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2.1 Analyzing Chinese Current E-commerce.
As we all know, there are some different points of view about Chinese present Internet situation, for instance, some of them draw a fantastic picture of Internet whilst others depict Chinese Internet is facing some problems such as even big Internet firms haven’t reached their promise to make profit. Even SINA.COM, one of China''s largest Internet portals, which is based in Silicon Valley and is backed by some heavyweight U.S. venture capital firms, was struggling to achieve its profit promise last year. In fact, because of somewhat complicated circumstance it is difficult to give a clear overall description about Chinese Internet. On the one hand the number of both Internet users and E-commerce firms is big, from many statistic , on the other hand, compared with the huge population, Chinese Internet and E-commerce are less developed, if we just ignore the other big issue. In addition, in fact, inside China there are no balanced well in developing Internet between different regions, especially between the east region and the west region. With regard to this issue there is still much discussion and research before the Chinese government legislates any Internet regulation and the law can’t satisfy all parts and classes of the whole country, if it has been done. Then it is easy to understand there comes some comment critically, some of them are worth of discussing.
First of all, it is reported, not surprisingly, that the worst issue of Chinese Internet regulations is the tight rules issued regarding the Internet such as “state monopoly of ISP service, tight control over Internet content, a suspicious attitude toward foreign investment in the Internet sector, and too many forbidden areas for private companies” , the E-commerce as well. This conclusion, which comes from the same throat, seems right if we just survey Chinese Internet without any deep research. However, when the exploration goes further, with an equal guideline, errors of this condemn begin to aggregate consequently.
For some reasons, in this short essay it seems impossible for me to reach every aspect of the matters, which are mentioned above. Thus there are two major issues, tight control over Internet content and a suspicious attitude toward foreign investment in the Internet sector, which will be argued in the following part.
2.2 Government tries to control information
Initially the key point, that is, medium is a double-edged sward and Internet acts as one kind of medium, moreover to transfer information by Internet is more convenient and intractable. Hence information from Internet, hopefully, is like this saying, that is, “Today it has become a truism to assert that information is power and to state that we live in an information society.” On the contrary, with this developing, Internet is also open to those contents, which are anti-government, pornographic, and criminal, nowadays it is probably used by terrorism. It is easy to find an example, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known for terrorist tactics in a nearly two-decade-old war against Sri Lanka, rely on the Web to spread propaganda, connect to the Tamil diaspora, and solicit donations. Another example can be given, in 1995, at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, estimates were put forward to the effect that almost half of all searches made using Internet search engines were seeking pornographic material. Even worse, people have to challenge one serious problem that is sexual harassment to children, which benefits from Internet mainly. As a result all the states as well as China try to regulate Internet, if they haven’t done, and for example, in UK the Computer Misuse Act 1990 became law on 29 August 1990. Thus China certainly has the same intention to make Internet work better.
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