Roughly three million readers visit The Wall Street Journal’s Chinese Online Edition every month. In an eventful year like 2011, what topped the Chinese WSJ’s most read story list?

No Japan earthquake, Steve Jobs, Kim Jong Il,  euro crisis or Arab Spring story on the list. Chinese readers are most interested in — what else? — China.

Among the 16 most read stories, the top two stories are about China’s next-generation leadership, which will debut in October but remains a hush-hush topic on the official Chinese media. Four are about the hottest topic on Chinese dinner tables: housing prices. Five are about macro-economic conditions, especially the rising inflation rate. Two are about the deadly high-speed train crash near Wenzhou, which also topped the Chinese WSJ readers’ poll on the most important domestic news stories in 2011.

To be fair, Chinese readers do care about the outside world (though maybe not as much as they do about their immediate surroundings). Both the year’s most viewed slideshow and live blog were about the Japan earthquake and its aftermath. The disaster was also voted the most important international news story in 2011, followed by the killings of Osama bin Laden and Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

1.       中国下一代领导人登台亮相 by WSJ (Next Generation Of Chinese Leaders Becomes Better Known)

2.      美报笔下的习近平 by CWSJ columnist Liu Gang (On the U.S. media coverage of Vice President Xin Jinping during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden)

3.      美国大学性学课堂上演“真人秀”引哗然 by WSJ (U.S. College Decries Classroom Sex Show)

4.      楼市若崩溃 中国经济会怎样? by WSJ (China Real-Estate Concerns Rise)

5.      美报称刘志军被查可能有更深层原因 by CWSJ columnist Liu Gang (On U.S. media coverage of the former Chinese railway minister, who has been detained on corruption charges)

6.      观点：中国高通胀的真正原因 by WSJ (Opinion: Beijing Chases the Inflation Dragon)

7.      中国房地产还能火多久？ By CWSJ columnist Cui Yu (on China’s housing market)

8.      专栏：中国版次贷危机即将上演？by MarketWatch (On what it called China’s credit crisis)

9.      中国经济恐怕很快会踩刹车 by  MarketWatch (on China’s slowing economic growth)

10.  美英报纸评中国723铁路撞车事故 by CWSJ columnist Liu Gang (on the July high-speed train crash)

11.  中国房地产泡沫开始泄气 by WSJ (China Property Bubble Starts To Deflate)

12.  动车事故引发中国网民集体愤怒 by WSJ (Chinese Outrage Grows Over Train Crash)

13.  可能被误读的中国房价 by MarketWatch (China’s housing prices)

14.  当心走火入魔的中国经济 by  MarketWatch (Watch Out for China’s ‘Freak’ Economy)

15.  专栏：中国恐将弄巧成拙？by WSJ (Opinion: China Might Have Over-Reached Itself)

16.  让中国又喜又忧的美国驻华大使 by WSJ (US Envoy In Beijing Charms And Unsettles)

–Li Yuan; follow her on Sina Weibo at CWSJ.

Reuters

It appears China’s government offices won’t be running legitimate software by the end of 2011 after all.

The prevalence of pirated software on Chinese government computers has for years served as damning evidence of China’s lax enforcement of intellectual property rights. In an effort to address that embarrassment, China’s Vice Commerce Minister Jiang Zengwei last year announced that the State Council, China’s cabinet, would launch inspections—to be completed by October 2011—to ensure that central and local government bureaus and businesses are using legitimate software.

But on the sidelines of a news briefing Tuesday, Mr. Jiang said the government has pushed back its timetable for getting government offices nationwide to use legitimate software.

“We originally said the legalization of government departments’ software could be completed by the end of this year, but based on the current situation we have adjusted the working plan. We are saying work on software legalization for prefecture-level governments and above will be fully implemented in 2012,” Mr. Jiang said.

When asked why the plan was delayed, Mr. Jiang noted large economic disparities within China. “Better areas like Beijing and Shanghai can compare with Washington or New York, but the poor areas I think are not very different from certain places in Africa, so arrangements for fiscal revenue in local areas must be budgeted,” he said.

