Timelines of Internet Development in China (Yr. 2004-2010)

1. On January 5, 2009, a teleconference was held in Beijing by seven ministries or commissions including State Council Information Office, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Culture, State Administration for Industry and Commence, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and General Administration of Press and Publication of the People’s Republic of China with the aim of performing special actions on governance of vulgarity on the internet within the whole country.

2. On January 6th, 2009, the first Cultural Festival of China Net Citizens, hosted by China Internet Association, was officially initiated. It covers fields of technology, sports, fashion, culture, animation, etc. concerning internet. At this conference, the date of September 14th was elected to be Net Citizen Festival.

3. On January 7th, 2009, Ministry of Industry and Information issued three licenses of the third mobile communications (3G) to China Mobile Communications Corporation, China Telecommunications Corporation and China Unicom Network Communications Co., Ltd.

4. On February 28th, 2009, Premier Wen Jiabao of the State Council exchanged with net citizens and accepted special visit from both Central People’s Government website and Xinhua website before the holding of the 2nd Session of the 11th National People’s Congress and the 2nd Session of the 11th National Political Consultative Conference.

5. On May 19th, 2009, Ministry of Industry and Information issued Notice to Preassembly of Filtering Software for Safe Surfing on the Computer.

6. From 9:00 P.M., May 19th, 2009, the domain name resolution system of baofeng.com experienced network attack and failure. It caused recursive domain name resolution server of telecommunication enterprises to receive a lot of abnormal request and result in blockage, then services provided for six provinces including Jiangsu, Anhui, Guangxi, Hainan, Gansu and Zhejiang are affected. At 1:20 A.M., May 20th, internet services of the affected regions basically returned to normal.

7. On July 26th, 2009, Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Commerce jointly issued notice about Virtual Currency Transaction Management of Network, which regulated that the same enterprise shall not manage the issuing and transaction of virtual currency at the same time and the virtual currency shall not be used to purchase real objects.

8. On August 7th, 2009, Premier Wen Jiabao of the State Council inspected Wuxi Micro-nano and Sensing Engineering Technology Research and Development Center and put up with the proposal of building China Sensing Information Center (“Sensing China” Center) as soon as possible. On November 3rd, Premier Wen Jiabao delivered a speech titled with Make Technology Lead China in Sustainable Development and instructed that breakthrough shall be made especially on key technologies of sensing network and internet of things.

9. Since the second half year of 2009, web portal including Sina.com, Sohu.com, Netease, People.com have initiated or tested micro-blog function. The micro blog has attracted public figures, entertainment stars, enterprise institutions and a lot of net citizens to join in, which became one of the hot internet applications in 2009.

10. On August 18th, 2009, Ministry of Culture issued Notice to Enhancement and Improvement of Web Music Examination, which regulated that the operational units shall report to Ministry of Culture for examination or records of information if they wish to operate on web music products.

11. On August 26th, 2009, the 28th Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) Open Policy Meeting, which was hosted by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), was held in Beijing. It was the first time for APNIC meeting to be held in China Mainland.

12. On September 7th, the State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform issued State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform’s Interpretation of Part of Articles about Comprehensive Law Enforcement on Animation, Web Games and Cultural Market in ‘Provisions on Agreeing to a Plan after Discussing Three Times’ issued by Ministry of Culture, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and General Administration of Press and Publication , which said, “Ministry of Culture shall be responsible for industry planning, industry base, project construction, exhibition transaction and market supervision relating to animation and web games. State Administration of Radio, Film and Television shall be responsible for management of animation programs in movie animation as well as web audio and video. General Administration of Press and Publication shall be responsible for management of animation in the publication stage and carry out pre-examination on online publication and issuing of publications about games. ”

13. On September 8th, 2009, Tecent Company owned market value of more than 30 billion dollars and became the third largest internet company in the globe.

14. On November 16th, 2009, Office of the National Campaign on Anti-prostitution and Anti-delinquency issued Emergency Notice to Strict Attack on Mobile Website Production and Spreading of Obscene and Pornographic Information. In December, nine ministries or commissions including International Communication Office of the CPC, Office of the National Campaign on Anti-prostitution and Anti-delinquency, Ministry of Industry and Information, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Culture, State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council jointly carried out special actions on deep governance of obscene, pornographic and vulgar information on the internet and mobile media within the whole country.

