Lost in Translation; Making Sense of the Far East Through a Western Prism

By Hal Bringman and Elias Bustos, November 1, 2011

We’ve lost track of the number of trips we’ve taken to China at this point. One thing that remains the same, however, is China’s ambivalence about the web. Between the many meetings with the Shanghai Media Group spanning the last several years, to the most recent TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing, it seems we take one step forward and two steps back, as China grapples with the Internet. Just as the historic inaugural TechCrunch Disrupt in Beijing wound down, rumors of a tightening of the Internet began swirling.

Indeed, within days, China’s IT chiefs agreed to tighten their clamp on the web even more. With various Western startups struggling to get off the ground to bring music into China in an effort to both create a music industry, and further bolster an IP economy in the region, the government’s moves creates more uncertainly for investors in the West.

Financial Times reports the heads of China’s leading information technology companies have pledged to censor Internet content more strictly as the local government tries to tame a boisterous online media.

The chief executives of 39 Internet, telecom and computer groups have reached a “consensus” that Internet companies “must strengthen self-control, self-restraint and strict self-discipline”, the official news agency Xinhua said on Sunday.

“[They must also] determinedly contain the tendency of spreading online rumors, pornography, fraud and other illegal, harmful information on the internet,” it added.

The government has made gestures to open up in the past and use the same censorship tools to combat piracy and bolster the sale of content, especially through the mobile ecosystem where nearly $3b is collected annually in mobile music revenues.

Next week, the preeminent Mobile Asia Congress event takes place in Hong Kong. From mobile money to mobile applications, the executive level conference examines the growing app-shaped world and how to adjust to it as quickly as possible.

As divergent senior level executives from Facebook to China Mobile and the Chairman of the FCC deliver keynote speeches at the event, the future of mobile in China, and around the world, will be a trending topic.

At TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing last week, Google’s John Lagerling, Director of Global Partnerships, Android at Google, wouldn’t give any insight as to when the company’s application store, Android Market, might be launched in China (currently, Android phones shipped officially in the US have application stores from handset makers or third parties pre-installed instead).

When asked at Disrupt whether Google is making an effort to launch Android Market in China, Lagerling would only say the company is always working with its partners, without elaborating. Google, as many other Western corporations, has retreated from China in the past due in part to government interference and partly caused by their own misunderstanding of how business is done in the world’s second most powerful economy.

Ultimately, speakers on the panel agreed that many opportunities are being explored on how to make more money in the world’s largest mobile market, and that things may change dramatically as advertisements in applications are rolled out, and cheaper tablets (1,000 Yuan or less) begin to sell in China in 2012, reports WSJ.

One hopes that China’s desire to squash rumors, pornography and other undesirable content doesn’t also squash investors’ zeal to help startups emerging from the East’s rising sun.