The Business Software Alliance, an industry advocacy group whose members include tech giants like Apple and Microsoft, estimated that 78% of the PC software installed in China last year was pirated, a small drop from 82% in 2006. U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke last month said legitimate sales of software in Vietnam exceed such sales in China — a nation, he noted, with “over 15 times the population of Vietnam.”

China does appear to be stepping up its efforts on intellectual property. Mr. Jiang on Tuesday confirmed that one of the country’s top officials, Vice Premier Wang Qishan, will heading up a new government office overseeing work to combat low-quality goods, counterfeiting and intellectual property violations. Oversight by such a senior official could help the office make a bigger mark.

Mr. Jiang also said China will take steps such as upgrading certain judicial guidelines into formal laws or regulations, researching changes to its criminal law and boosting fines for rights infringements.

The central government will hold local governments accountable for protection of intellectual property rights, he said, adding that IPR protection will be added to performance evaluations for government bodies and that government leaders could face disciplinary action, and possibly even criminal penalties, for neglecting their duty to protect those rights.

– Owen Fletcher. Follow him on Twitter @owenfletcher

Reuters

Lawsuits over the use of pirated software from companies like Microsoft and Adobe Systems are likely to ramp up in China in the next year, the head of the Business Software Alliance, an industry advocacy group, said Monday.

The remarks come as software makers continue to suffer large losses in China due to rampant piracy in the country, despite frequent campaigns by the Chinese government to stamp out intellectual property abuses.

Lawsuits launched by BSA’s member companies or by BSA on their behalf are likely to become more common as piracy becomes a bigger problem in China, the group’s chief executive Robert Holleyman told reporters in Beijing.

“The problem here is getting bigger and there are more instances of piracy” occurring, as growth in China’s personal-computer market outweighs the country’s gradually falling piracy rate, Mr. Holleyman said.

BSA estimated that 78% of the PC software installed in China last year was pirated, down from 82% in 2006. Despite that, growth in the Chinese PC market means piracy is occurring more often overall. “The dollar loss, the lost opportunity, is really exploding,” Mr. Holleyman said.

Microsoft and other software makers have for years used lawsuits to combat piracy of their products in China. Mr. Holleyman declined to elaborate on how much more common he thought they might become.

Microsoft and Adobe didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment. Other BSA members include Apple and design-software maker Autodesk.

Mr. Holleyman said he hopes China can reduce its piracy rate by 10 percentage points within four years. He urged China’s government to take further measures to fight piracy, including updating the country’s copyright law and publicly highlighting the computer-security dangers of pirated software, which is more susceptible to problems like computer viruses.

China in the second quarter surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest PC market, according to market research firm IDC. But highlighting how little the Chinese PC market’s growth has boosted software makers, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in May said the company’s revenue in China this year would only be about 5% of what it gets in the U.S., due to widespread piracy.

Mr. Holleyman also raised concerns about barriers to market access in China for foreign software makers. “I continue to hear concerns about what is happening at provincial levels or municipal levels, where statements are being made that governments should only acquire domestic Chinese software,” he said.

China since last year has taken various steps to ease restrictions in its controversial policies on government procurement, but some concerns remain among foreign industry and government officials about limits on foreign companies.

– Owen Fletcher. Follow him on Twitter @owenfletcher

Reuters

It appears Russian President Vladimir Putin will have to wait at least another year for his shot at China’s peace prize.

This post has been changed since it was first posted. See below.

The future of China’s homegrown alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize was thrown into doubt on Thursday, weeks after organizers offered a shortlist of candidates that included Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Organizers first offered the Confucius Peace Prize last year just days before the ceremony that marked the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Organizers then said the prize represented China’s views on peace and human rights.

But the organizers apparently didn’t seek permission from China’s Ministry of Culture to offer the prize. According to one group affiliated with the prize, the Chinese Native Art Association, authorities revoked permission to offer it under the name of an officially sanctioned group.

Liu Haofeng, an artist and the Confucius award’s executive chairman, said in an interview that the award would continue outside the auspices of the government. He said he understood the ministry’s decision, saying that another group under the ministry’s supervision planned to offer a similar award next year, to be called the Confucius World Peace Prize, and that there couldn’t be two. “We are a non-government organization and we will keep doing it to express our wishes within the law, no matter how hard it will be,” he said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Culture referred questions to the ministry department that handles outside groups, which couldn’t be reached Thursday. The Ministry of Culture regulates a large number of outside groups, its representatives have said in the past.

