It will be very interesting to see where this goes. China Digital Times tagged a longer Pacific Epoch Epoch Times article here. Zou Tao, the founder of the NotBuyHouse movement, has a blog here and a general website for the NotBuyHouse Alliance here. A couple of important points. First, Zou Tao is a longtime political activist. His latest blogpost helpfully reviews his background in this regard. He describes himself as a social activist and volunteer working on the social problems of the weak and poor. He lists some of his previous campaigns, beginning in 1999 with "Open Letter on Volunteering to Campaign for the People’s Congress" and "Open Letter to Society on Being a Real Citizen" [that's not a good translation, frankly, but it's a tough phrase to render in English]. He has also been a consumer representative on a number of Shenzhen forums on digital television costs and rising parking costs. In short, an active figure in municipal politics.
Second point: Zou’s political experience has shaped a sophisticated use of the internet to drive his movement. He has logos of varying sizes for people to copy onto their own websites, and a specific strategy for how people can help disseminate the word online.
Unknowns: Zou’s current whereabouts, according to Epoch Times Pacific Epoch. Personally, I’m always sceptical about the accuracy of Pacific Epoch’s Epoch Times’ reporting, but they say that Zou was detained on his way to deliver a letter to top Chinese leaders in Beijing. He then became reticent while talking to PE ET reporters, though one can understand why that may be since PE ET is known to be linked to the Falun Gong. [Note: I got the names mixed up. Apologies to Pacific Epoch, which is a consultancy and research firm whose work I admire].
Another unknown is what Zou wants to do with the "alliance" and the "movement" that he has started. There’s a strong current of populist anger at speculators, which clearly taps into widespread fear about the stability of housing supplies and the ability of blue collar workers to buy in. All understandable on one level, yet surely quite threatening to the government. Check out the NotBuyHouse Alliance’s goals, as posted on their website.
Our goals:
- to express our extreme dissatisfaction with housing prices that are "higher than England and the U.S."!
- through our actions, to generate action from the appropriate government bureaus, and to gain the attention of society!
- let the [real estate] developers die in the toilets, let the houses rot in the speculators’ hands! [Note: no idea what "die in the toilets" refers to. Is there a particular issue with toilets and real estate in Shenzhen?]
- unite all the forces that can be united, and through our practical actions, let the artificially high housing prices return to a rational position
Our actions:
- absolutely do not buy a house for three years, unless housing prices come within an acceptable scope
- broadcast our objectives, let more people understand us, and join with us
Could this be the first deliberate Internet-organized protest campaign that has gained international recognition? How far has it spread? What will happen now?
Reporting from Beijing.
I didn’t see QQ noodles at the local supermarket, but I did see Hong Lee’s Internet Snack:
Also spotted, at a mall, was a Popkart store, selling many adorable large-size plush dolls.
An online movement to not buy a house for three years has been started here. Its goal is to stem the recent sharp rise in real estate prices, and particularly to stop real estate agents who are only in it only to make a quick buck at the expense of others.
Via PostShow.
p2pnet caught this story from the South China Morning Post. The Hong Kong Customs’ Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau has released results from its training program for youth, which teaches them how to monitor and report illegal internet transfer files. The program aims to expand to a cadre of 200,000 youth.
" ‘Initially we used 700 cadets from the Civil Aid Service for a
three-month period,’ [Bureau Senior Superintendent] said. ‘In that time we received over 800
reports of people illegally uploading… We were then able to inform
the copyright holder and subsequently ask the website to remove the
illegal content. If only 700 youths brought us such good results in
three months, I think we will be very successful when the full 200,000
start helping us on July 19."
link
link to South China Morning Post article
If you read Chinese and have an hour to spend, you can check out the bustling conversations happening on Wang Ran and Keso’s blogs, in answer to the question of why BBS are so popular in China and not elsewhere (at least, not in the U.S.).
