just under $30 billion. Alibaba is private but an eventual initial public offering, likely in either the United States or Hong Kong, could make the company one of the most valuable Internet firms in the world. Tencent is listed in Hong Kong and is worth nearly $65 billion, or almost as much as Facebook.

Mobile Internet usage is growing rapidly in China, in large part because of the proliferation of Google’s Android and cheap smartphones made in China. Sunday’s CCTV Evening News dedicated the first three minutes of the broadcast to a report about surging smartphone use and the benefits to China’s economy from the increasing consumption that the mobile Internet is expected to drive.

Weibo’s several hundred million users now access the service more from mobile devices than from PCs. The deal with Sina is part of Alibaba’s strategy, along with other initiatives like developing a new mobile operating system, Alibaba Mobile OS, to become the leading mobile firm in China. According to a report in Monday’s issue of Caixin, one of China’s top business magazines, Baidu was also negotiating with Sina for a Weibo deal. A Baidu representative declined to comment on that claim.

Tencent has its own Weibo service (weibo is the Chinese word for microblogging) as well as WeChat, a mobile messaging and social networking service that has several hundred million registered users. In December, this column cited WeChat as one of the eight trends to keep an eye on in 2013.

All this activity and wealth creation is happening inside of what the Economist magazine, in an excellent recent report on China’s Internet, termed a “giant cage.” But there are recent signs that the government is concerned the cage may need strengthening.

The previous column noted that the government appears to be reining in the more salacious online exposes of corruption that occurred over the last few months in favor of channeling them into official outlets.

On May 2, China’s State Internet Information Office declared war against online rumors because they “have impaired the credibility of online media, disrupted normal communication order, and aroused great aversion among the public.” One report suggests the regulators have some of the most influential users of Sina Weibo, those with millions or tens of millions of followers, in their sights. Online rumors have been a real problem, but crackdowns against them can be used for broader goals.

Last week’s announcement follows a new rule to tighten media controls, especially in regards to Weibo, issued in April, and an essay titled “How Is the Party to Manage the Media Well in the New Era?” by a propaganda official who in 2010 wrote the influential book “The Art of Guiding Public Opinion.”

There have been campaigns against online rumors before. The most concerted efforts to reign in Weibo began after the sixth plenum of the 17th Party Congress in October 2011 when official media declared that “Internet rumors are like drugs” and propaganda work should focus on “strengthening the channeling and control of social media and real-time communication tools.” That campaign was followed by the December 2011 requirement for real name registration of Weibo users.

Strict implementation does not always follow rule promulgation in China, and the real name registration requirement was largely ignored. Sina admitted as much in its 2011 and 2012 20-F annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here is what the company wrote in the recent 2012 filing:

We are required to, but have not, verified the identities of all of our users who post on Weibo, and our noncompliance exposes us to potentially severe penalty by the Chinese government.

The regulators may not always succeed the first time, but it would be a mistake to assume they will not keep pushing the issue, especially when propaganda work and ideology are so core to the party’s control. At the end of March, the State Council released its task list for the next five years, and one of the items is an Internet real name registration system by June 30, 2014.

The Alibaba deal is about strengthening mobile positioning and spurring social commerce. The government would probably be pleased to see Weibo shift from being a hotbed of social and political commentary and critiques to more of an online shopping arcade that, through integrated online payment functionality, has the voluntary real name registrations of many users.

Just as China’s leadership is clear it will pursue economic reform without structural political reform, so it also appears intent on building a commercially vibrant yet managed Internet, an “Internet with Chinese characteristics.” Given the scale of business activity and wealth creation on the Chinese Internet, the cage looks quite gilded and may prove far more robust than many expect.

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/chinas-changing-internet-landscape/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Huge Ivory Stash Is Seized in Malaysia

December 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

“It’s extremely depressing,” said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, one of the world’s most renowned elephant researchers, who has been studying the ivory trade for more than 30 years. “The price of ivory is making this situation insane.”

Fueled by growing demand from Asia, especially from China, the price of ivory has shot up to more than $1,000 per pound in some markets. As a result, tens of thousands of elephants are being slaughtered each year in Africa — more than at any time in the past two decades — and some scientists say the survival of the species may be endangered. Much of the ivory is used for chopsticks, bookmarks, figurines and other trinkets.

