How is Internet in China?

In Asia do not have the same perception of the Internet in the West, but technological development is similar, if not higher. In Japan the smartphones came before the iPhone appeared and were thicker phones that allow television. There is twitter payment and, however, has a higher audience. In China, meanwhile, it can be done on the Web, but in any case, unless censorship-to skip services such as Google, Twitter or Facebook, which are not present in the country. In this article some of the Chinese equivalent to the web services we use most, are listed in terms of e-commerce, social networks, browsers and operating systems.

Between censorship and commercial sense

In China converge several causes that make a difference, but there all equivalent to our digital ecosystem; i.e., with the same functions but different companies that meet. On the one hand, it is the perception in the East of the network. Farther to the East of the Asian continent, most are new technologies such as a consumption scale economy, and less as a communications ecosystem. Therefore, Asians generally put more interest in commercial services and less on the sharing of tastes, experiences or opinions.

But this does not mean that services such as Twitter, Facebook or the like are used, but their depths are less or have a much more commercial approach. Thus, in Japan continue to pay for highly relevant users and pop stars or film. On the other hand, almost ten years ago in the Japanese country’s pay TV programs designed exclusively for the mobile screen, besides ebooks designed to be read on the subway and on the smartphone.

In addition to this different approach in China is compounded by the political pressure and the desire to control their traditional government, always attentive to stifle dissent and, therefore, afraid that new technologies pose a speaker to certain disgruntled sectors. This tight control has clashed often with the spontaneity, the contrast of information and freedom of expression from the beginning has been on the Internet, so the collisions of large companies with Beijing have been talked and ended up not infrequently in the expulsion of companies like Google, Facebook or Twitter.

But the Chinese government has never ignored that could not deprive citizens of access to new technologies and, in doing so, undermine its own future. Therefore, it has chosen to encourage the development of similar services to Google, Internet Explorer, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Privalia or WhatsApp but with the inclusion of Chinese characteristics and monitoring user activity.

Ecommerce: Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com

Perhaps the most powerful Chinese service is the equivalent of eBay and Amazon together: Alibaba.com. This ecommerce platform is the world’s largest, with a combined turnover of more than the other two mentioned, which occupies 80% of the Chinese online commerce. Alibaba, which actually lives to let businesses advertise their products put on their pages, arises now become global, entering the New York Stock Exchange. If so, what will be the best technology company valued history as it is a value estimated around 200,000 million.

Another important company in the country in e-commerce is JD.com with a model similar to Amazon, since it has its own warehouses where products distributed. Listed on the digital market Nasdaq technology stocks with good results.

But the most spectacular case, its history is that of Baidu. It is the search for excellence in China, used by almost all Internet users who have forgotten that it was created to replace when Google announced it was leaving the country by continuing government interference. The same was immediately launched search engine, then only a small startup. Today Baidu generates such turnover in advertising, operating only in China, which is the fourth largest advertising platform in the world, ahead of Microsoft and then Google, Yahoo! and Facebook.

Social Rdes: Weibo and Renren

The freedom of expression that permeates the Internet has always troubled the Chinese authorities, so that from the outset the reception to social networks like Twitter or Facebook was cold, if not bad. Later, when dissidents began to proliferate, the government was quick to suspend these services and as an alternative to several who had no objection to be allowed to censor or give security forces the authors of subversive comments.

As networks are used for many other things that are not protest, soon penetrated two services among younger Internet, emerging social classes and therefore unconcerned about politics. These were Weibo, the counterpart of Twitter, and Renren, a sort of Facebook. However, the prevailing censorship and the knowledge that the control and monitoring-exercised and therefore no privacy-make fall into disuse among the young, so that both services currently spend on economic moments of doubt, by slowing the benefits of their advertising platforms for the second year.

Sogou Explorer and Ubuntu Kylin, not to depend on Microsoft

Although Microsoft is the company that best Western this relate to the Chinese authorities, on more than one occasion have collided by continued demand from the Government for information about users and companies. This fact adds trade war initiated recently between the U.S. and China, which puts the company founded by Bill Gates in the spotlight. For this reason, from Beijing have fostered many services that could make expendable browsers such as Internet Explorer or operating systems like Windows, but not veto their use except in the case of computers Administration where itself has banned the installation of Windows 8 to avoid dependence on an American company.

However, the Government has itself reached a major agreement with the South African company Canonical to boost and create a Chinese version of Ubuntu, open and free operating system Linux derivative that launched back in the day Mark Shuttleworth. The name of the new distribution is Ubuntu Kylin and, for now, China has ordered that it be used in all official computers and recommends its use for internet surfers. As Ubuntu Kylin is free and lowers the final price of a computer, many buyers ask for it installed when they buy a PC, so that American laptop brands are beginning to preinstall instead of Windows, if the terminal is intended for market Chinese.

Furthermore, the browser Sogou Explorer, launched by the search engine of the same name, is eating soil Internet Explorer.