Zhang describes his users, unlike users in cities, as having few choices of offline stores or online stores city people can access through PCs in the daytime at work or at night at home. They use low-end mobile phones, getting connected with 2G and more recently with 3G. All Maimaibao’s users made purchases through its WAP site, said Zhang, with a half using feature phones, one third using Symbian-based smart phones and the rest using phones that cannot be identified by Maimaibao – Shanzhai phones. Internet café is the only place for them to access desktop PCs in spare time. Their online life on PC, however, doesn’t include setting up an account on Alipay or any e-commerce platforms, but playing online games, chatting on QQ IM or watching videos. So they pay cash on delivery. Delivery is a problem for most courier services don’t go to distant areas that only SME, the state-owned national delivery service, and two other private ones do. Sometimes it takes time to find where those people are; sometimes they cannot be found even though customer service staff had called them to confirm. The rate of failed delivery – recipients cannot be found — with Maimaibao is as high as 15% to 20%.
Chinese-language outsourcing/crowdsourcing service Zhubajie, which uses a similar model as Elance.com’s, claims to have 7.6 million workers. If this is true, it would mean that Zhubajie, despite having a cartoon pig as its mascot, is the largest online outsourcing/crowdsourcing site in the world by some margin, having more “workers” than Freelancer.com (6.5 million users) and Elance.com (2 million users) combined. Zhubajie’s might even be the largest employer in the world, as it has more workers than the U.S. Department of Defense, which has 3.2 million employees
Mobile phones have become the most common way for Chinese citizens to connect to the Internet, meaning the mobile Web has surpassed desktops. This is largely thanks to rural areas, which are driving over 50 percent of new Internet users
internet users in China over the age of 25 tend to scan the width and breadth of a website’s page in a manner that Western users would find indiscriminate and overwhelming.
Yet their younger peers (16-25) exhibit an adaptation of this behaviour, scanning in the same eye-gaze pattern but only above the fold of the page.
It’s a small difference, but one that points towards the gradual, quiet cultural shifts that are starting to shape the future of our online world(s).
China’s largest e-commerce firm, Alibaba Group, expects to sell merchandise this year worth more than that sold by Amazon Inc and eBay combined
AFP: Mobile phones trump computers among online Chinese
Mobile phones have overtaken computers as the most popular device for getting online in China, the government said Thursday, as it announced the number of web users had hit 538 million….
The number of people using mobile phones to go online rose to 388 million in the first half of this year, up 9.2 percent from the end of 2011, while 380 million used computers.
Uploading graft - Globaltimes.cn
In April 2009, the revised “Regulations on People’s Procuratorate Report” formerly extended reporting channels to the Internet and fax. Two months later, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) opened the anti-graft website 12309.gov.cn.
So far, the website has received more than 100,000 clues and over 200,000 appeals, nearly equal to the numbers of letters and visits the SPP received in the same time… Each year, about 140,000 officials are investigated, 80 percent of whom were exposed by tip-offs…
However, many informants prefer to turn to online forums, private blogs or non-governmental anti-graft websites…. Li Xinde, founder and manager of cnyulun.co, which claims to be the country’s most influential anti-graft website and was set up in 2003, said independence and fewer restrictions also make them popular. ”Without restrictions from advertisers, censorship by superiors, or worries of bypassing the chain of command, we can release reports accusing any official, at any rank, as long as we have solid proof,” Li told the Global Times, saying that some journalists, people’s congress deputies and even discipline inspectors also passed materials onto him. The website has released at least 400 cases, and Li is proud that nearly 60 percent of them were dealt with after being exposed.
(In China) Online retail sales last year were equivalent to the GDP of Vietnam, and by 2015 are projected to rise to $420 billion (Austria’s GDP), according to Barclays Capital
![(via Better search in mainland China - Inside Search)… ”In order to avoid connection problems, users can refine their searches without the problem keywords. For example, instead of searching for [长江], they could search for [changjiang]—which also means Yangtze River, but is written using pinyin, the system used to transliterate Chinese characters into Latin script. This won’t cause a timeout, but will still generate search results related to the Yangtze River.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4xxl4Bdd41qz4gh0o1_500.png)
(via Better search in mainland China - Inside Search)… ”In order to avoid connection problems, users can refine their searches without the problem keywords. For example, instead of searching for [长江], they could search for [changjiang]—which also means Yangtze River, but is written using pinyin, the system used to transliterate Chinese characters into Latin script. This won’t cause a timeout, but will still generate search results related to the Yangtze River.”
Via http://www.slideshare.net/Tomtrendstream/global-webindex-6-trends?from=ss_embed
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) calculates that every year for the foreseeable future another 30m Chinese will go online to shop for the first time. By 2015 they will each be spending $1,000 a year—about what Americans spend online now. BCG calculates that e-commerce could rise from 3.3% of China’s retail sales today to 7.4% by 2015… a quarter of Chinese shoppers seek products online because they are not available at physical stores. Also, until recently, China lacked a reliable and cheap method of shipping packages, so the e-commerce industry has invested in developing one. Purchases on Taobao, an online Goliath that is a division of China’s Alibaba, are thought to account for a staggering 50% of all packages shipped in China. The cost of shipping parcels is now a mere one-sixth of what firms in America have to pay.
(12) Subway lines in Shanghai and bus stations in Beijing have been equipped with billboards showing around 80 products with QR Codes. The company behind the experiment Shanghai based online shopping company Yihaodian (in which Walmart has an investment) does not charge for delivery on orders that total over 100 yuan ($15.50) and are less than 10 kiolograms in weight.
China’s Ministry of Defense announced Monday that it was releasing an official app for iPhones and iPads to let users keep up on People’s Liberation Army (PLA) goings-on. It’s a newsreader app that lets users view press releases, pictures and video from official military outlets like the PLA Daily newspaper and China’s Ministry of Defense
