WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2004-05-17 Time: 13:17:35 Posted By: Jan
[The Chinese with their modified communism are going from strength to strength. They will ultimately pose a great danger to the world. Jan]
Google's float may be grabbing the headlines but slightly further back from all the media attention are plans by five Chinese Net companies to go public and jointly raise $1-billion.
That will be less than half of what Google is expected to raise. However, industry analysts are convinced it is a sign that the Chinese are about to answer one of the questions that has vexed experts since the earliest days of the Internet boom (151) what will happen when a country with a population of 1,2-billion logs on?
The answer, they agree, will be many other Net markets being made to look like minnows. Within a couple of years it could be as commonplace for surfers to log on to Chinese-owned services as “destination” sites in their own countries.
“China's going to be one hell of a force to be reckoned with,” confirms William Makower, who lived and studied in China before becoming CEO of the online marketing agency Panlogic, which represents the likes of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Honda.
“If people aren't thinking about what is about to happen when the country logs on, they soon will. Apart from the simple fact that if everyone in China went online at the same time, it would bring the whole Net down, there's the question of how our companies should be expanding into China as well as the inevitable launch of Chinese sites over here.”
The five sites that have confirmed they are going to float, or at least shown an interest, include travel site eLong, gaming operation The9 and recruitment service 51Job.
Analysts are split on how well their efforts to raise dollars for foreign expansion will be received. Of four Chinese Net companies that have already gone public, travel service CTrip's shares have risen 50%, while ringtone site Linktone, Internet group Tom Online and portal Net-Ease are all down on their initial prices.
Nevertheless, the investment bank Morgan Stanley produced a paper commenting on the trend of Chinese Net companies expanding abroad, claiming to be “enthusiastic about the outlook because of the role the Internet should play in helping the Chinese economy develop”.
Regardless of investor reaction to this early wave of fund-raising by Chinese Net companies, Makower insists that China's rise to becoming the globe's economic superpower and main Internet market is inevitable.
“It's sheer weight of numbers,” he points out. “They've got a population of more than a billion and at the end of 2002 they had 57-million online. That's the equivalent of the entire United Kingdom population, yet it's only around 5% of theirs.”
While commentators admit that the Internet does not expand beyond the wealthy eastern provinces, they point out that, with a growing entrepreneurial “middle” class that could number as many as 250-million, it does not need to in order for Chinese Net companies to build user bases strong enough to fuel foreign expansion.
Certainly anyone in doubt as to whether China is on the verge of a Net boom should look at the registrations of its .cn web addresses, suggests Jonathan Robinson, business development director at NetNames, a domain name management company.
“Registrations of .cn addresses are up to about 350 000, which is up nearly 100% from last year,” he says.
“It may not sound like a great number but it's because .cn addresses haven't been available long. We always find that registrations reveal the economic cycle. We had most addresses being sold at the height of the dotcom boom and the least just after, so it's clear with the amount of interest in .cn names they're on the verge of a very big boom.”
Ironically, if China proves the optimists right, and does open up, it could well be down to the fact the medium is unlikely to ever reach the majority of the population that still work as peasant farmers.
The question is whether the Chinese ruling party, which has just quashed an agreement for free elections in Hong Kong, wants to embrace the openness of the Internet.
It maintains a firewall dubbed “The Great Wall of China”, which limits what information can get in and out of the country. Cyber caf(233)és use closed-circuit television to deter “subversive” activity. Hence the Internet is the meeting point between communist rule and the new wave of entrepreneurship and nobody can predict the outcome.
If openness wins the day, international companies eager to move into China and use its highly educated student population to run websites need to remember a crucial point.
According to Clive Jackson, the chief executive of the new media consultancy Global Beach: “If there is one thing I know from being half-Chinese and having been raised in Hong Kong it's that the West thinks far more short-term.
“Apart from expecting a massive leakage of intellectual property and having to accept that the rules change according to the whim of the ruling party, companies setting up in China will find that the country is thinking along a much longer time scale.” (151) Guardian Newspapers 2004
Source: Daily Mail & Guardian
URL: http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=66387/p>