Chinese officials have long distanced themselves from the Confucius Prize. Earlier this month, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said the prize was organized by a non-governmental organization and referred questions to it.

The prize was described last year in the state-run Global Times newspaper as a way for “the Chinese to declare China’s views on peace and human rights to the world” and came with a 100,000 yuan (about $15,600) purse. The inaugural winner of the prize–Lien Chan, former vice president of Taiwan and honorary chairman of its Nationalist Party–failed to appear at the awards ceremony last year. Mr. Lien was credited with helping to smooth relations between mainland China and Taiwan.

Earlier this month, organizers said Mr. Putin had been shortlisted for this year’s award. Other nominees included German Chancellor Angela Merkel for “her contribution to regional peace in Europe”; the Panchen Lama, a Tibetan Buddhist figure appointed by Beijing, for “promoting harmony in China”; South African President Jacob Zuma; Yuan Longping, a Chinese scientist known as the father of hybrid rice; Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates; former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan; and James Soong, chairman of Taiwan’s People First Party and a proponent of closer Chinese relations with Taiwan.

Even the revelation of the candidates was not without contention, however. After the names were made public, Tan Changliu, last year’s jury chairman and a member of this year’s jury, told the Global Times that some of the nominees hadn’t yet been approved and that it was “inappropriate to release the name of candidates on which the jury panel has not reached a consensus.”

CORRECTION: Confucius Peace Prize executive chairman Liu Haofeng said that another group under China’s Ministry of Culture planned to offer a similar award next year. That award will be called the Confucius World Peace Prize, he said. An earlier version of this post mistakenly identified Mr. Liu’s group as the one that planned to offer the Confucius World Peace Prize next year.

– Brittany Hite, with contributions from Josh Chin

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sits inside a T-90AM tank during a visit to an arms exhibition in the Urals town of Nizhny Tagil, on September 9, 2011.

He’s proven he can race a Formula 1 car, take down an opponent in judo, excavate archaeological digs and play piano. So what more does Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have left to accomplish?

How about winning China’s “peace prize”?

Mr. Putin has been named a contender for this year’s “Confucius Peace Prize,” the Chinese alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize established last year by a Chinese NGO just days before the Nobel went to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Nominees for the award were announced by Liu Haofeng, executive chairman of the award, on Saturday, according to AFP. In addition to Mr. Putin, those making the shortlist include German Chancellor Angela Merkel, nominated for “her contribution to regional peace in Europe”; the Panchen Lama, for “promoting harmony in China”; South African President Jacob Zuma; Yuan Longping, a Chinese scientist known as the father of hybrid rice; Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates; former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan; and James Soong, chairman of Taiwan’s People First Party.

The Panchen Lama, appointed by Beijing, is second-highest ranking lama in the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism and was also a finalist last year, as was Mr. Gates.

Mr. Liu told AFP the award had been set up by an association overseen by China’s culture ministry. Last year, when asked by China Real Time whether the Ministry of Culture had any relationship with the Confucius Prize awards committee, a ministry spokeswoman said: “There are so many organizations affiliated with the ministry. It’s hard for us to check.”

But even the revelation of the candidates has not been without controversy, with a member of the Confucius Prize’s jury criticizing Saturday’s announcement as having been made before the jury had approved the candidates.

Tan Changliu, last year’s jury chairman and a member of this year’s jury, told the state-run tabloid Global Times on Sunday that some of the nominees had not yet been approved, but declined to elaborate on which ones.

“It is inappropriate to release the name of candidates on which the jury panel has not reached a consensus,” Mr. Tan told The Global Times.

Last year, Lien Chan, Taiwan’s former vice president and the honorary chairman of its Nationalist Party, was awarded the prize – which includes 100,000 yuan, or about $15,700 — for having “built a bridge of peace between the mainland and Taiwan,” though he did not appear at the prize’s awards ceremony. The prize was described in a statement last year as “the Peace Prize reconstructed according to Oriental thought.”

