People’s Daily, which Reuters reported Monday may be planning an initial public offering in Shanghai this year, launched a microblogging service last year and a search engine in December called Goso.com, appointing the former head of Google’s research institute in China as its chief scientist last month. Xinhua launched its own search engine, Panguso.com, in February in partnership with China Mobile, and CCTV has been operating an online video platform CNTV since the end of 2009.

“We cannot rule out the possibility that Panguso, like Goso, is a government tool to tighten control of the information search field,” an Internet user said on a Baidu online forum, under the name iaspecjack.

“Google studied how to find information … Baidu later studied how to find only parts of the information … Goso came in the latest and it studies how to not find information,” a user from Guangdong wrote on Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo.

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“I am here openly criticizing investment banks, criticizing Morgan Stanley, what, Morgan Stanley can’t be criticized? Not be cursed? You foreigners’ flunky!” he said on microblogging service Sina Weibo to a user going by the name Mishi De Weiyi, whose profile listed Morgan Stanley as her employer.

Dangdang, often likened to Amazon.com, is an online bookseller looking to expand its product range to fuel growth. It sold $272 million of shares in its IPO, including more than $56 million sold by Mr. Li and other existing shareholders, before listing on the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 8. Morgan Stanley was a lead underwriter. Dangdang’s American depositary shares recently traded at $33.86, versus their IPO price of $16.00.

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Apple has yet to publicly disclose any plans for an iPad 2. But gadget bloggers in the last week seized on pictures from Alibaba.com, a trading platform for smaller businesses in and outside China, as evidence of the new features that a second-generation iPad might have. In particular, they said the cases proved that the iPad 2 will include a camera on its back surface, since circular holes were depicted on the backs of the mostly silicon cases in the Alibaba listings. The cases were priced at a few dollars or lower and available in colors including bright pink and green.

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The visit seems to have been a source of some sensitivity for Alibaba, for reasons that aren’t clear. Spokesman John Spelich, who is pictured in one of the photos along with Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Ma, declined to comment Thursday on whether or not the visit took place.

Officials at Baidu, Sina and China Mobile have been less sheepish about their meetings with Mr. Zuckerberg, whose visit has generated much excitement among Internet industry executives and enthusiasts in China. Indeed, while the government blocks access to Facebook from within China, many Chinese Internet users have welcomed Mr. Zuckerberg, whose wealth (and his Chinese-American girlfriend) have helped make him famous among China’s urban youth.

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State-owned China Mobile, which had about 570 million subscriber accounts as of September, has long been China’s preferred carrier. But the company’s subscriber growth has slowed as the government has rolled out efforts to restructure the industry and make it more competitive.

The most recent move may provide a boost for China’s two other carriers, which are also state-owned: China Unicom, which had about 160 million subscriber accounts as of September, and China Telecom, which had about 86 million mobile subscriber accounts as of October. China Unicom has been hoping to make the most of some competitive advantages, including its license to operate a mobile network using WCDMA third-generation technology, which is compatible with in-demand handsets like Apple’s iPhone.

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Mobile carriers, especially, are building their own takes on the App Store as they look for sources of revenue besides providing simple data connections, a business where tough competition drives down margins. Many carriers want to control their own download stores in addition to any offered by the makers of their customers’ handsets.

ZTE, a Chinese maker of telecommunications equipment and mobile phones, said this week it helped build the application service – called the WoStore – and that it will support “all open smartphone platforms” except the iPhone, as well as devices like tablets.

That suggests the Unicom store won’t compete directly with Apple’s App Store in selling downloads to iPhone users, a key source of subscribers for China Unicom’s 3G mobile services, which are more expensive than 2G services but offer faster data speeds.

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The smartphone, with a 3.5-inch touch screen, is ZTE’s second in France using Google’s Android operating system.

France Telecom’s Orange, which has already sold the phone in the U.K. with the name “The San Francisco” since September, will also sell the device in France as the “Tactile Internet 2? starting Nov. 18, an Orange spokesman said. It will sell the phone in France for 249 euros ($343) without any service plan and starting at 9 euros with a post-paid plan, the spokesman said.

France’s Bouygues Telecom will also sell the new Android phone as the “Blade,” the ZTE spokeswoman said.

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New user signups in China for Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, a competitor to Tencent’s leading QQ instant-messaging service, have gone “from tens of thousands normally to millions” per day since a flare-up between the two Chinese companies began, a person familiar with the situation said.

The conflict, which appears to have ignited two months ago when antivirus software company Qihoo 360 alleged that Tencent’s QQ was scanning the private data of its users and released software claiming to block plug-ins that could cause such privacy leaks. Tencent denied the allegations, then discontinued its services to QQ users who were also using Qihoo 360’s software. Qihoo 360 responded by encouraging users to discontinue use of QQ.