Malaysia is a well-known transit point. Malaysian authorities said Tuesday that they had discovered the ivory, which they said totaled 24 tons, packed in two shipping containers, concealed in stacks of neatly sawed wood.

“Inside the wood there were secret compartments that were filled with elephant tusks,” said a customs director, Azis Yaacub, according to Agence France-Presse.

Photographs from the seizure showed that the compartments were built to look like stacks of mahogany, but were in fact three feet deep and crammed with ivory. The shipment was labeled floor tiles.

According to Malaysian authorities, the shipment took a circuitous route, originating in the small West African nation of Togo, then going north to Spain, then east to Malaysia’s port of Klang and eventually destined for China. It is not clear where in Africa the ivory was from; conservationists say Togo is an emerging hub in the underground ivory trade and therefore the ivory might have been drawn from elephants killed across the continent.

Law enforcement officials have said that only well-oiled criminal syndicates have the money and skill to organize such large shipments. With the help of corrupt officials, they move hundreds of pounds of tusks thousands of miles across the globe, often using specially made shipping containers with such secret compartments. In some ports, like Mombasa, Kenya, only a relatively small percentage of containers is inspected, and ivory has been concealed in shipments of items including avocados and anchovies. Sometimes it is wrapped in chili peppers to throw off sniffer dogs.

But the ivory trade involves much more than organized crime. Some of Africa’s most notorious armed groups, including the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Shabab and Darfur’s janjaweed, are hunting down elephants and using the tusks to buy weapons and sustain their mayhem — both feeding off and fueling instability in turbulent nations.

Beyond that, members of some of the African armies that the American government trains and supports with millions of taxpayer dollars — like the Ugandan military, the Congolese Army and the military of newly independent South Sudan — have been implicated in poaching elephants and dealing in ivory.

“One wonders when this is going to end,” said Dr. Douglas-Hamilton, the founder of a nonprofit wildlife organization in Kenya called Save the Elephants.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/world/asia/huge-ivory-stash-is-discovered-in-malaysia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Markets Slide as Greece Sets Referendum on Aid Deal

November 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The proposed ballot will put Greek austerity measures — and potentially membership in the euro zone — to a popular vote for the first time, risking Mr. Papandreou’s political future and threatening even greater turmoil both among the countries that share the single currency and further afield.

His announcement sent tremors through Europe’s see-sawing markets on Tuesday, with bank stocks taking a particular hammering because of their exposure to Greek debt. At midday, the German DAX index was down by 5.3 per cent while the French CAC 40 had slipped by roughly 4.2 per cent. In Britain, which is not a member of the euro zone but trades heavily with continental Europe, the FTSE 100 index was down by around 3.2 percent.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is expected to speak with German Chancellor Angela Merkel by phone during the day on Tuesday to discuss the referendum, which took both leaders by surprise, Agence-France Presse reported. The French president was said to be “dismayed,” according to Le Monde, citing an unnamed confidant of Mr. Sarkozy.

The German Finance Ministry deflected questions in a statement early Tuesday that the call for a referendum “is a domestic political development on which the German government has no official information yet and which therefore it will not comment on.”

But Rainer Brüderle, a senior member of Ms. Merkel’s governing coalition and a former finance minister, said in a radio interview on Tuesday that he was “irritated” by the move, which he called “a strange thing to do.”

“This sounds to me like someone is trying to wriggle out of what one has agreed to,” he was quoted by Der Spiegel as saying.

Mr. Papandreou’s surprise promise of a vote on the austerity package introduced a note of uncertainty in what had seemed to be a done deal, threatening a comprehensive agreement reached by European leaders last week to shore up the euro zone. A rejection by the voters would also be likely to be treated as a vote of no confidence in the government and lead to early elections.

The anxiety stirred up by those fears hammered United States financial markets on Monday, showing once again how the domestic politics of even the smallest members of the European Union can create troubles that not only threaten the currency but reverberate around the globe.

Addressing lawmakers on Monday evening, Mr. Papandreou said the decision on whether to adopt the deal, which includes fresh financial assistance, debt relief and deeply unpopular austerity measures, properly belonged to the Greek people.

“Let us allow the people to have the last word, let them decide on the country’s fate,” he said.

It was unclear how the referendum would be worded, but Mr. Papandreou said it would be a vote on whether or not Greeks supported the debt deal and the program of austerity measures in exchange for foreign aid.