It’s unclear what Mr. Putin has done to deserve nomination for a peace prize, particularly given his role in helping launch Russia’s second war with Chechnya in 1999 — though the awarding of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (along with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin) was criticized along much the same lines.

Maybe it was this image of the Russian leader cuddling with a puppy that swayed the award committee?

In any case, Mr. Liu told AFP that the winner of the Confucius Prize will be announced Dec. 9 — a day before the Nobel ceremony in Oslo. This year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Oct. 7 from a record 241 nominations.

– Brittany Hite. Follow her on Twitter @brittanyhite

Jason Lee/Reuters

Reports this week that China might consider buying Italian bonds unleashed a slew of skeptical and sarcastic comments. Many wondered why China – a nation where many families still struggle to put food on their tables, and where children from poor villages walk a couple of hours each day to sit in dilapidated classrooms – should help out Europeans with easier lives.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s comments during the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Dalian this week that China may consider increasing investment in Europe drew a similar response.

One might expect China’s business elites to hold a different view. European debt troubles and the potential for double-dip recession are bad for business, after all.

But when a group of five Chinese business leaders at a Dalian forum were asked whether China should become the world’s savior, most answered no — or, at least, not so fast.

Liu Changle, chairman and chief executive of Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings, quoted Deng Xiaoping’s famous guiding words that China should “hide our capabilities, bide our time, and never become the No. 1 of the world.”

At a debate hosted by his own TV station at the World Economic Forum, Mr. Liu said: “When the world looks to us for help, we should keep our cool and not feel too flattered.” “Life is much easier for No.2,” he continued. “When the sky collapses, there will be a No. 1 who will hold it up.”

Three of the four other panelists expressed a similar view, that China should take care of its own business first.

China doesn’t have the capability to help the world yet, said Liu Jiren, chairman and CEO of Neusoft Group, a software company. The biggest contribution China could make to the world is to keep its market open and nurture a middle class that will spend more, he argued.

Cheng Siwei, a retired deputy national parliament speaker, concurred. “When it comes to external affairs, let’s not stretch ourselves,” he said.

The only dissenting voice came from Kai-fu Lee, former head of Google China and Microsoft China and founder of venture capital firm Innovation Works. “Perception is reality,” he said. When the West looks to China for help, he said, it’s an opportunity for China to step up.

He suggested that China appreciate its currency value by 5% every year so “that’s 5% more leadership each year.” He also suggested that instead of investing in U.S. Treasury bonds, China could put its money to better use by investing in infrastructure and non-defense companies in the West.

The other panelists also agreed that there are opportunities to be taken in the current crisis. Mr. Liu said that the crisis in the developed world presents a good opportunity for China to slow its economic growth so it can better implement much-needed restructuring, such as narrowing the income gap and reducing reliance on exports.

Gao Jifan, chairman and CEO of Trina Solar Ltd, a solar panel manufacturer, agreed that it’s a good opportunity for Chinese companies to invest abroad. “But do we have the capabilities to invest globally and make profits?” he asked.

– Li Yuan

Chinese computer-security researchers and professionals gathered in Beijing late last week for the 10th annual session of the country’s best-known information security conference, where presenters spoke on security threats and how they could be prevented.

A handful of researchers from countries like Japan, South Korea and the U.S. also joined the conference, the XFocus Information Security Conference, also known as XCon. The speakers included a representative from Microsoft, a sponsor of the event, who discussed the company’s strategy for countering threats from “zero-days,” or as-yet-unknown vulnerabilities in its software code.

The computer-security industry is seen as sensitive in China and reporters were barred from the conference, but some attendees were willing to discuss the event outside the venue. Top of their list of topics: the security of Apple’s iPhone and Android smartphones. WSJ’s Owen Fletcher reports.

Chinese computer-security researchers and professionals gathered in Beijing late last week for the 10th annual session of the country’s best-known information security conference, where presenters spoke on security threats and how they could be prevented.

A handful of researchers from countries like Japan, South Korea and the U.S. also joined the conference, the XFocus Information Security Conference, also known as XCon. The speakers included a representative from Microsoft, a sponsor of the event, who discussed the company’s strategy for countering threats from “zero-days,” or as-yet-unknown vulnerabilities in its software code.

