News From Chinese Blogosphere · Global Voices
Frank Dai

1 Buzzwords in 2005: As the end of year 2005 approaches, Baidu, the largest search engine in Chinese released its hottest words in (in ZH)Chinese internet; the top ten was as followed: “Mp3″(Baidu provided a controversial mp3 search and download service), “Super Girls“, “Fairy Tale”(a popular Chinese lovesong), QQ(instant message software), LiYuchun(Winner of Super Girls). “Preserving the Progressiveness”, a term created by Communist Party of China to initiate a movement among its memebers was also one of the buzzwords. Xiaoqiang of China Digital Times explained the meaning of the term and why it was so popular. According to Fangxingdong, CEO of Bokee.com, this blog is the most visited blog on Bokee, which provides “analytical material of progressiveness” required by the Party leaders. Keso, an IT blogger sneered at this (in ZH) that “it will put the comedy of our time under the limelight”.
2 Shanwei Protest: In Shanwei, a fishing village near HongKong, police fired at the residents who were having a large-scaled protest due to land ownership dispute with the local government. Howard French of NYT has an article reminding that it's the first time that military force was taken against civilian since 1989. Xinhua, the official news agency declared that it was “Incited villagers attack power plant in Guangdong“(The original article was deleted for unknown reasons. For Google Cache here). Here and Here has some photos.
3 WTO protest in HongKong: The WTO conference was holding in HongKong. Residents and anti-globalization figures are protesting for the unfair trade and its damage to the environment as well as local economy, especially for the agricultural industry. Simon World has set up a blog category tracing the daily valuable links and stories. Inertia is also doing his citizen report (in ZH)on the conference. He suggested a tag “2005hkwto” tag to accumulate photos and posts on the internet. There is also a Flickr group.
4 English Douban: Douban, a social networking website based on book information and review has released its English version.(A review of Douban on China Web2.0 Review). Its Chinese edition has attracted ten of millions of users , mainly bloggers, to find books, and share views and information. Sinosplice has a comment after he tried the service.
5 Blogger Award: Sina has issued its award of Best Blogger on Sina Blog (in ZH). As the leader in Chinese online portal service and largest website, Sina released its blog hosting service late this year in a hope to catch the blogging boom in 2005. However there are some rumors on it for Sina had invited many celebrities to write blog in order to attract netizens.