15. At the beginning of December, 2009, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television shut down more than 530 BT (BitTorrent) websites including BT China in the clearance and rectification of websites with illegal and violating programs.

16. On December 26th, 2009, the 12th Session of the 11th National People’s Congress, Standing Committee Conference passed, by voting, Tort Law of the People’s Republic of China (executed as of July 1st, 2010), which regulated for the first time on network right infringement problems and their disposal principles.

17. In 2009, the public supervision value of the internet became widely known. A series of incidents such as “Hide and Seek”, “Deng Yujiao”, “Cigarette with outrageous value”, “entrapment” became the top issue of the public because of network exposure.

18. Until December 31st, 2009, it is shown according to the statistical data of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the net citizens in China has reached 384 million; the popularity of internet reached 28.9%; net citizens of wide band reached 346 million; users of web shopping reached 108 million and transaction of web shopping market reached 25 million yuan; mobile net citizens reached 233 million, with 120 million added in a year. There are 232 million IPv4 addresses, with 16.82 million domain names. There includes 13.46 million domain names and 3.23 million websites. And International band width has reached 866,367Mbps.

1. According to the statistics of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), by December 31, 2007, the number of Internet users in China has reached up to 210 million, while the number of the broadband Internet users has reached 163 million, accounting for 77.6% of the total. There are totally 11,931,277 domain names in China with 9,001,993 CN names, about 1,503,800 websites, and international bandwidth about 368,927Mbps.

2. During the period from January to February 2008, many x-rated indecent photos of some Hong Kong female entertainers were leaked to the Internet and disseminated quickly, which was known as the “Nude Picture Scandal”. It has started heated discussion on issues of the purification of the Internet environment and protection of personal privacy on Internet.

3. February 25, 2008, eight ministries and administrative offices jointly issued the Opinions on Intensifying Supervision over Internet Maps and Geographic Information Service Websites, requiring further regulations on the Internet maps and geographic information service websites. These eight ministries and administrative offices are: the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Information Industry, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, General Administration of Press and Publication, State Council Information Office, and Administration for the Protection of State Secrets.

4. March 11, 2008, in accordance with institutional reform of the State Council passed at the 1st Session of the 11th National People’s Congress, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was set up under the State Council. Responsibilities of the former Ministry of Information Industry and the former State Council Informatization Office have been transferred to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology which now becomes the administrative authority of the Internet industry in China.

5. April 28, 2008, commissioned by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Internet Society of China set up the “12321 Information Center of Indecent and Unsolicited Electronic Messages”, and the complaints and reports can be submitted via telephone calls, feedbacks on websites, e-mail messages, mobile phone texting and WAP.

6. Since May 2008, with the rapid spreading of SNS (Social Networking Service) websites as Kaixin (“being happy”) and Xiaonei (“on the campus”), SNS has become one of the most popular Internet applications in 2008.

7. As for relief news after the earthquake on May the 12th, 2008, in SichuanProvince, people.com, xinhuanet.com, chinanews.com and cctv.com had released about 123,000 pieces of news on the earthquake relief (including pictures, texts, audios and videos) by May 23, 2008, and played a leading role in news releasing; sina.com, sohu.com, NetEase and Tencent jointly released 133,000 pieces of news. The above eight websites received 11.6 billion hits on news with up to 10.63 million follow-up replies. The Internet played an important role in news releasing about earthquake relief, helping people find their missing kin, delivering aids and soliciting donations. The development of China’s Internet media has come to a new stage.

8. June 20, 2008, President Hu Jintao communicated with the Internet users on line through the ChinaForce BBS on people.com. As a key channel for information exchange, the Internet has attracted more and more attention of the government.

9. Up to June 30, 2008, the total number of Internet users in China reached 253 million, ranking first in the world for the first time. On July 22, the CN domain name became the world’s top national domain name with a large registration number of 12.188 million.

10. July 2, 2008, Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce officially issued the Opinions on Strengthening Supervision and Administration over the Order of Electronic Commerce Market which provides that, from August 1, each profitable on-line shop must obtain a business license before business operation.

