For my friends who wonder why Chinese can lie with a straight face, watch this video to get inside the mind of a Chinese … pic.twitter.com/NVZNXl084O

— James Seng (@jseng) June 8, 2018

By now, many people have heard of the implementation of China’s “Citizen Scores” that has been making rounds. I become curious and did some investigation of my own.

As a boy scout as a kid, we used to play a game around campfire. The adult would form two teams and make two lines with 10 kids. He would the whisper the same exact message to first kid of the two teams, whereby they would repeat it to the next kid and so on until the last kid have to write the message down on paper. We always have a good laugh what comes out at the end compared to what went in.

“Citizen Score” is what happens when official news gets reposted, added with the journalist opinions, mixed in some new information (relevant or not), and repeated the process 10 times. To make it worst, most journalists in the process didn’t bother to, or was not able to do fact checking as the source is in Chinese.

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Recently, there have been a lot of noise about China tightening control on new top levels and how it could severely damper domain names registrations in China and one should make preparation for the worst.

Initially, I tried to stay out of this as I know all the players behind this. But given there are at least 3 people who have email me to ask me what’s going on, I think let me clear the air here.

It started with a report by Brandma on China’s “Special Operation” to regulate Domain Name Registrations which warns that “Getting the license requires understanding on how the regulatory system works and how one should respond as it evolves. It’s also like a mini ICANN application process, but this time in Mandarin.”

Contrary to these “doomsayer” report, there is really no need to panic.

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如果你到中关村去，想买一台电脑。看中的是一台外观神奇的机器，标识写着：英特尔，4G内存。这时候导购哥们出现了。

你问：“四核双核？”他答：“买回去试试，就知道啦”。
你问：“硬盘多大？”他说：“越贵越大，但不做保证。”
你问：“可以玩游戏吗？”他答：“运气好可以。”

你还会买这台电脑吗？一个拳头都不过分。

但是很不幸，作为中国互联网网民，在安装家庭宽带这件事情上，我们不可避免地面临着明知被骗，也要心甘情愿掏钱的讽刺。因为宽带接入是一个黑即是白，不公重复多次即为标准的行业。

猜一猜，你家的网速实际是多少？

当他们保证你4M宽带时，打开淘宝，网页却“千呼万唤始出来”；当他们收取你10M宽带的年费，你看爱奇艺，缓冲时间却约等于放映时间；他们当然也不会事先告诉你，20M的网速意味着和家人Skype时，他们的笑容永远在凝固状态。

去质问宽带接入商：说好的流畅网速到哪儿去了？接入商耸耸肩，并迅速地根据对你“柔弱程度、白痴程度、气愤程度”的判断，流利地提供给你以下说辞的一种或几种。

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This morning I read a catchy titled article on CircleID “China Closing the Door to New Technologies”. I was trying to make sense of what’s all the fuss is about …

So I called up my friends in Ministry of Industry and Information for lunch to find out what’s going.

Background

The document is called 电信业务分类目录 (Category of Telecommunications Services) that is now calling for public comments. This has been something MIIT have been working on for a quite some time now. Many companies, domestic and international companies, have been consulted and provided feedback before this publication.

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Via 玖零张艳帅…

台北有一位建筑商，年轻时就以精明著称于业内。那时的他，虽然颇具商业头脑，做事也成熟干练，但摸爬滚打许多 年，事业不仅没有起色，最后还以破产告终。在那段失落而迷茫的日子里，他不断地反思自己失败的原因，想破脑壳 也找寻不到答案。论才智，论勤奋，论计谋，他都不逊于别人，为什么有人成功了，而他离成功越来越远呢？

百无聊赖的时候，他来到街头漫无目的地闲转，路过一家书报亭，就买了一份报纸随便翻看。看着看着，他的眼前豁然一亮，报纸上的一段话如电光石火般击中他的心灵。后来，他以一万元为本金，再战商场。

这次，他的生意好像被施加了魔法，从杂质铺到水泥厂，从包工头到建筑商，一路顺风顺顺水，合伙伙伴趋之若鹜。短短几年内，他的资产就突飞猛进到一亿元，创造了一个商业神话。

有很多记者追问他东山再起的秘诀，他只透露四个字：只拿六分。又过了几年，他的资产如滚雪般越来越大，达到 一百亿元。有一次，他来到大学演讲，期间不断有学生提问，问他从一万元变成一百亿元到底有何秘诀。他笑着回答，因为我一直坚持少拿两分。学生们听得如坠云里雾里。

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Looks like Mobile Dating Sim has reached in China (via xinhuanet)

记者日前了解到，曾经在年轻人中风靡一时的饲养电子宠物的游戏如今已有了“升级版”——用手机养“虚拟情人”成了现在最流行的一种玩法。有专家指出，这类游戏的流行不仅会损害女性形象，让人将感情培养功利化，更严重的会影响游戏玩家的身心健康和人格发展。

Mobile Games like 口袋情人 [Pocket Lover] (typical Japanese dating Sim) and SMS Games like 宠物情人 [Pet Lover] is getting popular in China and experts are concern about the social effects of such games on youngsters.

These games don’t come cheap either – the virtual “lover” requires gifts which cost real money – US$0.50 to US$2 – beyond the monthly subscription fees. Wow, talks about ARPU :-)

While many heard of Maria Schneider who produced the web-only album that won the Grammy, very few people (or at least outside the Chinese community) heard of 杨臣刚 (Yang Chen Gang).

Yang Chen Gang produced a web-only Chinese album called 老鼠爱大米¹ (click here to listen) which is incredibly popular in China , thanks to 网络DJ (Web-DJ). In fact, he was just recently invited to (China) National TV, which is an incredible feat.

Don’t believe? Grab a friend from China and ask if he/she have heard of Yang Chen Gang. They would be very surprised that you know the name. [Or do a search on Baidu, the Google for China.]

I also learn yesterday that China Internet Users has grown to 94m (~10% of the world internet population) according to Mao Wei. I think I can trust Mao since he is the Executive Director of CNNIC who is responsible for collecting these statistics annually. That’s means there is a world of 94m chinese Internet users which the rest of the English-speaking Internet world have little knowledge and interaction with.

It’s like you have a 10% blackhole in your system.

¹ The literal translation is “Mouse love Big Rice” which is very cute.