The Chinese Ecommerce Dance

One step forward, two steps back, dosy dosy do ,,,

[Woz]

We have seen various reports of the years about the amount of control the Chinese Government has over the Online Community in China, from shutting down Internet Cafes to Blocking major sites such as Google.

It seems there has been another round of shutting down Internet Cafes this year which has been widely reported in many media outlets such as this article [thestandard.com] in The Standard.

"A high-profile government crackdown on Internet cafes in China resulted in the temporary closure of 18,000 Internet cafes between February and August, ..."

"In their hunt for Internet cafes that were violating Chinese law, officials inspected 1.8 million [M] cafes, ..."

"Officials also levied fines totalling 100 million [M] renminbi (US$12.1 million [M]) on Internet cafes for allowing children to play violent computer games, ..."

Clearly this is yet another attempt to control the masses, but, as I have often mentioned before, I do wonder about the overall ramification of these raids and closure to the overall Ecommerce industry in China, and I have to also wonder whether the "officials" are also thinking about these long temr ramifications or just blindly protecting the state. <From my experiences I suspect the latter, but that is another story.>

It seems I am not alone in the concerns however, as evidenced in this article [ecommercetimes.com] from the Ecommerce Times.

"When you shut off access to that many people, it definitely slows down progress," Heather Dougherty, retail analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings, told the E-Commerce Times. "This could have a huge impact in terms of how China progresses in e-commerce. It's certainly another hurdle."

"China is one of the countries where a lot of players have been looking to expand," Dougherty said. "But there are so many hurdles with the government policing everything so it isn't going to be a quick and easy road. This crackdown will definitely shut off some opportunities for American companies."

China is at an electronic crossroads and needs to make some long terms decisions. They are often at the forefront of technology, they are developing new protocls to cater for the language requirements, they have the larget potential online population, and so on, but these continual attempts to protect the people and the state are really nothing more than occasional spanners in the worlks that, in my opinion, do more damage for the country as a whole than the small amount of good they are supposed to achieve.

Strong in my opinions I may be, but I really do feel for the Chinese poeple being hampered at every turn by these official actions.

Onya
Woz

[redstorm]

Internet bar really does some harm to young children, it is a common sense among Chinese citizen. The reason is the bosses of internet bar does not provide a healthy environment for them.
In my point of view, the shutdown of internet bars will not hurt the development of e-commerence as most people do online business at their office, at home. Few people do e-business at the internet bars. Most people at these bars play games, communicate with qq or msn there. So it may hurt the online game industry in a short period but will lead small impact in the long run. Its my opinion, glad to share thoughts with your sincerely.