Cyber China

The digital addiction is worldwide and a frantic race to connect and to catch up takes place at almost all developmental levels. China, my homeland ,for example, could be considered a 'third generation tiger',but the scale and the pace of the digital interconnectivity involves in the country seems set to eclipse the rest of Asia - and perhaps the world.

Under the political, social,cultural and technological deep freeze that was China in 1979 there were only about 2 million telephones for the population of almost abillion.By the end of 20th century, the number of telephones had increased to 100 million, and by 2002,this had doubled to 200 million with 65 million of these being mobile phones!
This surging and seemingly unstoppable grouwth in telephony is only one small aspect of China 's grouth in cinnectivity.The Internet has been also diffusing rapidly and extensively throughout China.5000user in 1994 grew to over 80million by 2004. IF the groeth rate can be sustained at anywhere near this level, in several years China will; have more Internet users than any other country on earth.a big part of the "IF" is the chinese one-party rule over the country. For example Chinese users love the Google search because it reads Chinese characters. In 2002,the chinese government blocked access to Google and also tried to limit access to the CNN aND bbc websites.Censoring the Internet 's content, especially its political content, seems set to be a constant rearguard action for the government.

Given the enormous potential of the Chinese economy, and its obvious attraction as a market for world-wide companies,the resolution to this particular dilemma is going to be one of the most important and interesting aspects of the wired world in the years to come.