Liberté, I write your name… but where?

This does not come as a surprise, yet, sometimes, one prefers to be wrong. From today's SCMP:

Mainland bans private websites
by Stephen Chen, Dec 15, 2009

Mainlanders have been banned from registering personal domain names, and those who already have personal websites could lose them, according to a government regulation that came into effect yesterday.
The regulation states internet service providers are no longer allowed to host individually owned websites, and that only businesses with operating licences or government-authorised organisations may now have websites. The China Internet Network Information Centre, which supervises domain name registration on the mainland, said the measure stemmed from concern over widespread pornographic content on personal websites.
The draconian regulation requires a domain name applicant to submit, among other things, a photocopy of its business or organisation licence. The purpose of requiring the licence is to guarantee the background information of the applicant is "real, accurate and complete".
An individual would not have a chance to get a website under the new rule, said a centre employee who would not give his name.
"We will reject the application if it does not come with either of the licences," he said.
Existing individual domains could also be in trouble.
"We have launched a thorough examination ... if their registration information is found incomplete or fake, we will kill their domain names as well," the employee said. "We're doing so to clean up pornography and piracy on the internet."
Website owners in Jiangsu, Shanghai, Henan, Zhejiang and Jiangxi said their sites were no longer accessible from yesterday morning. Nanjingtaobao.com is one of the victims.
"Most of the world's websites are established by individuals; most of the world's websites are still run by individuals," its webmaster wrote.
"The internet needs freedom, needs sharing and needs the spread of words. Killing personal websites is like killing an infant in the cradle.
"The government must stop using the methods of the Cultural Revolution to manage the open internet platform."
HiChina, one of the biggest ISPs on the mainland, said it would return hosting fees paid by customers whose applications were rejected.
William Long, author of the best-selling book How to Make Your Blog Famous, urged mainland website owners to shift their base to other countries, such as the United Sates.
"Their ISPs would not sell customer information and shut down their websites at will. It is safer, more reliable and economic," he said.

On crisis and changes in Macao

I really like the guys from Destination Macau, as they always spice up the news and are obviously always very well informed: too bad that their sub department has not shown the same proficiency in adding the emails of prospective readers... These two pieces are really worth reading. Crisis? What Crisis? Changes? What changes?

October in review – holy moly!
Sorry it took us so long this month to get around to analyzing the October gaming numbers in closer detail. There are some trends that really jump out, as we will try to explain with the attached graphs below.
The first was the jaw-dropping turnover numbers. Who could ever have imagined that SJM would do MOP 90 billion in rolling-chip sales for a month? But far more spectacularly, who could have forecast an 80 per cent month-on-month increase in volumes at the three Sands China properties, pulled by a near-vertical takeoff at the Venetian? This is a group that publicly has shown nothing but disdain for the junkets. And here they are, doing as much in VIP volume as Melco-Crown, on a win-hold percentage that brought in nearly 50 per cent more revenue than their Cotai neighbor!

L'atelier des médias, November 27

Internet en Chine

Avec 300 millions d'internautes, les Chinois sont aujourd'hui la nation la plus présente sur le web. L'internet en Chine, ses us et ses usages fait l'objet d'un examen détaillé dans le prochain numéro de la revue Hermès du CNRS. Eric Sautedé, chercheur à l'Institut inter-universitaire de Macao, a coordonné le volet chinois de ce numéro de la revue plus globalement consacré à "Société civile et internet en Chine et en Asie orientale".

Eric Sautedé constate qu'internet "constitue une formidable caisse de résonance de l'expression des mécontentements et des doléances de la société chinoise". En revanche, écrit-il, "rien ne permet d'affirmer que l'Internet favorise la structuration d'une sociéét civile". Et le chercheur d'expliquer qu'internet peut autant être un "agent du changement que de la conservation".

Que font les internautes chinois sur le web? Est-ce que l'internet bouscule de pouvoir chinois? Le Net fait-il émerger des personnalités de la société civile?

http://atelier.rfi.fr/profiles/blogs/emission-1041-internet-en

Transparency: the more the better ©MDT

The release of the latest report of Transparency International on the perception of corruption in the world is pretty telling for our community: Macao is not doing well and we clearly need more surveys and elements of comparison if we are to clearly identify the issues, possibly solve them and ultimately dissipate crucial misunderstandings.

