China aims for faster broadband Internet

Qin Hai, vice chief of the ministry's informatization promotion department, said the country will expand average bandwidth to at least 20 megabytes per second (MB/s) for urban households by 2015. In the capitals of more developed eastern regions, average bandwidth is expected to reach 100 MB.

Average bandwidth in rural areas will be raised to 4 MB/s, Qin said.

In urban areas, 2- and 4-MB/s bandwidth is still the most common choice for customers.

China Telecom, one of the country's largest Internet service providers, aims to boost its average broadband speed for urban users over the next three to five years while substantially lowering fees, according to Guo Hao, assistant to the company's general manager.

Guo said that by 2015, the company will have more than 100 million customers using fiber optic connections in south China's urban areas.

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2m more to have access to electricity

The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), the country's largest power supplier, pledged Tuesday to launch projects in the country's most remote corners, offering another 2.07 million people access to electricity by the end of 2015.

 In its annual social responsibility report, the SGCC said it plans to light the nights of 400,000 people this year after providing 136,000 rural residents with access to electricity in 2011. An electricity supplier with grids covering 88 percent of China's land, the SGCC supplied electricity to 5.09 million people who had never before had access to electricity during the 2006-2010 period. 

Some 5 million Chinese people living in remote villages in mountainous or border areas are currently without electricity, and the government has vowed to extend electricity services to such groups by the end of 2015. According to the SGCC report, China's urban residents endured an average of 6.92 hours of blackouts, while rural households experienced an average of 29.35 hours of blackouts last year. 

In its report, the SGCC vowed to shorten the periods of electricity cut-offs to 5.71 hours for urban citizens and 23.7 hours for rural residents through grid upgrades and renovations. The SGCC will invest more than 300 billion yuan ($47.65 billion) this year in grid construction, particularly ultra-high voltage electricity transmission lines, after an investment of 301.9 billion yuan in 2011.

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China publishes high-resolution full moon map

China on Monday published a set of full coverage of moon map and moon images witha resolution of seven meters captured by the country's second moon orbiter, the Chang'e-2.

The map and images released by the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industryfor National Defence (SASTIND) are the world's highest-resolution lunar images ever publishedthat cover all of the moon, said Liu Dongkui, deputy chief commander of China's lunar probeproject.

The images were photographed by a charge-coupled device (CCD) stereo camera onChang'e-2 from the heights of 100 km and 15 km over the lunar surface between October 2010and May 2011, the SASTIND statement said.

The resolution of the images obtained from Chang'e-2 is 17 times finer than those taken by theits predecessor Chang'e-1.

If there were airports and harbors on the moon, the Chang'e-1 could just identify them whileChang'e-2 could detect the planes or ships in them, said Tong Qingxi, academician with theInstitute of Remote Sensing Applications of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The scientists also made some adjustments to the original data to more accurately reflect thetopographic and geomorphologic features of the moon, the SASTIND statement said.

The scientists have produced 746 moon pictures with the resolution of seven meters, and thetotal volume of data is about 800 GB, the statement said.

The satellite is now orbiting the second Lagrange Point (L2) more than 1.5 million kms awayfrom Earth.

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Facebook IPO likely to boost China's SNS

Facebook's planned initial public offering (IPO) is likely to give impetus to China'ssocial networking service (SNS) and boost its development, industry insiders say.

Facebook filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday to raise $5billion in a preliminary IPO, one of the largest technology offering so far.

"Facebook's IPO is a milestone event in the global Internet arena," said Cheng Binghao, chiefexecutive officer of China's top SNS site Kaixin.

"In the next few years, SNS sites will become the mainstream of the Internet, and the IPO ofFacebook will make more people realize the change," Cheng told reporters in an interview.

Fang Xingdong, founder of blogchina.com and web research consultancy chinalabs.com, saidmany venture capitalists would benefit enormously from the IPO.

"The move will also fortify market confidence over investment in the Internet," Fang said.

Thanks to the news of Facebook's IPO, China's SNS sites have witnessed a dramatic rise instock market. Shares of New York-listed Chinese social networking company Renren Inc., whichis dubbed China's "Facebook," rose 33 percent from last Thursday to Tuesday this week, whileshares of NASDAQ-listed Sina Corp., owner of China's popular Twitter-like Sina Weibomicroblog service, rose 18.8 percent over the same period.

SNS sites have mushroomed in China in recent years and some of them have successfullylisted on overseas stock markets.

It is estimated that 269 million Internet users in China were registered at SNS sites by the endof 2011, which had a market value of about 2.1 billion yuan ($328 million), according to China'smarket research firm Analysys International.

However, China's SNS sites still face numerous problems that will impede its furtherdevelopment, industry watchers say.

Compared with Facebook, China's major SNS sites like Kaixin and Renren are still small-scalein user numbers and lack growth momentum, experts say.

Kaixin CEO Cheng said Facebook's going public will in the short term have a great impact onthe performance of China's SNS.

"However, the long-term influence is limited due to the difference between Facebook andChina's SNS sites in income structure, business model and positioning," Cheng said.

Huang Meng, an analyst with Analysys International, also pointed out that the status quo ofChinese concept stocks in the US stock market being undervalued won't change in the longrun.

Huang said China's Internet companies usually lack a solid profit pattern and they are tooeager to expand their business scope.

"By doing so, they have lost their core competitiveness in comparison with their foreign peers,"Huang said.

However, Cheng is still optimistic about China's SNS sites in regard to their developmentpotentials to replace traditional communication, media and business platforms in the next fiveyears.

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Space-tracking Yuanwang VI concludes trip

China's space-tracking ship Yuanwang VI concluded its 154-day trip on Thursday after covering more than 30,000 nautical miles. 

The ship returned to the port of China Satellite Maritime Tracking and Controlling Departmentin eastern Jiangsu province.

 Since September 2011, Yuanwang III, Yuanwang V and Yuanwang VI had sailed out insuccession to maritime areas in the Pacific to carry out 12 tracking missions, including China'sfirst space rendezvous and docking test of spaceship Shenzhou-8 and space lab moduleTiangong-1. 

Yuanwang III and Yuanwang V came back home at the end of January. Construction of Yuanwang VI was completed in 2008. It represents a new generation of space-tracking ships designed and manufactured in China, manipulating and coordinating the spaceposition of satellites and spaceships. 

On its maiden voyage in September 2008, Yuanwang VI was engaged in maritime tracking ofthe Shenzhou-7 manned space mission.

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China's largest electric car charging station opens

A view of China's largest electric vehicle (EV) charging and battery swapping station Gaoantun in Beijing, Jan 31, 2012. Gaoantun charging station, located in the eastern Beijing district of Chaoyang, has been installed with more than 10 types of EV charging or battery swapping machines, covering all charging modes that are available in China.[Photo/CFP]

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