The computer-security industry is seen as sensitive in China and reporters were barred from the conference, but some attendees were willing to discuss the event outside the venue. Top of their list of topics: the security of Apple’s iPhone and Android smartphones. WSJ’s Owen Fletcher reports.

Nelson Ching/Bloomberg

Lee Kai-fu, chairman and chief executive officer of Innovation Works Inc., speaks during an event organized by the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China in Beijing, China, on Monday, Sept. 6, 2010.

Kai-Fu Lee, former China chief for Google Inc., raised $180 million from a group of prominent investors for his company aimed at helping Chinese tech-industry startups, a sign of continued interest in the sector despite a range of recent challenges that have pushed down share prices for Chinese Internet firms listed in the U.S.

Investors in the new fund run by Mr. Lee’s Beijing-based Innovation Works include Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway–who was among the early backers of Google, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc.–and Yuri Milner, whose firm Digital Sky Technologies invested in Facebook, Groupon Inc. and Zynga. The fund will use the money for new Chinese Internet projects, Innovation Works announcement said in a statement Thursday.

Innovation Works, which Mr. Lee founded in 2009 after four years running Google in China, backs early-stage start-ups in China’s fast-growing Internet sector. It has helped nine companies obtain funding from third-party venture capital funds, including a smartphone operating system developer and a mobile application distribution platform.

Mr. Lee said in an interview Thursday that the nine companies raised an average of $8 million each and have an average valuation of $40 million. “The Chinese Internet will undoubtedly grow in usage, mobility, monetization, e-commerce—all faster than the U.S. market, so this is clearly one of the best investment opportunities,” he said.

But the sector has been confronted recently by growing concerns about a possible bubble in Chinese tech stocks, worries about the regulatory environment in China, and broader concerns over corporate governance practices at smaller Chinese companies.

A string of new Chinese Internet listings in the past year have performed badly. Shares in social-networking site operator Renren Inc. are now trading on the New York Stock Exchange around half their initial public offering price in May, and NYSE-listed stock in online-video company Youku.com Inc., which more than doubled on their first day of trading in December, are now back below their IPO price. Shares in Nasdaq-listed Tudou Holdings Ltd., a Youku competitor that listed last month, closed on Wednesday 10% below their offering price.

These companies, as well as China’s top Internet companies including Baidu Inc., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Sina Corp., have multi-billion dollar valuations comparable to some U.S. Internet companies, despite competing for significantly less market revenue. Total revenue from online ads in China reached $4.3 billion last year, according to research firm Analysys International. The U.S. online ad market last year reached $26 billion, according to research firm eMarketer.

Market enthusiasm for Chinese Web companies has also been damped by increased government supervision of information online. It also follows the controversial handling of an ownership restructure by Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., of which Yahoo Inc. owns a roughly 40% stake, in which Alibaba transferred a key business to its chief executive without approval from its board of directors.

Mr. Lee, who is also a former Microsoft executive, said the Chinese Internet sector still has much to offer. “The overall trend is still exciting,” he said. “Some public companies are bubbles, but the same is true anywhere.” It’s “all the more reason” to invest at an earlier stage “before the valuation gets too expensive,” he said.

– Loretta Chao. Follow her on Twitter @lorettac

Obtaining a Chinese visa can be a challenging game of political chess for academics and activists perceived to have been overly critical of the regime. In the wake of recent revelations that 13 co-authors of “Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland,” a collection of essays about one of China’s most sensitive regions, were blacklisted from entering the country in the years after the book’s 2004 release, one of the book’s authors has responded with a solution for combating visa denials within academia: Ban together and take a stance.

In a blog post published on China Beat on Wednesday, Georgetown University’s James Millward, who co-wrote two chapters on Xinjiang’s political history for the book, provides an exhaustive account of how and why the contributing scholars were banned from entering the country paramount to their profession. Among Milward’s assertions: That the book’s editor, Frederick Starr, didn’t alert the Chinese government of the book via proper diplomatic channels, leading to friction from the get-go.

