RFA Unplugged is a Radio Free Asia blog. Written by RFA staff, this blog includes top stories and previously unpublished material from our language services, what’s coming up in our broadcasts, and what’s going on in the world of the Asian online media. We welcome your comments.
Beijing bureaucrats are in a vicious fight over control of internet content particularly on-line games. It seems an unlikely battleground for an internal government turf war but gaming is a sector that promises fast-growing revenue.
It is also set against the background of the Government’s wider desire for control over internet content.
And the biggest prize in the battle for the real dollar in the virtual world is the latest version of the world’s most successful role-playing online game, World of Warcraft.
Meanwhile the New York Times says the online gaming industry in China is already huge, and growing fast.
“About 50 million people crowd the Internet cafes of China on a regular basis to play,” it reported.
“ Revenues in 2008 rose about 50 percent to at least $2.9 billion, according to Alicia Yap, a Hong Kong analyst for Citi Investment Research and Analysis.
“That is 10 times the revenue of just five years ago. IDC, a research company, has predicted that annual revenue will reach $6 billion by 2013.
The boy was detained Thursday on suspicion of criminal intimidation and blackmail. He has since been released on bail.
According to local media it is the latest in a series of scandals to hit the school which has recently expelled another 16-year-old for selling drugs including marijuana and muscle building steroids.
China seems to be looking ahead to future climate talks beyond the Copenhagen gathering scheduled for December.
On Friday, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told reporters that if negotiations are to continue, the Copenhagen should set guidelines for “the next stage” of talks.
While many had hoped the December meeting could result in an agreement on global warming that would replace a soon-to-expire Kyoto protocol, reports say pre-conference talks between major players have already started to break down.
China and the U.S., seen as the two largest sources of greenhouse gases, have been unable to agree on how to curb emissions.
Washington wants China to severely limit its emissions, but Beijing says developed nations like the U.S. should set the standard.
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but the U.S. is the second largest greenhouse gas producer per capita after Australia.
Read an RFA article on how climate change has already contributed to glacial melt in Tibet, which is affecting the flow of China’s major river arteries.
Zachu, Tibetan for the Mekong River, is said to be sacred by nomads living on the Qinghai plateau. That’s where our team of reporters starts the journey. As they progress down the least developed of the world’s major rivers, they file video dairies, slideshows of amazing photos rarely seen before and regular blogs and tweets offering a window into an extraordinary trip.
Their goal is to give a voice to some of the millions of people who live off the river, and will see their lifestyles transformed by industrialisation, global warming and cheer political arogance.
WASHINGTON—Six Uyghur ex-detainees from Guantanamo Bay and now living on a remote Pacific island are upset they cannot phone their families in China.
In an interview with RFA the men said the Chinese Government has cut off most communication with their home in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang. It has been the site of recent unrest.
“We haven’t been able to talk to our family members yet,” Anwar Hasan said in a telephone interview from the Pacific island nation of Palau, where he was transferred with five other Uyghur men after spending nearly eight years behind bars.
The men who were released form US custody without charge said they were fleeing religious persecution in China when they were mistaken for extremists and picked up in Afghanistan.
Vietnam’s Deputy Information Minister this week hit back at United State’s charges it censors internet content and spies on IT users.
The US condemnation came in a House Resolution sponsored by Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez in late October.
Rep Sanchez told the House the Vietnamese Government had created an agency to “restrict Internet freedom, censor private blogs” and compel IT companies to help the government spy on users.
But the Do Quy Doan, vice minister of information and communications has denied the allegations saying the agency referred to was set up to ensure orderly development of the IT sector in the country not as a censorship or control mechanism.
He pointed to the UN’s International Telecommunications Union findings that Vietnam was in the top 10 countries in the world for the rate of internet development as a sign of its openness and progress.
He also quoted a Voice of America reporter who had commented on a recent visit to Vietnam that he observed huge amount of internet usage. The vice-minister said this would not have been possible in a country that repressed users.
Six Uyghur men held for seven years in U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay have been released to the tiny Pacific island of Palau which has promised to give them a temporary home for two years.
Radio Free Asia reports the men, were detained as terror suspects but claimed to be religious refugees who had fled persecution in neighboring China.
The case highlights the thorny problem of what to with detainees, some of whom have been held for as long as seven years yet are innocent.
There is concern if they were not radicals before they were detained it is possible harsh treatment and proximity to genuine zealots may have converted them.
The United States Congress is considering a resolution calling on Vietnam to ease up restrictions on internet uses and free bloggers and cyber activists jailed for their activities.
She sees the internet and free expression as essential for the promotion of democracy, and social and financial development.
The representative said she did not believe that a country which uses violence and the legal system to crush people trying to freely express their views deserves to be a member of the World Trade Organization or President of the United Nations Security Council and position it currently holds.
Any repercussions, albeit unlikely, in the WTO would hurt Vietnam economically. Removal from its position on the UN Security Council, while unlikely to have a direct material affect on the Vietnam, would be seen as humiliating.
Twenty years after the Berlin wall fell, signaling the end of communism in East Germany, China has erected an electronic wall to stop its citizens from joining the festivities electronically.
The organizers of the Berlin Wall Twitter site intended for it to be used by people wishing to post their memories of the night the wall came down. But it quickly became an outlet for Chinese angry at internet censorship in their country.
Organizers said nearly half of the more than 3000 comments posted were from China.
According to the China Digital Times, one user wrote: “Mr Hu Jintao, please tear down this Great Firewall.
It was an ironic twist on the 1987 speech given by US President Ronald Reagan who asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachew to “Tear Down This Wall.”
China has at least 338 million Internet users, more than any other country in the world, according to state media.
The Mekong River is the longest river in Southeast Asia and supports the lives of 70 million people from Tibet to Vietnam. Our reporters undertook the journey to tell their stories. From these conversations, the team produced the "Mekong diaries," a series of videos on display in this section.