11. September 17, 2008, Premier Wen Jiabao made comments on the “reporting letter posted on a blog about concealing of deaths in the landslide accident in Loufan County, Shanxi Province on August 1”, requiring relevant authorities to carry out careful inspection and verification of the major accident of burst of a dam at a refuse ore. The function of Internet as means of supervision by public opinions has caught further attention of the central government.

12. September 28, 2008, according to the official reply to each local taxation bureau by the State Administration of Taxation, the incomes obtained by individuals purchasing virtual currency from Internet players and reselling to others with premiums should be subject to individual income tax, and a 20% individual income tax under the category of “income from transfer of property” should be levied.

13. From November to December 2008, the CCTV exposed successively the defects of the business operational model of two major search engines – Baidu and Google. It has triggered a crisis of confidence of the Internet users in those search engines, and advantages or disadvantages of the pricing on ads based on hitting employed in search engines have also become a hot topic.

14. December 22, 2008, sina.com announced an acquisition of the outdoor digital advertising business of Focus Media Group at a price of about 1.3 billion USD, which was so far the largest Internet purchase in China.

15. According to the statistics of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), by December 31, 2008, the number of Internet users in China has reached up to 298 million with an Internet penetration rate of 22.6%. The number of the broadband Internet users has reached 270 million, accounting for 90.6% of the total. There are totally 16,826,198 domain names in China with 13,572,326 CN names, about 2,878,000 websites, and international bandwidth about 640,286.67Mbps.

1.On January 23, 2007, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the 19th statistical report on the development of the Internet in China. By December 31, 2006, there were about 59.4 million computers in China which had access to the Internet. The number of Internet users was about 137 million, and the proportion of the number of netizens in the population of the country exceeded 10% for the first time. The total number of domain names was 4,109,020, the number of websites was about 843,000, and the network bandwidth of international export was about 256,696Mbps.

    2.On January 23, 2007, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee collectively studied the development of world network technology and the construction and management of Internet culture in China. Secretary-General Hu Jintao pointed out while presiding over the study that whether we could actively use and effectively manage the Internet and whether we could truly make the Internet a new approach for transmitting advanced socialist culture, a new platform of public cultural services, and a new space of people’s healthy spiritual and cultural life were related to the healthy development of the socialist cultural cause and cultural industry, to the cultural and information safety and the long-term stability of our country, and to the overall situation of the socialist cause with Chinese characteristics.

    3.On February 15, 2007, 14 ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Culture issued the Circular Concerning Further Strengthening the Management of Internet Cafés and Online Games, which regulated, for the first time, the virtual currency transaction in online games.

    4.On February 28, 2007, People’s Daily, the largest comprehensive print media and the newspaper of the CPC central government, formally issued mobile phone newspapers all over the country. It became a landmark event in the integration of modern communication technology and news media.

    5.From May 2007, 11 websites such as qianlong.com, sina.com, sohu.com, 163.com, tom.com, and china.com held Online Lecture Hall activities to transmit scientific and cultural knowledge in such forms as online video lecturing, textual recording and netizen interactive communication. By the end of December, altogether over 330 lectures had been held, and the accumulated hits exceeded 100 million person-times.

    6.On June 1, 2007, the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Council Informatization Office jointly released the first E-commerce development plan in China—the Eleventh Five-Year Plan for the Development of E-commerce, which, for the first time, determined the strategy and tasks for developing E-commerce at the level of national policies.

    7.On June 18, 2007, the Anti-Junk Mail Comprehensive Treatment Platform of the Internet Society of China was formally opened, and the number of e-mailbox users of the 10 email operating enterprises connected to this platform accounted for over 80% of the total number of e-mailbox users in China.

    8.In July 2007, Wang Xiao, the blog owner of Leading Brother 777, called the Number One Blog in the World in the hot wave of the stock market in China, was brought under criminal detention by the police in Jilin. The nature of the case was determined to be new mass-related economic crime. The event showed the negative effect of blog products, and meanwhile reflected the new complexity in the course of public opinion formation.