The stakes are extremely high. A no vote could break the deal between Greece and its so-called troika of foreign lenders — the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund — which have demanded structural changes and austerity measures in exchange for aid.

Without the aid, Greece would not be able to meet its expenses and would default on its debt, sending shock waves through the euro zone and the world economy.

A yes vote, on the other hand, would move the package forward, effectively shifting responsibility for the nation’s painful economic choices from Mr. Papandreou’s Socialist Party onto the public. That outcome would help Mr. Papandreou shore up his political fortunes and avoid the instability of early elections.

The center-right opposition has opposed the bulk of the austerity program, and the prime minister’s popular support has dwindled as Greeks have been hit by a seemingly endless series of tax increases and wage and pension cuts. On Sunday, the center-left newspaper To Vima reported that a majority of Greeks viewed the deal negatively.

The leader of Greece’s main conservative opposition party New Democracy, Antonis Samaras, told reporters in Athens on Tuesday that his party would do whatever it takes to force early elections and accused Mr. Papandreou of acting selfishly by calling for a referendum.

“Mr. Papandreou, in his effort to save himself, has presented a divisive and extortionate dilemma,” Mr. Samaras said following talks with President Karolos Papoulias.

Niki Kitsantonis reported from Athens, and Rachel Donadio from Rome. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London and J. David Goodman from New York.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5c25792233c5ec9a2d5412b71521fb87

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Markets Tumble as Greece Sets Referendum on Latest Europe Aid Deal

November 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The proposed ballot will put Greek austerity measures — and potentially membership in the euro zone — to a popular vote for the first time, risking Mr. Papandreou’s political future and threatening even greater turmoil both among the countries that share the single currency and further afield.

His announcement sent tremors through Europe’s see-sawing markets on Tuesday, with bank stocks taking a particular hammering because of their exposure to Greek debt. At midday, the German DAX index was down by 5.3 per cent while the French CAC 40 had slipped by roughly 4.2 per cent. In Britain, which is not a member of the euro zone but trades heavily with continental Europe, the FTSE 100 index was down by around 3.2 percent.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is expected to speak with German Chancellor Angela Merkel by phone during the day on Tuesday to discuss the referendum, which took both leaders by surprise, Agence-France Presse reported. The French president was said to be “dismayed,” according to Le Monde, citing an unnamed confidant of Mr. Sarkozy.

The German Finance Ministry deflected questions in a statement early Tuesday that the call for a referendum “is a domestic political development on which the German government has no official information yet and which therefore it will not comment on.”

But Rainer Brüderle, a senior member of Ms. Merkel’s governing coalition and a former finance minister, said in a radio interview on Tuesday that he was “irritated” by the move, which he called “a strange thing to do.”

“This sounds to me like someone is trying to wriggle out of what one has agreed to,” he was quoted by Der Spiegel as saying.

Mr. Papandreou’s surprise promise of a vote on the austerity package introduced a note of uncertainty in what had seemed to be a done deal, threatening a comprehensive agreement reached by European leaders last week to shore up the euro zone. A rejection by the voters would also be likely to be treated as a vote of no confidence in the government and lead to early elections.

The anxiety stirred up by those fears hammered United States financial markets on Monday, showing once again how the domestic politics of even the smallest members of the European Union can create troubles that not only threaten the currency but reverberate around the globe.

Addressing lawmakers on Monday evening, Mr. Papandreou said the decision on whether to adopt the deal, which includes fresh financial assistance, debt relief and deeply unpopular austerity measures, properly belonged to the Greek people.

“Let us allow the people to have the last word, let them decide on the country’s fate,” he said.

It was unclear how the referendum would be worded, but Mr. Papandreou said it would be a vote on whether or not Greeks supported the debt deal and the program of austerity measures in exchange for foreign aid.

The stakes are extremely high. A no vote could break the deal between Greece and its so-called troika of foreign lenders — the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund — which have demanded structural changes and austerity measures in exchange for aid.

Without the aid, Greece would not be able to meet its expenses and would default on its debt, sending shock waves through the euro zone and the world economy.

A yes vote, on the other hand, would move the package forward, effectively shifting responsibility for the nation’s painful economic choices from Mr. Papandreou’s Socialist Party onto the public. That outcome would help Mr. Papandreou shore up his political fortunes and avoid the instability of early elections.