Here are a few of the ideas being tossed around. Chinese people like BBS because:
there aren’t enough other places to speak your mind
people have too much time on their hands [note: Isaac Mao's "boredom economy", but it wouldn't explain why BBS and not blogs]
they’re anonymous
people are acting out alternate selves online
they like the bustling activity of BBS
they’re easy to use
they provide a sense of community [note: but so do blogs]
I think there may be another important factor: the entry barrier to the BBS is about as low as it gets, while the potential benefits are huge. BBS, unlike blogs, allow individuals to post creative packages of text and photos to a huge audience–without having to maintain an individual blog. They don’t have to spend the time and daily effort of creating an individual "brand," but can take advantage of the BBS brand and reputation. And the BBS can tolerate any number of topics, unlike many blogs which tend to focus on certain zones such as politics, gossip, or IT.
I have often wondered the opposite, which is why there aren’t Chinese-style BBS in the U.S.? Perhaps our media readerships are already too fragmented?
Taiwanese girls with their own website and large online fanbase on the mainland. Well known enough that the release of recent photos on China’s BBS was noted on top Chinese tech blogs Postshow and IT news site Donews. The photos are passed on, posted on blogs, sent to cellphones, and so on. Look out–the adorable Sandy and Mandy may be coming to a screen near you any day now…
Now THIS is what I’m talking about. Wanna hear what’s on playlists generated by Chinese young people? Here’s a song from a playlist called "Perfect World," put together by Ah Yang. Ah Yang’s playlists are number one on the user-generated Top 20 list (however, it’s not like we’ve got hundreds of thousands of voters. It’s not SuperGirl. He has 250 ratings). We’ll definitely have to spend some time with this. If you’d like specific, translated directions on how to navigate, let us know and we can post more details complete with "push the button that looks like THIS" images.
And all courtesy of Baidu, China’s leading search engine, which launched a new service on Tuesday called Zhangmenren 掌门人. China Web2.0 Review describes it perfectly so I’ll just give you his words:
Zhangmenren, which started beta test quietly in December 2005,
allows its users to set up and share their music playlists, which is
called “album” in the service. For example, you can create an album
named “Best Songs of Jay Chou“,
write a short description for the album, and list out the name of songs
in your album, and assign tags for it. Then Baidu will use its mp3
search engine to get the search links for each song in the album. Users can rate and comment on any album.
Besides personal album, the service provides a collaborative open
album function. Any users can add songs to a open album. But it seems
that so far users can not set an album to be an open album for
collaboration, since I can not find the function when creating an
album.
The playlists are categorized as "Top20" "new," "popular," and "essential".
Beep beep: reporting from Hong Kong.
Bus Uncle (巴士阿叔) has managed to break into the mainstream media in Hong Kong. For example, ESWN posts a cover scan of the current issue of Next Magazine featuring a giant mug shot of Bus Uncle:
Inside the magazine is an interview with him (ESWN translation here) portraying Bus Uncle in a kindly, pitiable light. Fun fact from interview: he ran multiple times for Chief Executive of Hong Kong (the top government position in HK) and intends to do so next year!
According to a brief RTHK television spot on Bus Uncle, he also tracked down his bus-shouting victim to persuade him into doing a show together (in order to make money). He was refused.
Then the television program brought a new light to the issue: did Bus Uncle break the law by his loud use of profanity inside the bus, and if so, should the bus company be doing something about it?
Before moving onto the next newsbit, the program also mentioned the young cameraman’s other 160 videos involving people doing "shameful" things - the example cited was one of a couple during a typhoon.
Stayed tuned for more on Bus Uncle.
If you haven’t seen them yet, do check out the two-part video documentary, "Broadband for Barefoot Bankers: Zuoquan County" on YouTube, from the European Commission and PlaNetFinance’s "Broadband for Barefoot Bankers" program. The videos document a process undertaken with poor farming families in Shanxi province wherein already existing local microfinance loan officers are set up with a computer/Internet system to manage their loans, and also become "technology guides" for the families they serve. The farmers either get their loan officers to look up the information they need online (say, on livestock diseases), or learn how to do it themselves and then become tech guides for their own small businesses and social networks.
link to videos
link to post on Broadband for Barefoot Bankers in China on the blog worldchanging
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