    9.On August 21, 2007, the Blog Service Self Discipline Convention was formally released in Beijing. This Convention advocated the real name registration system. Over 10 renowned blog service providers jointly signed the convention on the site of the release meeting.

    10.From September 3 to September 6, 2007, TOM withdrew successively from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ Stock Exchange of the United States, and became the first China concept stock that withdrew from the stock market.

    11.On September 7, 2007, the Survey Report on Internet Development in Rural China 2007 was released. By June 2007, the scale of rural netizens in China exceeded 37 million. There was a big gap between the city and the countryside. The internet penetration rate in the countryside was 5.1%, while the internet penetration rate in the city at the same time was 21.6%. This was the first time for our country to issue a survey report on the development of the Internet in the countryside.

    12.On September 30, 2007, the central government transmission backbone network of the national e-government network was formally opened, which symbolized that a uniform national e-government network framework was basically formed.

    13.On October 15, 2007, Secretary-General Hu Jintao pointed out at the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, We should have a comprehensive understanding of the new situation and tasks in China's advance toward an industrialized, information-based, urbanized, market-oriented and internationalized country; integrate IT application and industrialization; strengthen efforts to develop and manage Internet culture and foster a good cyber environment. Clear requirements were put forward to the development of IT application and the Internet.

    14.On November 1, 2007, Shanghai Giant Network Technology Ltd. was listed in the New York Stock Exchange of the United States. It was the first Chinese network company listed in the New York Stock Exchange and became the online game enterprise with the highest market value in China.

    15.On November 1, 2007, seven national standards on information security were formally implemented. These seven national standards were respectively: GB/T 20984-2007 Information security technology - Risk assessment specification for information security, GB/T 20979-2007 Information security technology - Technical requirements for iris identification system, GB/T 20983-2007 Information security technology - Evaluation criteria for online banking information systems security assurance, GB/Z 20985-2007 Information technology - Security techniques -Information security incident management guide, GB/Z 20986-2007 Information security technology - Guidelines for the category and classification of information security incidents, GB/T 20987-2007 Information security technology - Evaluation Criteria for online stock trading information systems security assurance, and GB/T 20988-2007 Information security technology - Disaster recovery specifications for information system.

    16.On December 4, 2007, the NASDAQ Stock Exchange of the United States announced that Baidu Company became a part of the NASDAQ 100 index and NASDAQ 100 average weighted index. Baidu was the first Chinese company selected into NASDAQ 100 index.

    17.On December 18, 2007, the International Olympic Committee and CCTV jointly signed the Agreement on the Transmission Right of the Internet and Mobile Platform in China Regarding the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This was the first time in the Olympic history when new media including the Internet and mobile phones were listed separately into the transmission system of the Olympics as independent transmission platforms.

    18.On December 24, 2007, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the State Administration of Sport jointly issued the Circular Concerning the Related Issues of Lottery Organizations’ Resort to the Internet to Sell Lotteries. The sales of lotteries on the Internet were forbidden and the rapidly growing online lottery sales were stopped urgently.

    19.On December 29, 2007, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Ministry of Information Industry jointly issued the Regulations on the Administration of Video and Audio Program Service on the Internet.

    20.On December 31, 2007, the number of registration for CN domain names, i.e., the country code top-level domain names, reached 9.002 million, accounting for 75.4% of the total number of domain names in China, and the websites under CN domain names reached 1.006 million, accounting for 66.9% of the total number of websites in China. This symbolized that CN domain names had become the mainstream domain names registered and applied in China.

    21.In December 2007, the Eleventh Five-Year Plan for IT Application in National Economy and Social Development was released, which put forward the overall objective of IT application and Internet development of the country in the period of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, deployed main tasks, arranged major projects and clarified guarantee measures. This was an important measure in accelerating the integration of IT application and industrialization and implementing the scientific outlook on development

    22.In 2007, the market value of Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba successively surpassed USD 10 billion. Chinese Internet enterprises ascended to the list of the largest Internet enterprises in the world.

    23.In 2007, PPG Clothes (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (PPG) won altogether an international venture capital of USD 50 million. This kind of B2C new E-commerce direct sales mode without stores or channels reflected the channel value of the Internet and showed the further integration of the traditional industry and the Internet.