Starr, not a China specialist, contacted the Chinese embassy at the very start (without prior knowledge or consent of the contributors), seeking official Chinese collaboration. I believe this put the work on radar screens it otherwise would not have got on. A better approach would have been to work through Chinese academic contacts, either individual scholars or the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Xinjiang, a resource-rich administrative region in northwest China home to many Muslims, has long been a sore topic for the Chinese government thanks to intense ethnic tension between the region’s once dominant Uighur minority and an ever-increasing population of Han Chinese migrants. Those tensions became the subject of global headlines in July 2009 after hundreds were killed or injured in riots in the regional capital of Urumqi and again last month with a series of bloody incidents in the city of Kashgar near the border between Xinjiang and Pakistan.

China blames tensions in the region on a small group of Uighur separatists, which it regards at as a terrorist organization.

Millward argues that it was not the book’s content – a comprehensive survey of Xinjiang in which “nothing…advocates a ‘separatist’ point of view” – but its context that raised the ire of the Chinese government. According to a Bloomberg account of the controversy, the book was put together as the U.S. was advancing the war in nearby Afghanistan, causing Chinese officials to suspect the book of being a mouthpiece for the U.S. government. As Bloomberg notes, the book was actually funded by a Henry Luce Foundation grant.

But Millward’s main point is that the universities employing the authors didn’t do enough to support their blacklisted scholars. ”I encountered an institutional urge to hush up the visa banning–like it was an awkward social disease and I an embarrassingly afflicted family member,” he writes.

He refutes Bloomberg’s implication that the universities are more concerned with enticing high-paying Chinese students and establishing campuses in the Mainland than academic freedom. And he notes that a few of the authors, himself included, were granted visas in 2010, after years of denials. But he says, ”A strong and collective response, organized by institutions and not left to the affected scholars themselves, is imperative.” This includes denying cultural exchanges when the Chinese government vetoes a visa, he says.

It bears noting that a similar effort has been made to get U.S. Internet companies like Google and Yahoo to band together to resist Chinese government pressure on censorship and privacy. So far, the Chinese government still has check mate.

– Marisa Wong

China Daily

Baidu Launches Browser Competing With Microsoft, Google
Wall Street Journal
Baidu, which dominates China's search market, is looking to fuel growth mainly by boosting its core search advertising business, but it is also branching out to seek other potential sources of revenue. Baidu said in October 2010 search advertising …
China's Biggest Search Engine, Known for Illegal Downloads, Makes Music DealNew York Times
China's top search engine agrees deal to pay record labels for musicThe Guardian
Baidu to Pay Record Labels to Offer Beyonce, Lady Gaga Downloads in ChinaBloomberg
PC Magazine -Reuters -PCWorld
all 342 news articles »

]]> http://www.sinolinx.com/20110720/baidu-launches-browser-competing-with-microsoft-google-wall-street-journal/feed/ 0 http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/07/19/baidu%E2%80%99s-new-browser-looks-strikingly-familiar-google-chrome/?mod=WSJBlog http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/07/19/baidu%E2%80%99s-new-browser-looks-strikingly-familiar-google-chrome/?mod=WSJBlog#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:08:04 +0000 admin http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/?p=14076

Baidu

A screen shot of the Baidu Browser download page showing the browser as it appears in beta.

Following months of speculation that it was working on an Internet browser like Google’s Chrome or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Chinese search giant Baidu announced in April that it was indeed developing a browser but offered little in the way of detail.

At last Baidu Browser is out and one glance at its slick, stripped-down interface makes it clear that company’s designers are vastly more inspired by Google’s approach to web surfing software than they are by Microsoft’s.

While Baidu has so far chosen not to follow Google in coming up with a fancy name for its browser – a beta version of which was made available for download on Monday — the fast-acting tabs, game-heavy application platform, keyboard shortcuts and placement of menu items are all very familiar.

In fact, if it weren’t for the browser’s promotion of local Chinese sites like Youku for video and Sina for microblogging, the uninitiated could easily mistake it for a Chinese-language version of Chrome.

In announcing the browser in April, Baidu Chief Executive Robin Li said the idea was to help attract more traffic to the company’s search engine. The company may also consider models like revenue-sharing with developers that want to charge for applications in the browser, a Baidu spokeswoman said. The applications, which number 30,000 and open in a Baidu Browser tab, are currently free.

