In China, I used to use baidu—the leading Chinese search engine to search websites, news, images, and download music. After arriving in London, as most people around are using Google and say “you can ‘google’ it”, I tried to use Google.
At first, I didn’t find something different between the two search engines, as it shows in the following, the designs of them seem so similar to each other, as well as the functions:
However, last week when I typed in the words “Tiananmen”, to search for some images of Tiananmen square in google, what I saw are pictures of tanks, armed army, people shot dead… really bloody. I was shocked and puzzled—what are these photos about? Why it seems like a massacre? What happened? … …
With so many questions, I searched for Tiananmen in BBC news. Oh, I have heard that before—June Fourth Movement. It had been a student movement asking for democracy in my memory. There are not any materials in the history text book or other media I could contact with before. The affair sounded like a mysterious story without any details. Conversely, BBC news named it Tiananmen Square Massacre, and described it in detail.
Then I typed in “Tiananmen” again but in baidu image search engine. You could click both of them to see the differences between the pictures in google and baidu. Surprising, isn’t it? One is like in hell full of blood and violence but one in heaven filled with smile and sunshine. There is no doubt that Chinese government has cancelled pictures and articles it hopes people not see. Powerful censorship, isn’t it?
The more information I found, the more questions I have: What contents are censored by Chinese government? How can it achieve this goal? Thanks for powerful google search engine and wikipedia, I get clearer about these questions:
For the first question, the censored content includes
l Sources cover some taboo topics such as Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Falun Gong--a system of "mind and body cultivation" related to buddhism and qigong, dalai lama—the head of Tibetan gobernment.
l Sites related to Taiwanese government, media, or other organizations.
l News sources such as Voices of America, BBC news, Yahoo! Hong Kong.
l Many blogging sites, such as blogger.com.
In a word, contents which may threaten the regime of China Communist Party are facing censorship.
For the second question, Chinese government implements the internet censorship by Golden Shield Project, which acts like a network firewall. It can “block content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and consists of standard firewall and proxy servers at the internet gateways”(wikipedia). By the way, “up to 2002, the preliminary work of the Golden Shield Project cost 800 million dollars.
Initially, I feel like being cheated by the government, because what I had seen and heard from media are all government wanted us to know. These filtered materials had made so deep impact on me, and are going to impact more and more Chinese youths.
But, from the government’s point of view, the censorship sounds reasonable in a certain degree. There are so many people in China, and the area is quite large. It is really difficult to control on this condition. If there is not such strict control in media, maybe it had been divided into many parts. Who knows? In history, Chinese people experienced wars and divided situation, and they lived in miserable life. However, China is developing very fast now, though there are still lots of social problems, the situation is much better than before. Of course, I hope people could have more democracy in China in the future.
2007年11月5日星期一
China new accounting standard system
New accounting standards which comply with the International Financial Reporting Standards are supposed to be adopted by the end of 2009 in China. The first group of companies adopting the new accounting standards includes China Unicom, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Petro Corporation, etc. And these enterprises are all in technology or energy areas.
Other organizations such as small and medium-sized companies, occupying up to 99% of the total enterprises in China, will use the new accounting system in the future.
Besides accounting standards, the Ministry of Finance also considers modify the current internal control system on accounting in order enhance the transparency and credibility of information released by companies.
From the process in the following, we can see that the pace of reforming accounting system seems fast and efficient.
In Feb, 2006, to be line with International Financial Reporting Standards which are being used in around 100 countries at present, China decided to carry out new accounting standards.
One year later, on January 1, 2007, China released new accounting standards, and implemented them at domestic accounting and auditing firms.
In the past, foreign investors usually had a headache when looking for reports released by China’s domestic companies, for the accounting standards are quite different from the international accounting ones. This also brought out mistakes when comparing one domestic firm to foreign ones. This also brought out mistakes when comparing one domestic firm to foreign ones. What’s more, several methods could be chosen to measure production and profit, this made some firms perform opportunism behaviours.
http://www.chinaorbit.com/china-economy/chinese-accounting-standards.html
Therefore, the accountancy reform is really a big progress in Chinese economy. It is expected to improve confidence of foreign investors. "In the A share market, we used to choose stocks of those listed firms who also issue H shares or B shares, because under that situation, those firms' financial reports are disclosed under the requirement of international standards, which are more reliable to us," Cai Hongping, head of the investment bank, BNP Paribas Peregrine's Asia department's commented.