On January 12, 2004, the three nations’ project (China-US-Russia) - “Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development” (GLORIAD) was accomplished. GLORIAD was funded and constructed by CAS, the National Science Foundation (US) and Russia Ministry and Science Group Alliance. GLORIAD will support the three countries even the global advanced scientific and educational applications. Computer Network Information Center of CAS, National Supercomputing Application Center of Illinois University and Kolchatov Institute of Russia.

On January 15, 2004, CNNIC published the 13th “Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development of China”. By the end of December 31, 2003, there were approximately 30.89 million computer hosts, 79.50 million Internet users in China; 340,040 names were registered under .CN domain. China had about 595,550 WWW website, and 27,216Mbps of international bandwidth.

From February 3 to 18, 2004, Sina, Sohu and Netease successively revealed their financial results in 2003. They reported annual profits of US$114 million, US$89 million and US$80 million respectively in 2003, achieving for the first time full-year profitability of the three firms.

On March 4, 2004, Linktone Ltd., a provider of entertainment-oriented wireless value-added services to mobile phone users in China, announced its listing on the NASDAQ Stock Market in New York. Linktone has become the first firm specialized in SP (Service Provider) in China to have accomplished initial public offering (IPO). Afterwards, Tom Online, Shanda, Tencent, KongZhong Corporate, 51job, China Finance Online, eLong, Hurray! And The9 were successively listed on overseas stock market, indicating the second overseas IPO tide of Chinese Internet firms.

On April 1, 2004, the State Council Informatization Office issued “Survey Report on Quantities of China Internet Information Resources, 2003” in Beijing. By the end of December 31, 2003, the total number of domain names in China had reached 1,187,380. China had had 311,864,590 web pages and 169,867 online databases.

On April 14, 2004, IETF formally issued RFC 3743 with the title of “Joint Engineering Team (JET) Guidelines for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Registration and Administration for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean”, which was submitted by CNNIC, together with JPNIC and KRNIC. This is the second IETF RFC document participated and instituted by Chinese engineers ever in the history. RFC 3743 is focused on realizing equivalent conversion and transition of different forms (traditional/simplified/variant) of Chinese characters when using as IDN identifiers.

Created by the Internet News & Information Service Working Committee (INISWC) of the Internet Society of China, the website of net.china.cn was launched in Beijing on June 10, 2004. The website was named the “Illegal and Inappropriate Information Report Center", providing a channel for the public to report suspected illegal or offensive Internet activity and material, and to maintain public interests. The opening of the website is another essential step to strengthen self-discipline and public supervision of the Internet industry.

On July 16, 2004, a national teleconference on the crackdown against porn websites was held, marking the launch of a nationwide campaign against porn sites. On the next day, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and some other 13 governmental organizations jointly published a notice to launch a nationwide crackdown project against pornographic websites according to the laws.

On July 21, 2004, the China Next Generation Internet (CNGI) Project Experts Committee was established by National Development and Reform Commission and other seven central government departments.

On August 28, 2004, the Law on Electronic Signature was passed on the eleventh meeting of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC). The law will take effects on April 1, 2005. The launch of the law was a notable step toward the legislation of informatization in China. It will also greatly facilitate and better ensure the process of e-government and e-commerce in China.

On September 6, 2004, China's Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate jointly issued a new judicial interpretation for criminal cases concerning the production, duplication, publication, sale and dissemination of pornographic material via the Internet, mobile communications terminals and fixed-line telephone networks.

New “Measures for Administration of Internet Domain Names of China” were promulgated on November 11, 2004 as Decree No. 30 of the Ministry of Information Industry of the People’s Republic of China. These measures will take effects on December 20, 2004.

On November 29, 2004, the Internet Trust and Self-discipline Alliance, co-established by Internet companies Sina, Sohu and Netease, proclaimed self-disciplinary regulations for China's Internet wireless service providers (SPs), representing the continued and serious efforts put into the self-discipline of the Internet wireless SPs in China.

On December 23, 2004, the IPv6 address of China's Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) name server was successfully registered in global domain name root server, marking that the upgraded .CN name server has connected to the IPv6 network and is capable of providing .CN domain name resolution services for IPv6 environment. China’s .CN domain name system has into IPv6 Era.