Observers have previously attributed some of Baidu’s success to its ability to tailor existing technologies to the China market.

Baidu says the browser’s application platform is what differentiates it most from Chrome, partly because it is focused on the entertainment features that Chinese users want. The platform has “music” and “video” sections in addition to others like “games” and “life.” The company plans to add new distinguishing features as time goes on and it plans to launch an updated browser this year, a Baidu spokeswoman said. Baidu will also offer its own apps alongside third-party apps in the browser, she said.

The app platform—where users can search for apps in a “Treasure Vault” section and place shortcuts to them on a home page—is similar to the Chrome Web store that Google launched late last year. The apps in Baidu’s browser were, however, already available on its website to users who performed a search for them, a function the company launched in September.

The browser does have unique touches, like a button beside the address bar that immediately opens recently closed tabs, one at a time.

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

Baidu could face a challenge promoting its browser in China, where users are slow enough to adopt new browsers that Internet Explorer 6 remains very popular, said Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting in Beijing. Internet Explorer 9 is the newest version of Microsoft’s browser.

Baidu could advertise its browser on its search engine, but Chinese companies like antivirus software maker Qihoo 360, which also offers a browser, have had the most success promoting their programs by bundling them with other software, like games, Mr. Natkin said.

“Baidu has realized perhaps a little bit late the importance of client-side applications,” or those that run on a user’s system, he said. Among the companies that have pursued such applications more aggressively, he said, is Google.

– Owen Fletcher. Follow him on Twitter @owenfletcher

Sina Weibo

A screenshot shows the verified Sina Weibo account of Chinese real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang.

Sina’s Twitter-like microblogging service Weibo has hosted lots of interesting discussion since its 2009 launch, from public criticism of the government to expletive-laced rants by Chinese CEOs. It has also completely changed things for outspoken Chinese real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang, once voted one of the most hated men in Chinese history in an online poll.

Mr. Ren’s public comments, in particular his comment that commercial residential housing is for the rich and not the poor, have drawn ire from many who express anger over not being able to afford China’s soaring property prices. Last year, someone gave him the George W. Bush treatment, throwing a pair of shoes at him as he took the stage at a real estate forum in Dalian.

No longer, says the 60-year-old Chairman of Beijing-based Hua Yuan Real Estate Group. Mr. Ren now uses Weibo to deliver his sharp commentaries on China’s property market, and the occasional poem, directly to his more than 4 million followers, each post drawing dozens and sometimes hundreds ofcomments.

While he still gets criticized, Mr. Ren says, the hatred has died down considerably.“I was a public enemy,” he said between posting messages on his Sina Weibo account from HIS iPad 2. He blames the media for giving him a bad reputation by taking his comments out of context. Sitting at his desk or the dinner table, cigarette almost always in hand, Mr. Ren now uses Sina Weibo to explain his views and answer his critics.

Executives and wealthy people in China are often “more celebrity-like” than they would be in the U.S., are followed more, and get more comments, said Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Chinese start-up incubator Innovation Works and former executive of Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., whose book about microblogging, called “Micro-blog: Changing the World,” was released in February. Mr. Lee has more than five million Sina Weibo followers.

Sina Weibo provides “a new tool” for people to speak out, and allows users to do so at varying levels, from taking a chance and posting criticism about a product or some local injustice to taking a slightly safer route and reposting similar comments from other people with whom one agrees, Mr. Lee said.

Sina CEO Charles Chao, who himself has more than 160,000 followers, says Mr. Ren has been spotted on different occasions posting messages on his microblog from an iPhone, then switching to his iPad after the phone’s battery runs out.Mr. Ren is “completely addicted to Weibo,” Mr. Chao said. “He was not very well-regarded in the media and by public opinion before because a lot of things [he said ] were misunderstood or misquoted.” Weibo provided Mr. Ren “his own media platform” so he can “express his opinions and his views directly.”

Last year, Mr. Ren and his friend Pan Shiyi, co-founder and Chairman of property developer Soho China Ltd. won an award for best comedic banter on the website. It “has changed my image,” he said.