The center-right opposition has opposed the bulk of the austerity program, and the prime minister’s popular support has dwindled as Greeks have been hit by a seemingly endless series of tax increases and wage and pension cuts. On Sunday, the center-left newspaper To Vima reported that a majority of Greeks viewed the deal negatively.

The leader of Greece’s main conservative opposition party New Democracy, Antonis Samaras, told reporters in Athens on Tuesday that his party would do whatever it takes to force early elections and accused Mr. Papandreou of acting selfishly by calling for a referendum.

“Mr. Papandreou, in his effort to save himself, has presented a divisive and extortionate dilemma,” Mr. Samaras said following talks with President Karolos Papoulias.

Niki Kitsantonis reported from Athens, and Rachel Donadio from Rome. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London and J. David Goodman from New York.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/world/europe/markets-tumble-as-greece-plans-referendum-on-latest-europe-aid-deal.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Court Orders French Cop-Watching Site Blocked

October 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

PARIS — A court here has ruled that French Internet service providers must block access to a Web site that shows pictures and videos of police officers arresting suspects, taunting protesters and allegedly committing acts of violence against members of ethnic minorities.

Law enforcement officials, who had denounced the site as an incitement to violence against the police, welcomed the decision.

“The judges have analyzed the situation perfectly — this site being a threat to the integrity of the police — and made the right decision,” Jean-Claude Delage, secretary general of the police union, Alliance Police Nationale, told Agence France-Presse.

But free speech advocates reacted with alarm, saying the ruling, issued Friday, reflected a French tendency to restrict Internet freedoms.

The site, called Copwatch Nord Paris I-D-F, is an offshoot of the so-called cop-watching groups that appeared in the United States in the 1990s. In the United States, the courts have generally ruled that filming the police is protected by free speech guarantees in the U.S. Constitution.

In France, there is no equivalent to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bars Congress from making any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for the development of a “civilized Internet,” promoting stricter law enforcement in the digital sphere, in areas ranging from protecting copyright to preventing the spread of child pornography.

“This court order illustrates an obvious will by the French government to control and censor citizens’ new online public sphere,” said Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesman for La Quadrature du Net, a Paris-based organization that campaigns against restrictions on the Internet.

The police had said they were particularly concerned about portions of the site showing identifiable photos of police officers, along with personal data — including some cases in which officers are said to express far-right sympathies on social networks.

The initial complaint against the site was filed by a Paris police officer who said he had received a bullet in his mailbox after his picture had appeared on the site. He was joined by other officers.

The case was then taken up by Claude Guéant, the French interior minister. He had asked the court to issue an order blocking only certain pages of the site — those showing the most sensitive personal information. But Internet service providers argued that this would be impossible, given that they had been unable to identify the host of the site or its creators.

The French Association of Internet Access and Service Providers said it was relieved that it had not been asked to try to “filter” the site in this way. It said that while it did not want to encourage the blocking of sites, it did not object as long as the judicial process had been followed.

“As long as the necessary safeguards are respected, members will be happy to comply with the judicial decision,” said Nicolas d’Arcy, legal adviser to the association.

Cop watching is not exactly new; in 1991, the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King, by Los Angeles police officers was videotaped by a bystander with a camcorder. The acquittal of three of the officers a year later led to widespread rioting in the city.

In Berkeley, California, an organization claiming to be “the original Copwatch group” had already been set up in 1990. From there, the movement spread to other U.S. cities, adopting the Web and other tools as digital technology advanced. Eventually, it crossed the Atlantic to Britain and, now, France.

A report by Amnesty International in 2009 was sharply critical of the French record on police brutality, as well as the authorities’ response. “Allegations of beatings, racial abuse, excessive force and even unlawful killings by French police are rarely investigated effectively and those responsible are seldom brought to justice,” the report said.

The police union said violence against police officers had been on the rise, too. On Friday, for example, an officer was killed in the city of Bourges by a knife-wielding assailant, the police said.

The “I-D-F” in the name of the French site is short for “Île-de-France,” the region that includes Paris and its suburbs, the scene of frequent tension between the police and young members of ethnic minority groups.

The court ordered that the site be blocked immediately, but it was still accessible late Friday.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/court-orders-french-cop-watching-site-blocked.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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