On December 25, 2004, one of the first backbone networks of China Next-Generation Internet (CNGI), CERNET2, was launched and going into formal operation.
199. On December 29, 2004, the Unified Network Platform (UNINET) by China Unicom won the first prize of the Science and Technology Award offered by China Institute of Communications. UNINET has realized a network on a unified platform, simultaneously providing voice, data, video, Internet, video conference, video telephone or CDMA 1X mobile data services.

On January 17, 2005,CNNIC published the 15th “Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China”. By the end of December 31, 2003, there were approximately 41,600,000 computer hosts and 94,000,000 Internet users in China；432,077 names were registered under .CN ccTLD. China had about 668,900 WWW websites, and 74,429 Mbps of international bandwidth. On June 30, Chinese Internet users broke through 100 million for the first time, attained 103,000,000, broadband users exceeded half of the Internet users for the first time.

On January 28, 2005, the Network Copyright Alliance of Self-Discipline Steering Committee of the Internet Society of China (ISC) was established in Beijing, the alliance aims at strengthening the self-discipline of the Internet industry, impelling it to healthy and orderly development.

On February 8, 2005, Ministry of Information Industry (MII) issued “Administration Rules for Making Files of Non-profit Internet Information Services”. According to the rule, MII jointly with some other 13 Ministries — namely Chinese Central Propaganda Department, the News Office of the State Council, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Public Security and etc., — launched the centralized website for filing projects all over the nation. This project would establish three basic databases of ICP information, IP address information and domain name information for filing information of ICPs, and laying a foundation for strengthening the administration of the Internet.

On February 8, 2005, Ministry of Information Industry (MII) issued “Administrative Rules for Electronic Authentication Services”. It was implemented simultaneously with “Electronic Signature Law”, and laid the foundation for the development of China’s electronic authentication service industry.
204. At the end of April, 2005, Shanghai Television Station, subordinated to Shanghai Media Group (SMG) obtained the approval from The State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) to broadcast audio and video programs to TV sets and portable facilities over IP networks. It was the first IPTV license that the SARFT had issued.

On August 5, 2005, BaiDu Co.Ltd went IPO on NASDAQ. With the original offering price at USD 27 per share, in the first transaction day, it had a gap at USD 66 then peaked to USD 151.21, and closed at USD 122.54. It recorded the highest first day growth rate of 354% among all IPOs on NASDAQ since the year of the Internet Bubble in year 2000.

On August 11, 2005, Yahoo China announced to exchange 40% of Alibaba.com’s stock and 35% of the voting rights for 1 billion US dollars and all its assets, and transferred all business operations of Yahoo China to Alibaba.com. This was the first case for a global Internet giant giving all of its China’s business to a local company.

On September 11, 2005, the News Office of the State Council and Ministry of Information Industry jointly issued “Regulations for Administering the Internet News and Information Services” and the regulation came into effect on the same day.

On November 7, 2005, Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee announced that Sohu.com became the Internet content service sponsor of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. For the first time, the Internet content service is set to be one of the sponsored items in the history of Olympic Games.

On November 3, 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao presides over the fifth meeting of the State Informatization Leading Group. The meeting reviewed and approved “The National Informatization Development Strategy (2006-2020)”. It was considered that developing and implementing the strategy was an important deployment of conformance to the world’s trend of informatization, and an important movement to achieve the goal of developing the economy and the society in the new stage.

On November 17, 2005, “Science Museums of China” and “Tianfu Agricultural Information Network” attained “World Information Summit Award” of “The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)” in Tunis phase, it is the first time for China’s website to attain such a great international award.

On December 31, 2005, .CN domain name registration exceeded one million for the first time, attained 1,096,924, which ranked first among all ccTLDs in Asia and sixth in the world.

In the year 2005, Blogers and attached concept of Web2.0 promoted tremendous development of China's Internet. The emerging concept of Web2.0 marked the beginning of a new evolution stage of new media on the Internet. As it was widely used, there also emerged a series of socialized applications such as Blog, RSS, WIKI, SNS friend-making network and so on.

