China is evidently paying people to say the "right" (read: politically correct) thing on the Internet. And (surprise) they've been doing it for a while, according to blogger Joop Dorresteijn.

Let's make some distinctions. First, censorship is what happens when the government decides to not let you see something. If USA Today is censored where you live, that means you don't get to see it. Astroturfing is a public relations tool; it's an orchestrated effort to shape public opinion with what looks like grassroots discussion - but isn't because, well, it's orchestrated. Finally, I should mention crowdsourcing. That's when you get the larger community of Internet users to do your job for you (like with Wikipedia).

The story traces back to a piece in the Far East Economic Review (which I'm guessing is censored in China) about the "50-cent army."


© Rivard

The Deal.com thinks so. They published a piece this week in which they concluded that "Chinese Internet company Oak Pacific Interactive is considering a public offering either in Hong Kong or the U.S."

Oak Pacific operates Mop.com which The Deal.com describes as "a social networking site that is a copy-cat of U.S.-based Facebook and was picked up in an acquisition in 2006."

Softbank Corp., SBI, and JOHO Capital were among the investors a few months ago when Oak Pacific raised $430 million in new funds. The strength of that fundraising effort makes many analysts suspect that Oak Pacific has something big on the horizon...


© Daneel Ariantho

Bloomberg pointed out the irony this week: Starbucks may be shutting down stores in the U.S., but it is investing more heavily in China at the same time.

Starbucks is closing 600 U.S. outlets and giving 12,000 U.S. employees the axe. U.S operations doubled in just four years, but economic hard times had hit the gourmet coffee industry hard in the U.S.

In China though, according to Bloomberg, Starbucks expects "to gain as more-affluent Chinese are drawn to gourmet coffee."


© booizzy

Tsinghua University drew international attention this week with the release of the 2006 Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED). The report showed that the Chinese university is now the single largest source of doctoral candidates at American universities, according to the Baccalaureate Origins tables from the 2006 SED.

Some 571 graduates of undergraduate programs at Tsinghua University in Beijing earned doctorates in the United States in 2006. That's almost 150 more than third place UC Berkeley, the highest ranking American school in the Baccalaureate Origins tables. UC Berkeley formerly ranked first in the survey in this area. Another Chinese school, Beijing University, ranked second, with 507 of its alumni earning U.S. doctorates in 2006. UC Berkeley grads earned 427 doctorates in 2006. A listing of the top 50 schools in this category can be found here.

Tsinghua University has about 14,000 undergraduate students. It is by far China's most popular and prestigious institution of higher education.


© denn

Tech Start Ups carried a blog post a couple of days ago on the VC industry in China. I think the story originated with Xinhua. This year's Q2 numbers for venture capital in China are up 70% over last years numbers.

There were 159 venture capital projects funded in Q2, according to the report. About $1.2 billion was invested in these projects.

About half those projects were in the middle of their funding cycles, still expanding. A quarter of them were "matured enterprises."

The Internet technology sector alone accounted for 42% of the project that got VC funding in Q2.


© lumaxart

China's monstrous online job site, Zhaopin.com, got a shot of cash so huge recently that would make King Kong blush.

PaidContent.Org is reporting that Zhaopin has received $110 million in venture capital funds - a mezzanine round of funding designed to get it through to an IPO in sometime 2010. Zhaopin translates from Mandarin as "help wanted."

Zhaopin has two main investors, both Australian, and the company relationships have become interesting.


© ink3d