Doing business in China: June 2008 Archives

By Joe McDonald, Associated Press Business Writer | The San Francisco Chronicle
June 26, 2008

The government has ordered China's fast-growing phone companies to stop adding new customers in August so they can better focus on ensuring service for the Beijing Olympics, company employees said Thursday.

The moratorium on new phone and Internet connections adds to sweeping measures, including traffic bans and factory shutdowns, that are meant to provide better conditions for the games, a major prestige event for the communist government.

"We simply won't touch the network any more to ensure its stability for the Olympic Games," said an employee of China Telecom Ltd., China's main fixed-line carrier, who said he had seen an internal company memo on the subject. He asked not to be identified further because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

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By David Barboza | The New York Times
June 24, 2008

The plush lobby of Beijing's Kerry Center Hotel is usually crowded with foreign guests, many of them listening to jazz and sipping martinis in Centro, the hotel's fashionable bar, or lining up for taxis after dinner at the Horizon restaurant.

But Thursday evening, Centro had only a sprinkling of guests in a hotel whose occupancy rate is typically close to 100 percent this time of year. That night, the duty manager, said it was 63 percent.

"Something strange has been going on," said Sun Yin, the duty manager. "I really don't know what happened."

With the Beijing Olympics less than two months away, hotel operators, travel agencies, and foreign businessmen say new Chinese visa restrictions are proving bad for business, casting a pall over Beijing during what was supposed to be a busy and jubilant tourist season leading up to the Olympic Games.

Chinese authorities acknowledged putting new visa restrictions in place in May -- after foreign embassies reported fewer visas being granted and tighter, sometimes seemingly arbitrary, restrictions. The government did not release guidelines detailing the changes in policy; it often does not. But a foreign ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said in May that they would be temporary.

On Monday, Hu Bin, a visa official at the foreign ministry, said the ministry had no statistics on the number of visa denials, but that the new policies were put in place for "security considerations."

Travel business analysts had forecast that the Games would bring 500,000 foreign visitors and an extra $4.5 billion in revenue to Beijing this summer. But now, even though some five-star hotels are fully booked for the Olympics, many economists are beginning to doubt the city will get the kind of economic windfall it was hoping for.

Many hotels in Beijing are struggling to find guests; some large travel agencies have temporarily closed branches; and people scheduled to travel here for seminars and conferences are canceling. The number of foreign tourists visiting Beijing fell sharply in May, dropping by 14 percent, according to the city's statistics bureau.

Beijing residents, meanwhile, are complaining that heightened security measures could spoil what was supposed to be Beijing's long anticipated coming-out party. Despite years of careful preparation -- including teaching taxi drivers English and instructing locals in how to wait in a line (not common here), and spending billions on mammoth building projects for these Games -- Beijing is starting to appear less welcoming to foreigners.

"Business is so bleak," said Di Jian, the sales manager at the Capital Hotel in Beijing. "Since May, very few foreigners have checked in. Our occupancy rate has dropped by 40 percent."

Many other cities in China are also feeling the pain of fewer tourists, including Shanghai, where some hotels say occupancy rates are down 15 to 20 percent.

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By Agence France Presse
June 21, 2008

It is unacceptable for China to block Internet content, a European Commissioner said Friday, calling the Internet a free and open medium.

"We say for instance to the Chinese, very clearly so, that their blocking of certain Internet content is absolutely unacceptable," said Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

"So Europe speaks up in this sense, and is fighting for the freedom of speech and the freedom to receive the news," she said.

Her comments to the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Singapore came after she was asked what concerns she had about freedom of expression in Asia.

China maintains some of the strictest Internet censorship in the world with its "Great Firewall" regularly blocking any kind of information or content that the ruling communist party views as improper, unhealthy or anti-China.

An activist said in Tokyo on Thursday that Chinese censorship of the Internet and restrictions on reporting have worsened despite Beijing's pledge to improve media freedom ahead of the August Olympic Games.

China has actually tightened control of the Internet as the Olympics approaches, said Zhang Yu, a member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, a branch of International PEN, a writers' association.

By The Associated Press | USA TODAY
06 June 2008

China on Friday denied allegations that its operatives secretly copied the contents of a U.S. government laptop computer and used the data to try to hack into Commerce Department computers.

U.S. authorities say they are investigating whether surreptitious copying took place when a laptop was left unattended during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez for trade talks last December.

Shortly afterward, three serious attempts at data break-ins at the Commerce Department were reported, according to U.S. officials.

In Beijing's first comments on the allegations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Chinese officials knew nothing about the laptop cited in the reports. He repeated China's claim that it too was a victim of cybercrime.

"These reports are totally groundless," Qin told reporters at a briefing for a new round of U.S.-China trade talks later this month.

The reported incident is the latest in a series of cybersecurity problems blamed on China. Reports last year cited officials in Germany, the United States and Britain as saying government and military networks had been broken into by hackers backed by the Chinese army.

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