Internet access in Mainland China for business and leisure
Internet access in China
It was difficult getting internet access in China a mere 6 years
ago. Corporate leased line were difficult to apply for, hotels
had no internet access, dial-ups were extremely unreliable, xDSL
or cable were largely unavailable and cybercafes largely denied
foreigners access.
Today, China is one of the easiest country in Asia to make
internet accessible to businesses, homes, travellers and
students.
If you are a business traveller or tourist, you will be
pleasantly surprised that almost all hotels, down to 3 stars
hotels, even in more remote cities offer broadband internet
access in their hotel rooms. Most rooms will have an ethernet
port for you to hook up to the hotel's broadband. Access is
mostly automatically DHCP with dynamic IPs but in certain
hotels, you may need to call the reception to allow access from
your room.
You can also visit a cybercafe or 'wang ba' as they are known in
China. Cybercafes are everywhere in China and can be a dingy 5
computer setup to large cybercafes with hundreds and hundreds of
computers. Most cybercafes in China are patronized by young
people whose sole purpose are computer games or online-chatting.
These youngsters can spend days in the cybercafes without going
home. If you find them too noisy for your liking, you can even
request for a private VIP room to surf in peace and comfort!
As a foreigner, you will need to show your passport before you
can be allowed access to a cybercafe. In many provinces, the
local law requires your picture to be taken and your particulars
submitted to a central database. The cybercafes are pretty
strict about this or they are liable to have their operating
licences taken away. Cybercafes are lucrative businesses in
China and you can be sure that they implement the required laws
most strictly!
One of the problem that you may face in a public cybercafe is
that all the log-in procedures and computer operating systems
will only be in Chinese even in the touristy areas. Hence, you
will need the cybercafe operator assistance before you can
eventually start answering all your Hotmails and Gmails.
If you like visiting coffee cafes, you will also find that many
of the newer cafes offer internet points for you to plug in your
laptop. Most of the time, usage is free. At this point of time,
wireless internet access does not seem to be entirely popular as
compared to wire access in these cafes.
If you are running a business, getting a corporate lease line or
xDSL broadband is a breeze with very competitive ISP fighting
for your business. Monthly charges are low and access speed is
decent. In fact, many newer office buildings offer broadband
access as part of the rental deal and you need not apply
seperately to the ISP.
Home users are well taken care of as well. Many new apartment
also comes with broadband access or you can apply to the ISPs
directly. Charges for monthly sDSL broadband can be as low as
US12.
Control of the internet
China is one of the countries with strict internet laws. Having
said that, internet usage in China is very, very high for both
business and social use. Because personal computers are still
expensive by China's income standard, most people access the
internet from cybercafes or from offices.
All websites hosted in China needs to be a approved by a
government unit. One of the first thing you will notice in China
is that domestic sites are blazingly fast but foreign hosted
sites tend to be very slow. This is due to foreign sites having
to go through a proxy as well as a bottleneck on China's limited
conduit out to the international internet pipes.
Many foreign sites such as CNN, Falungong, Playboy and other
sites deem sensitive to China's society are blocked.
Web applications and development in China are often of a high
standard. Many domestic sites such as Alibaba and Sohu has made
it to the very competitive top internet arenas. Many web
development companies from Taiwan, South Korea and even the USA
has also made China their development base for their web
applications as China offers a large pool of competitive and
high qualified web developers.