[LINK] "China's social networks bloom without Twitter, Facebook"

[rfmcdonald]

AFP's report on Chinese social networking sites is unsurprising: if, in an increasingly wired society, international sites are unavailable for whatever reason, local ones will pop up to meet those needs.

China's domestic social media sites like Weibo are booming thanks to their better knowledge of the world's largest Internet market -- and the censorship stifling foreign rivals like Facebook, Twitter, and Google-owned YouTube.

The 384 million people now online in China, where the need to build connections (guanxi) has always been vital, have fostered an explosion in web networking, led by instant messaging and video-sharing sites QQ and Youku.

But the government, wary of the power of such networks to quickly mobilise large groups of people, has blocked foreign sites such as Twitter on and off for months, which has guided Chinese users towards domestic firms, experts say.

"The Chinese government has been deliberately fostering domestic enterprises which are generally much easier to be controlled," said Xiao Qiang, who heads China Digital Times, a US-based site that monitors web developments in China.

"This is one of the essential components of the Chinese censorship mechanism, which also creates a trade barrier for the world's largest Internet market."

Twitter and Facebook were cut off nationwide in July amid deadly ethnic unrest in the restive far-western region of Xinjiang. Authorities blamed the spread of the violence in part on agitators who used the web to stoke it.

Last month, Google threatened to abandon its Chinese-language search engine google.cn, and perhaps end all operations in the country, over censorship and cyberattacks it says targeted the email accounts of Chinese rights activists.

The ultimatum thrown down by Google has sparked a Sino-US row over Internet freedom, but observers say the problems for foreign social networking sites run deeper, as those sites are simply not tailored to Chinese users.

"Even if Facebook and YouTube were not blocked in China, they still could not compete with the popularity of Kaixin (China's Facebook equivalent), Youku and others," said Duan Hongbin, an IT analyst at Anbound consulting.

"It's like Baidu and Google in China -- generally, Google is better in terms of technology and branding. But most Chinese still prefer Baidu," he said.

"It's not because of nationalism -- the language barrier is one reason. It is normal for Chinese users to use a Chinese-language interface. There are not many web users in China who prefer an English interface."

Iran's recent crackdown on Gmail makes me wonder whether the Islamic Republic is set on following the precedents of the People's Republioc.