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To: djane who wrote (4517)	5/10/1999 6:48:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 29987

Internet is on a slow boat to China Monday May 10 5:59 PM ET PC Week By John Dodge, ZDNet Cheap and easy access to the Internet is a freedom we take for granted in America. The point was driven home for me on a recent trip to Southeast Asia and the People's Republic of China, in particular. Estimates range as high as 2.1 million Internet users in mainland China to as low as 1.2 million at the end of last year. There's really no difference in those two small figures against the improbably huge Chinese population of 1.25 billion. So I asked a tour guide if the Internet was catching on in China. "Interwhaaaat?" he responded. I repeated the question. "Oh yes," he said, finally appearing to understand the question. I sensed he didn't want to talk about it. Strange, given he could speak near-fluent English, has a plum job as the manager of a tour company and was formerly a reporter at the China Daily. As I watched the throngs of people on bicycles flow through the squares of Beijing, it struck me that few of them had even heard of the Internet. That was my impression, although I could be wrong. China's approach to the Internet is exceedingly cautious. A story in the English-language China Daily last month said obtaining Net access is "as easy as falling off a log." Maybe the log fell on me, but I fail to understand how getting a "special visa" at the post office makes it easy. Visas cost $6 to $60 and are time-limited, depending on whether you go to Web sites in China only or surf Web sites at large. (And you thought Microsoft wanted to control the Web.) In addition, an adjoining story characterized China's use of computer networks as being "in the preliminary stage." Indeed! Originally, I had no intention of reporting, since the trip was a family vacation, but a curious Westerner cannot ignore the sights and sounds of such a fascinating place, much less a reporter. At the same time, I had been warned by colleagues in the United States and in Hong Kong that China views foreign journalists with deep suspicion. They advised me to list my profession as "clerk" or "teacher" on the visa application, but I put down "editor" and encountered no problems. I could not help but relate their attitude toward journalists with their skepticism about freely surfing the Web. The underlying premise is to censor information to the general population regardless of source. Westerners, who freely get HBO, "Walker, Texas Ranger" and Australian television piped into their rooms, could easily be fooled. A quick check of Chinese TV and radio listings shows what they get--"World Music Hits: World-Famous Accordion Pieces" and "Peking Opera: Battle of Puyang." So my reporting for this column to gauge the level of Internet usage in mainland China--near as I could tell, Hong Kong is as free and open as any Western city and maybe more capitalistic--was not done via traditional reporting. The China Daily offered some clues to how open China is. Day after day, it recounted the accomplishments and speeches of the energetic Chinese premier, Zhu Rongji, as he toured the United States. The stories seemed little more than press release fodder, claiming China was misunderstood by the West and that trade, particularly for high-tech goods, should be increased. Zhu argued that America's trade imbalance with China is exaggerated, and even at $169 billion last year, the amount equals a mere 2 percent of our nation's gross national product. So practice what you preach--free trade, Zhu said. Zhu's relentless push for freer trade between the world's most powerful and populous nations was part of a lobbying effort to gain China admittance to the World Trade Organization. When I hear about companies tripping over themselves to do business in China, I wonder what market potential there really is and how fast it will develop. By no means is my "reporting" exhaustive or definitive, but more than once I heard businesspeople in other countries in that part of the world complain about the slow pace of reform in China. Copyright © 1999 ZDNet.