On the legislative elections in Macao

Eric Sautedé: Electoral Commission “the biggest loser” in the race

22/09/2009 01:56:00 Natalie Leung

Although the direct legislative election results were still waiting to be verified yesterday, people could already get an idea of which 12 candidates are going to win the battle.

Yet to political analyst Eric Sautedé, the results are not the most significant, instead what caught him by surprise are the failure to improve the cleanliness of the election and the powerlessness of the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC).

A few lessons from the September 20th Elections

Candidates, as well as voters, would have appreciated a smoother electoral process and a more fair and balanced contest. But that – various analysts point out – would have required an effective Legislative Assembly Electoral Commission. Vasco Fong’s team came under heavy fire in a debate organised by Macau CLOSER and the Portuguese daily Ponto Final at Clube Militar. On the table were democracy, the lack thereof, the role of the internet in the 2009 campaign, and what Macau is missing in terms of discourse and politics.

Je reprends ce blog, quelques années plus tard, et peut-être avec enfin quelque chose à dire sur une base régulière. Twitter via Facebook c'est un peu court et avec l'année électorale qui s'annonce à Macao, l'appel du civisme se fait sentir, même si je n'ai toujours pas le droit de vote (eh oui, il faut être résident permanent, soit habiter l'endroit depuis 7 ans ET faire la demande de résidence permanente. En 2010, je serai normalement résident permanent, mais les prochaines législatives ne seront qu'en 2013). Tout ça pour dire qussi que je vais switcher vers l'anglais - I am going to switch to English: even though some of my acquaintances believe that Esperanto is still the way to go, I have given up even before starting (this is called common sense; no sarcasm there).

Today, I just reproduce this piece of good journalism by Destination Macau regarding the January statistics on the economy of Macao (this is dated February 6). The more I live in Macao, the more I think that things have indeed to be spiced up by adding humor to actual reporting and unraveling.

"Gaming revenue crashes, and then ... wow!
We all love Lusa, the Portuguese news agency, for their timely scoops on Macau's gaming revenue figures. But we have to wonder why they released a report just before the start of Chinese New Year showing that Macau's gaming revenue in January was, until that point, down 30 per cent on January 2008. They are smart enough to know that their mole at the DICJ was feeding them these numbers in the full knowledge that Chinese New Year would make them irrelevant in a week's time. But they are also smart enough to know that most US-based fund managers and investment-banking analysts are not knowledgable enough to appreciate that.
The reaction was predictable. Shares in the US-listed operators were hammered. LVS was hit hardest, down almost a third over the week. This is despite the fact that investors would know better if they had memories that could stretch back further than the last piece of bad news. If they could go back to January 2008, they might have remembered that was the month that the Amax deal at Crown kicked in, and VIP revenues went off the charts. This January, Crown's revenues were about half of what they were back then. It was an anomaly driven by a surge in credit and commissions, which has now been corrected.
And then along came Chinese New Year. Even the normally dependable South China Morning Post chose to write reports from the comfort of Quarry Bay when the revised numbers were leaked this week. Those numbers showed that – whoa! – revenues for the first six days of the new year period were nearly the same as last year's comparable period, and the month's overall revenues were only down 17 per cent, at almost 9 billion patacas. If they or anyone else had hopped on a ferry during those six days (that is, if they could have bought a seat), they would have seen that Macau has lost none of its attraction for Chinese at this time of year. The main gaming floors at every major casino were packed. Grand Lisboa executives talked about numbers that were close to their opening days in 2007. The Venetian received 3 million visitors for the month. Even MGM Grand had a spike.
Overall, visitor numbers were 1.5 per cent lower than the same period last year – despite the restrictions on travelers under the Individual Visitation Scheme. In all, about 650,000 tourists crossed over during Golden Week alone. Ku Keng Min, head of the immigration authority, said the numbers were "beyond expectations". He told local media: "Initially we [the Immigration Department] expected that the border crossings would be jumped during the week, but I thought the numbers would still be normal due to the tightening of the individual visit scheme, the separate visa applications to Hong Kong and Macau and also the global economic environment." Ku thought wrong.
To be here, in the midst of an economic recession of incomparable magnitude, with Chinese government officials openly worrying about social unrest if the slowdown continues, and to see this kind of performance at Macau's casinos is remarkable. February may well struggle to follow January's act, but we fail to see how anyone in this industry could not be encouraged by the determination of Chinese gamblers to indulge their favorite pastime at this time of year."