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Twelve rounded glass panels stand over 12.5 meters (41 feet) to form the cylindrical dome. Inside, the computer maker’s distinctive bitten-apple logo is suspended above a glass stairway that corkscrews into the underground retail space

The atrium foyer is also a crystalline sign of the times: It was made entirely in China, establishing a fresh benchmark on workmanship for the world’s largest glass industry.

Glassmaking is a rare ancient craft with limited history in China. It got a boost in 1954 when Mao Zedong urged more production of building materials during a visit to a Hebei Province glass factory. In 1971, China’s building materials bureau proclaimed its development of a version of the established “float glass” manufacturing process.

By the early 1990s, China had overtaken the U.S. in flat glass production, and its 28.7 million-ton output last year was six times Ducker Worldwide managing partner Nick Limb’s estimate of 2009 U.S. shipments.

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The animation studio is a unit of Next Media Ltd., the company founded by billionaire Jimmy Lai, an outspoken critic of Beijing — and the founder of the Giordano retail clothing chain — who has used his media holdings to counter what he calls a pro-China trend in the region’s press. Next Media is now Hong Kong’s largest listed Chinese-language print media company and the publisher of the Apple Daily newspaper and Next Magazine in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Mark Simon, commercial director at NextMedia, says the animated videos have been enormously popular, averaging four million views per day in Hong Kong alone, and sparking imitations among its competitors, though not in the way one might think.

Hong Kong’s “unique” media environment means the company’s strategy “isn’t echoed by others, as no one helps a competitor, especially one unpopular with government,” he said. “But in Hong Kong, every single TV station is now undertaking some form of animation. No secret, a response to us.”

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According to the article in Xinhua’s International Herald Leader, safety nets have been put in place on almost all buildings as a way to stop workers from jumping off roofs at Foxconn’s mobile phone plant in the city of Langfang in Hebei province. Both Foxconn and city officials in Langfang declined to comment on the issue.

The world’s biggest electronics contractor came under fire after a series of suicides and suicide attempts—with 10 deaths in all–at its Shenzhen production base in the first five months of this year.

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Baidu fielded the most mobile searches of any company in China in the second quarter, accounting for 34.3 percent of total searches after a rise of about five percentage points from the first quarter, local research firm Analysys International said Monday.

Meanwhile, Google’s share of the mobile searches fell by about five percentage points to 12.3 percent in the second quarter, moving it from second to third place behind local mobile search provider Easou.com, Analysys said.

Baidu is in talks with multiple handset makers about embedding a Baidu search box on their smartphones in China that use Android, Baidu Chief Executive Robin Li said in a recent interview. The company is in similar talks for phones with other operating systems, he said.

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Ma asked Bryant to talk about his experience as a leader for the Los Angeles Lakers, which delighted the screaming fans at the event, but did little to clarify the parallels between playing professional basketball and running businesses in China.

This year Alibaba is hosting a guest speaker at the annual summit whose Internet industry credentials are clear—but who maybe even more of a surprise: John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay. This year’s summit, which takes place in September, will also feature California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a keynote speaker.

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The search giant now has permission from authorities to link Chinese users to an uncensored version of its site in Hong Kong, but its China operations are still at the discretion of the government, a fact which continues to cast uncertainty over its businesses and partnerships here.

Orca Digital Chief Executive Gary Chen said the company, which runs a free, ad-supported music downloading and streaming service in partnership with Google, saw a dip in traffic a few months after Google began automatically redirecting Chinese visitors to Google.com.hk in March. But the decrease wasn’t significant — just about five percent — Chen said, and the company is now serving seven million to eight million downloads and streams a day.

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Dell hopes to launch the five-inch Streak in China, said Amit Midha, the company’s president for Greater China, Tuesday. He didn’t give a time frame for when the device will be available. The company launched the tablet in the U.K. this month and has said it plans a U.S. launch later this summer.

The Streak has 3G connectivity in addition to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but it can be bought without a wireless service contract for 399 pounds ($589) from O2 in the U.K., according O2’s website.

The Streak, which uses Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system, would face a market in China already crowded by small-screen devices sold at Chinese gadget bazaars. But those devices, some of which are knock-offs of Apple’s (AAPL) iPad, rarely have a smooth control interface or a wide range of content such as games and applications for download.

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Football crazy Hong Kongers who live in buildings with satellite antennae might’ve tuned in to mainland China’s CCTV, but now that loophole is being sewn up.

In Hong Kong, the subscription service i-Cable won the legal rights to show every match. For those who don’t subscribe to i-Cable, the only local viewing option was a pair of free stations that will air two semifinal games and the final (they also showed the opening game on Friday). Even North Korea has made it easier to watch the World Cup: its state broadcaster has aired footage from three games so far, though not surprisingly it skipped the South Korea and U.S. games. (South Korea’s SBS TV, which has refused to share its feed with the North as it did in 2006, called the latest broadcasts an “act of piracy.”)

