China says Android can stay, misses Google's point
By Vlad Savov 
posted January 28th 2010 3:15AM
posted January 28th 2010 3:15AM
A Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology spokesperson has today delivered a statement affirming China's willingness to allow Android devices to operate within the country without restriction so long as they adhere to the nation's laws. This means that whatever China's response to Google no longer obeying its censorship edicts may be, it won't be to disallow Android -- which kind of makes sense considering the growing roster of OPhones out there, all running a remixed version of the dessert-loving mobile OS. Then again, Google's latest power play was to hold back Android handsets from entering China, so we're not entirely sure how much the Mountain View outfit cares about the Middle Kingdom's apparent benevolence.
"...China's willingness to allow Android devices to operate within the country without restriction so long as they adhere to the nation's laws."
But the nation's law require restrictions to the functionality in some way.
@Cence Chinese law is a difficult thing to understand, there's a lot of conflicts and loopholes. And furthermore, there is room for policy considerations in certain special cases not available in Western systems.
I am not practicing PRC lawyer, so I can't rule on the legality this decision, but I just want to know outright illegality is more difficult thing to establish on the PRC.
@YpoCaramel Obviously, Pornography is just a alibi of China to avoid uncensorship to google china. If you will look at china's past history on how it wants to try to hide all its 'private affairs' from the world, you can see that China are really trying to hide something.
Google may lose its partnership with China, but he will get the support of the world not to mention human rights activist. This is something that won't be disclosed to the public for sure. Conspiracies: http://bit.ly/google-china-censorship-details
google has a point in this?
@YpoCaramel
The Chinese law is passed on the discretion of the CPC and no scrutiny is made before legislation.
@Cence i think the word we are looking for is 'oxymoron'
I heard a rumor that the iPad is make in sweatshops in China.
Wait, that's not a rumor. Apple is in bed with Foxconn.
Still, another article about the iPad coming out in China would be nice, even if it was just a rumor.
@cherryboom Jesus christ, that was lazy. At least respond with something relevant to the topic!
Google got very lucky on this one. They pulled out of China for IP reasons, and everyone thought they had just forfeited the Chinese Smartphone market to Apple.
@Wesscoast I had half-expected that the PRC would just try to make their own standard. China has its own version of wi-fi, blu-ray and digital TV transmission after all - I can hardly say it's good for the people to have a separate standard, but they do it anyways.
@YpoCaramel I think this is all about information control. Having its own standards means they can control the information that comes into the country much more easily.
@genghiskhan exactly
@YpoCaramel No worries. :)
China's "homegrown" wi-fi isn't really wi-fi. The so called "WAPI" is not anything like 802.11, rather the same thing as WEP and WPA. In other words nothing but a new encryption. Aside from this it's 100% good old wifi. And curiously, so many years announcing the WAPI, I've never seen any router with this thingie enabled yet.\
And China's "homegrown" blu-ray isn't really blu-ray. The name CBHD (China Blue High-definition Disc) has a "blue" only for marketing purpose. In the bones (I think) it's 85% good old dead HD-DVD, only slightly altered and granted a fashion-friendly name. And also curiously, I've never seen such discs or players on sale around Beijing yet.
It's easy to roll out some weirdo standards, but quite hard to make people buy that cr*p. :)
@Wesscoast It also seems to me that China is giving Google some slack due to economic reasons, Moto, HTC (Dopodo, Lenovo and future KIRFers rejoice.
@Wesscoast
lol...they wish. Nokia still dominates in China. Arm twisting MOTO and Sammy not to release their phones (without keeping them in the loop) might sound good in cocktail party conversation but just imagine the immense amounts of money and effort which went down the drain for these 2 companies just so GOOG could play the good guy. Bad move for GOOG regardless of the good intentions and definitely not a way to inspire confidence in one's partners. GOOG cant afford to act like Apple - they are not as secure as Apple.
Ah, the Pip Boy. Oh so appropriate.
I think the PRC misses the point because they are really not seeing it as a corporate swipe, but rather something orchestrated by the White-Deviled American government.
Living almost 30 years in China, I'm quite confident to break it to you guys some interesting facts.
"..delivered a statement affirming China's willingness to allow Android devices to operate within the country without restriction so long as they adhere to the nation's laws."
---- When a government officer, especially those of high level, says something like this, it usually mean "but you are not really adhering to our law right now, so we are screwing you not so publicly."
And actually the guy from MIIT had some extra saying like "China's telecommunication industry is an open market. Meanwhile, every country regulates its telecom market in accordance with its laws."
---- Usually when government speaksperson slings the "open" and "law" terms all around, it means something very bad has happened, with the possibility of worse happening soon.
And as an Android (HTC Dream) user on China Mobile network, I find the DNS request for android.clients.google.com frequently denied (need to manually modify HOSTS file). On China Mobile's GSM/EDGE network, applications requiring network access generally don't work (except for the web browser). I have every reason to believe China isn't completely Android-friendly at all.
There's the motivation. Now China has mutated Androids, namely OPhone (China Mobile) and UPhone (China Telecom). There's a good reason not letting THE Android be too competitive.
Oh my wicked mind what am I talking about
@Chassit
As a Chinese, I almost agree with you.
BTW, you can try CMNET instead of CMWAP, then other applications can access internet as well, I guess.
@Chassit Nice translation there! Now, you'll need to keep a look out for any MSS agents that might pop up at your house ;)
Too bad..The Chinese loves Nokia.
Where the hell are the meme pictures of the Google logo or the Android logo standing in front of the Tanks in Tiananmen Square?
Yeah, but what's with the Fallout dude in the picture???
huh? China is clearly *ignoring* Google's complaint.
it's like if someone is expecting you to make an apology and you just sit there silently waiting for *them* to apologize even though they've done nothing wrong
China is basically saying, "we forgive you."
I bet China makes gougle, a giant google KIRF with way more features and zero quality.
@jol Hahaha. That would be one giant up yours! (via @spectoral)
There is an hidden message in this. Maybe even a few hidden messages. At least one I can think of: "dear Chinese compatriotes, please go ahead and use Android for the production of 3G devices. We may be bashing Google, but you are allowed to use this OS for your phones."
Just for the purpose of background: until some date in 2009 mobile data use was forbidden in China. It could very well have been available, but use of the Mobile Network for data traffic was forbibben. Just one of the reasons why Chinese handset developers hardly produced 3G devices and/or mobile operating systems that could benefit from this bandwidth. With the availability of Android, said manufacturers can immediately start producing 3G handsets.
good .
http://udtekbattery.wordpress.com
感谢上帝，感谢春哥。