On January 1st, 2006, website of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China (www.gov.cn) formally launched. This website is a composite platform for the State Council and its departments, along with people’s governments of each province, autonomous region and municipality to release information of governmental affairs on the Internet and provide online services.

On January 17th, CNNIC issued “the 17th Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China” in Beijing. The report shows that till Dec. 31st, 2005, China has had about 45,900,000 computers on the Internet, about 111,000,000 Internet users, 1,096,924 registered CN domain names, and about 694,200 websites.The international network bandwidth of China is 136,106 Mbps by then.

On February 21st, 2006, Ministry of Information Industry (MII) started a series of activities of “Sunshine Green Network Campaign”, including: Clean Electronic Waste, Enjoy Clean Network Space; Regulate Illegal and Malfeasances Information, Promote Green Mobile-Phone Culture; Fight Illegal Online Service, Introduce Green Online Behaviors.

On March 19th, 2006, the National Informatization Leading Group issued the General Frame of National Electronic Government Information, set the requirements and targets for establishing the general frame of national electronic government information, described the form of the general frame of national electronic government information, and pointed out the value-orientation and development direction of national electronic government information for the next stage.

On March 30th, 2006, the Management Methods for Internet Email Service issued by MII began to take into effect.

In June 2006, MII decided to initiate the targeted movement of regulating and standardizing the rates and charging behavior of mobile information service nationwide. On Sep 14th, MII issued “the Notice on Regulating Rates and Charging Behavior of Mobile Information Service”. During September to November, provincial communication management bureaus found out and punished at least 245 illegal mobile value-added service providers. As a result, the profits of the listing mobile value-added service providers in 2006 decreased a lot.

In June 2006, Xiang Wenbo published article titled “Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group Co., Ltd.(XCMG) Acquisition: a beautiful lie” on his weblog along with two other related articles to reveal the event of Carlyle Group's buying Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group Co., Ltd.. The articles arose great reverberation. The price for Carlyle Group to buy XCMG was downed from 375 million USD for 85% shares to 233 million USD for 45% shares. It highlighted the influence of small mass spreading. Investigation Report of China Blogs in 2006 issued by CNNIC shows that till August 2006, blog authors have increased to 17,485,000.

On July 1st, 2006, the Regulations on the Protection of the Right of Communication through Information Network approved in the 135th standing conference of the State Council began to take into effect.

On July 18th, 2006, the award of 16th “Chinese Journalism Prize” held by All-China Journalists’ Association was revealed. Network news articleswere in the prize competition for the first time. Thirteen network news articles were awarded prizes.

On September 23rd, 2006, the “Core Network (CNGI-CERNET2/6IX) of the Model Network of Chinese Next Generation Internet (CNGI) Project” built by the network center of China Education and Research Network (CERNET) and other 25 universities such as Tsinghua University was formally accepted by the country.

On October 13th, 2006, the International Engineering Task Force (IETF) formally issued the Registration and Administration Recommendation for Chinese Domain Names as RFC4713. The standard was mainly constituted by CNNIC.

On October 26th, 2006, Internet Society of China set up the “Anti-Malicious Software Collaborative Working Group”.

On November 16th, 2006, the “Golden Shied Project”, a project for establishing national police affairs information management system, formally obtained the national completion acceptance in Beijing.

On December 18th, 2006, six ISPs include China Telecom, China Netcom, Chunghwa Telecom, Korea Telecom, and Verizon of US announced in Beijing that they will jointly to build the Trans-Pacific Fiber Cable System.

On the night of December 26th, 2006, 7.2 (Richter Scale) earthquake occurred in south Taiwan, China, which broke 11 optical-fiber submarine cables, including China-US submarine cable, Asia-Pacific No.1 submarine cable, Asia-Pacific No.2 submarine cable, FLAG submarine cable, Asia-Euro submarine cable and FNAL submarine cable. This caused a large area of Internet from China Mainland to Taiwan, North America, Europe and Southeast Asia paralyzed, and access many oversea websites are obstructed.

In the end of 2006, a virus called “Nimaya” broke out. Millions of computers were affected and damaged. The investigation shows that: 90% of the new viruses in 2006, showed evident characteristics of for profits. The purpose of virus producers veered from showing off their techniques to pursuing illegal profits.