– Loretta Chao. Follow her on Twitter @lorettac

David Gray/Reuters

Bill Gates (R), Microsoft Corp co-founder and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, laughs after he and Robin Li, founder and chief executive of Chinese search engine Baidu, put on shirts bearing the slogan: “Say No to Involuntary Smoking”, during a media conference in Beijing June 11, 2011. Gates and Li signed an agreement to form an alliance between their charitable foundations called the “Alliance for Healthy China”.

Now that Baidu’s chief executive Robin Li has come out as perhaps China’s most prominent anti-smoking crusader, the boardroom affiliation of Baidu’s chief financial officer, Jennifer Li, is starting to look a bit (cough, cough) awkward.

You see, Ms. Li is a member of the board of Philip Morris International, the tobacco giant that has big hopes of selling more cigarettes in China.

Mr. Li (no relation), who has teamed up with Bill Gates to campaign against second-hand smoking, is famous for his “zero tolerance” smoking policy at Baidu. That means no lighting up anywhere – including, we presume, the toilets and stairwells where so many of China’s office smokers sneak off to for a furtive drag. In Beijing last Saturday, the two billionaires announced an initiative to persuade smokers to give up the habit, and to ask people not to smoke around them.

When we asked Baidu’s international media relations supremo Kaiser Kuo (himself not averse to the occasional puff) about the apparent contradiction between Baidu’s CEO and CFO on the question of tobacco use, he came up with this statement:

“Jennifer’s decision to join that (Philip Morris) board was a personal one – and one she made because she wants Baidu to be a better run company.”

In other words, she’s not on the board to help Philip Morris push Marlboros in China. She’s there as part of a corporate grooming exercise to make her a better manager for Baidu.

We won’t argue with Mr. Kuo’s statement, although we always thought that Ms. Li’s corporate resume was pretty stellar even before she hooked up with PMI.

In addition to her current job at Baidu, Ms. LI has done stints as CFO of General Motor’s China operations and financial controller of GMAC in North America.

But the case does point to rapidly shifting cultural perspectives in China. When Ms. Li was appointed a PMI board member last year it was a matter of some national pride that she had become the first Chinese woman ever to sit on the board of an S&P 500 company.

A lot has happened since then on the anti-smoking front in China, where nearly a quarter of the country’s 1.34 billion people light up and where, by some estimates, one million Chinese die each year from tobacco-related causes.

Earlier this year, the country’s film and television regulator announced a new rule to limit smoking scenes in movies and TV shows. Just this May, the health ministry issued nationwide guidelines discouraging indoor smoking while the northeastern city of Harbin passed the country’s first formal law against lighting up indoors.

As Mr. Li weighs in on the side of the anti-smoking lobby, we’re left to ponder what sort of conversations he has with Ms Li on the topic around the Baidu water coolers.

– Andrew Browne

WSJ Highlights:

• Luxury brands revamp their marketing tactics to target China’s self-made female entrepreneurs.
• A man seeking “revenge against society” sets off a bomb outside a government building, the latest in a spate of violent incidents highlighting public anger at abuse of power.
• Baidu CEO Robin Li and Microsoft founder Bill Gates announce a campaign to combat China’s smoking scourge.

Elsewhere:

• Vietnam holds live-fire navy drills during a territorial spat with China over the South China Sea (AP)
• Migrant workers protesting alleged mistreatment of a pregnant migrant woman clash with security forces in Guangzhou for a third consecutive night (BBC).
• Torrential rains in Chinese regions previously hit by drought have killed nearly 100 people and left dozens more missing (AFP).
• Free at last? Jailed human-rights activist Hu Jia is expected to be released soon, but his family expects that won’t be the end of his, or their, punishment (Globe and Mail).
• Keeping the peace: As tensions with Vietnam escalate, veteran China watcher Minxin Pei looks at how Beijing can avoid another costly conflict (The Diplomat).
• China’s latest luxury frontier: high-end food (China Daily).

Just Because:

• Mao Zedong sidekick Zhou Enlai once famously said it was “too early to tell” how the French Revolution had turned out. Or did he?

— compiled by Josh Chin