Moreover, this likely to “enable a broader base of investors to consider investment in more Chinese companies,” says Yvonne Kam of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Other organizations such as small and medium-sized companies, occupying up to 99% of the total enterprises in China, will use the new accounting system in the future.
Besides accounting standards, the Ministry of Finance also considers modify the current internal control system on accounting in order enhance the transparency and credibility of information released by companies.
From the process in the following, we can see that the pace of reforming accounting system seems fast and efficient.
In Feb, 2006, to be line with International Financial Reporting Standards which are being used in around 100 countries at present, China decided to carry out new accounting standards.
One year later, on January 1, 2007, China released new accounting standards, and implemented them at domestic accounting and auditing firms.
In the past, foreign investors usually had a headache when looking for reports released by China’s domestic companies, for the accounting standards are quite different from the international accounting ones. This also brought out mistakes when comparing one domestic firm to foreign ones. This also brought out mistakes when comparing one domestic firm to foreign ones. What’s more, several methods could be chosen to measure production and profit, this made some firms perform opportunism behaviours.
http://www.chinaorbit.com/china-economy/chinese-accounting-standards.html
Therefore, the accountancy reform is really a big progress in Chinese economy. It is expected to improve confidence of foreign investors. "In the A share market, we used to choose stocks of those listed firms who also issue H shares or B shares, because under that situation, those firms' financial reports are disclosed under the requirement of international standards, which are more reliable to us," Cai Hongping, head of the investment bank, BNP Paribas Peregrine's Asia department's commented.
Moreover, this likely to “enable a broader base of investors to consider investment in more Chinese companies,” says Yvonne Kam of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
PetroChina's Value Tops $1 Trillion
SHANGHAI - Shares in PetroChina Company, largest oil and gas producer in China, opened on 5 November 2007 at the price of 48.6 yuan (6.5 dollars) in the mainland A share market, up 191 percent from IPO price which was 16.7 yuan. This made PetroChina the world's largest listed company by market value，worth about one trillion dollars. The previous biggest, Exxon Mobil, was valued at 487.7 billion dollars.
The shares of PetroChina closed at 43.96 yuan -- still up 163 percent. But in Hong Kong share market, PetroChina slided down 6.63 percent to 18.30 Hong Kong dollars (2.44 US dollars) at mid-day.
Warren Buffet, Bershire Hathaway chairman and CEO, said that the firm had gained almost 3.5 billion dollars from the sale of 488 million dollars investment in PetroChina, and that third-quarter profit rised by 64 percent.
Some comments in mainland China are as follows:
"Stock prices are rising too fast," said a Shanghai-based analyst with Industrial Securities.
"The government will take measures to prevent asset bubbles and avoid huge fluctuations in the stock market," Wen Jiabao told reporters, according to the China Daily. "It is the government's responsibility to ensure a fair, healthy and transparent stock market."
Some analysts said investors had chased the firm's price too high. "I think it's a bit risky for individual investors to buy in at the moment because we don't see much growing space," another analyst said.
PetroChina raised 66.8 billion yuan in Shanghai share market by selling 4 billion A shares.
According to the company's prospectus, 6.84 billion yuan and 5.93 billion yuan is planned to boost production capacity at Changqing and Daqing oil fields respectively . Besides, 1.5 billion yuan will be used to build production facilities at Jidong field. It also planned to upgrade facilities and expand an ethylene plant in Daqing.
The shares of PetroChina closed at 43.96 yuan -- still up 163 percent. But in Hong Kong share market, PetroChina slided down 6.63 percent to 18.30 Hong Kong dollars (2.44 US dollars) at mid-day.
Warren Buffet, Bershire Hathaway chairman and CEO, said that the firm had gained almost 3.5 billion dollars from the sale of 488 million dollars investment in PetroChina, and that third-quarter profit rised by 64 percent.
Some comments in mainland China are as follows:
"Stock prices are rising too fast," said a Shanghai-based analyst with Industrial Securities.