So many Hong Kong residents were left with CCTV. But, according to the Associated Press, the Hong Kong government said it asked local buildings with satellite antennae last week to block out CCTV’s World Cup coverage, warning that violators “may attract civil liability” for copyright infringement.

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Such a move raises the prospect that rising inflation and production costs in Shenzhen, one of China’s main manufacturing hubs, could prompt global consumer electronics makers to look at other destinations such as Vietnam, India and Indonesia as well as poorer inland provinces in China itself, such as Hubei and Chongqing, and to choose to manufacture products there in the future.

Taiwan Electronic and Electrical Manufacturers’ Association Vice President Luo Huai Jia said Monday the organization, which represents the interests of electronic manufacturers on the island, is encouraging Taiwanese electronics makers to build new facilities in cheaper Asian countries such as Vietnam, India, Indonesia and Malaysia, because of rising wages in China.

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A Hon Hai spokesman said the wage change discussion, which predates a wave of suicides at its giant Longhau factory in Shenzhen, flowed from concerns about a tight supply of workers in the southern industrial city where Hon Hai employs more than 400,000 staffers. “It is not related to the suicides,” he said.

Another Hon Hai worker tried to kill himself Thursday, becoming the 13th person to commit suicide or attempt to do so this year at the Longhau complex. Police said the 25-year-old man survived after cutting himself in his dormitory room at the factory, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

The Hon Hai spokesman denied Thursday reports in two Taiwanese newspapers and at least one newspaper in China that Hon Hai Chairman Terry Gou said Wednesday the company would increase its minimum wage levels by 20 percent.

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Though having users book flights and hotels through a website rather than a call center is more profitable, two-thirds of Ctrip’s bookings are done through its call centers, according to CEO Fan Min. That means only a slightly higher percentage of users today are going through Ctrip.com than five years ago, and Fan believes it will take another few years for the percentage to increase to 35 percent.

“Each percentage point is hard-earned,” Fan says. “It’s a matter of consumer behavior” even among Ctrip’s wealthier users, he says. Compared to U.S. travelers, people in China tend to book their travel at the last minute and “find it’s more convenient to do it by just picking up the phone.”

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But a recent survey of 2,000 mobile users in China between the ages of 22 and 32 by China Market Research Group, or CMR, suggests that the cause of the iPhone’s performance in China may stem from the relative unpopularity of Apple’s (AAPL) partner, China Unicom, among its target users, as well as a lack of desire among those users to sign up for two-year contracts and subscribe to 3G services.

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The company’s legacy in the world’s largest Internet market by number of users has for years been tainted by losing the consumer-to-consumer e-commerce market to Alibaba Group’s retail website Taobao.com. But while Taobao and Alibaba’s payment platform, Alipay, still charge little to no sales commission to merchants–a strategy the Chinese company used to undercut eBay–PayPal’s China General Manager Alan Tien says the company has found a commission-based revenue model that works in China.

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Foreign companies in China increasingly report that they feel less welcome in China, in large part because of regulatory barriers to the massive Chinese market, which is more important for global businesses than ever, and because of increasing competition from Chinese companies whom they believe benefit from those barriers.

But John Deng, chairman of Nasdaq-listed microchip design house Vimicro (VIMC), says the short-term losses of these companies will translate to long-term improvement in high-tech sectors. Vimicro, based in Beijing, is one Chinese company that has become competitive in the global market—it supplies energy-efficient chips to Sony (SNE), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Samsung and others—and though he says China should be open for foreign competition and investment, he thinks it’s natural for China to want to set its own technology standards, like third-generation mobile standard TD-SCDMA, and take other measures that will allow local companies to catch up with the rest of the world.

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RockYou CTO and co-founder Jia Shen said at a social game summit in Beijing Friday that the company, which plans to expand its presence in Asia, is “actively” looking at acquisition targets in China rather than more users because social games are less lucrative here than in other markets, mostly due to a lack of openness of Chinese social networking sites.

According to Shen, companies that operate social networking Web sites in China, including Tencent Holdings Ltd., have huge user numbers, but demand an average of 40 percent to 50 percent of revenue from the games distributed on their Web sites, or more than is standard in other markets. And though a higher rate of Chinese users pay to play the games, they spend much less, he said.

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Google’s Jan. 12 threat to leave China sent shockwaves through China’s fast-growing Internet, including prompting a rise in Baidu’s (BIDU) share price over speculation that a Google exit could mean more market share for its chief Chinese rival, and raising concerns of a door closing on Internet freedoms in China.

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So there was some eye-rolling among the more seasoned Western business executives in Beijing, earlier this year when Bill Gates weighed in on the Google vs. China imbroglio by criticizing Google (GOOG) and offering a sympathetic assessment of the Chinese position in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Bill Gates Bats for China,” read a triumphal headline in the Global Times, a sometimes nationalistic Chinese newspaper.

The charitable explanation was that Gates was expressing a personal view.

Apparently not. It seems that this is now a part of the company’s image-making in China.

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