"The government will take measures to prevent asset bubbles and avoid huge fluctuations in the stock market," Wen Jiabao told reporters, according to the China Daily. "It is the government's responsibility to ensure a fair, healthy and transparent stock market."
Some analysts said investors had chased the firm's price too high. "I think it's a bit risky for individual investors to buy in at the moment because we don't see much growing space," another analyst said.
PetroChina raised 66.8 billion yuan in Shanghai share market by selling 4 billion A shares.
According to the company's prospectus, 6.84 billion yuan and 5.93 billion yuan is planned to boost production capacity at Changqing and Daqing oil fields respectively . Besides, 1.5 billion yuan will be used to build production facilities at Jidong field. It also planned to upgrade facilities and expand an ethylene plant in Daqing.
2007年11月1日星期四
Bloomberg data source in China
There are two branches of Bloomberg in the mainland of China--Bloomberg news agency, Beijing branch and Bloomberg news agency, Shanghai branch. There is no websites of these two branches, only the contact number and address available. From the name of these two branches, we can guess that they mainly provide news, not data analysis of China's domestic firms. As far as I know, these two Bloomberg branches currently buy data of local companies mainly from china economic information centre (CEI). http://www.cei.gov.cn/
China economic information centre, found on December 2, 1996, is the formation of the State Information Center to provide economic information for the professicial and business purpose.
It is an information platform for the government, financial institutions, schools, enterprises, research institutions and foreign investors. The service is to statistical data and research reports. The Internet is the largest Chinese economic information base, as announced by CEI.
It is supposed that data collected by Bloomberg from CEI is mainly in China macroeconomic area. Data of companies listed in stock market can be collected from the regular reports—both quarter and annual reports. I guess that Bloomberg also buys information from government and industry associations. In this way, it can not only cut cost but also save time.
However, from my point of view, sometimes the data may be not accurate, as some local governments intend to polish the economic data. In this way, they could either cut taxes which allocatied to central government or announce an excellent performance which will lead to higher reputation and position. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FJ23Ad01.html
Besides CEI, China infobank is another critical China business information souce in China. http://www.chinainfobank.com/irisweb/english/homepage.htm )
The company collects, indexes and broadcasts China business information of various business sectors to satisfy customers. The areas covered by its database is the largest in China. At present, the database has over 10 billion Chinese characters, 10 million articles. Furthermore, it is accumulating at a rate of 20 million Chinese characters per day.
In my point, when foreign companies such as Bloomberg buy bussniss data from either China governments or institutions, they should make sure that the data are accurate and up to date. To achieve this goal, they must be aware of Chinese accounting system, as it was different from western accounting system, and the local laws as well. Besides, they must check the source of data to prevent polishment by governments.
China economic information centre, found on December 2, 1996, is the formation of the State Information Center to provide economic information for the professicial and business purpose.
It is an information platform for the government, financial institutions, schools, enterprises, research institutions and foreign investors. The service is to statistical data and research reports. The Internet is the largest Chinese economic information base, as announced by CEI.
It is supposed that data collected by Bloomberg from CEI is mainly in China macroeconomic area. Data of companies listed in stock market can be collected from the regular reports—both quarter and annual reports. I guess that Bloomberg also buys information from government and industry associations. In this way, it can not only cut cost but also save time.
However, from my point of view, sometimes the data may be not accurate, as some local governments intend to polish the economic data. In this way, they could either cut taxes which allocatied to central government or announce an excellent performance which will lead to higher reputation and position. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FJ23Ad01.html
Besides CEI, China infobank is another critical China business information souce in China. http://www.chinainfobank.com/irisweb/english/homepage.htm )
The company collects, indexes and broadcasts China business information of various business sectors to satisfy customers. The areas covered by its database is the largest in China. At present, the database has over 10 billion Chinese characters, 10 million articles. Furthermore, it is accumulating at a rate of 20 million Chinese characters per day.
In my point, when foreign companies such as Bloomberg buy bussniss data from either China governments or institutions, they should make sure that the data are accurate and up to date. To achieve this goal, they must be aware of Chinese accounting system, as it was different from western accounting system, and the local laws as well. Besides, they must check the source of data to prevent polishment by governments.
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