Baidu - the leading Chinese search engine and potentially most formidable competitor for Google in the long-run - has joined the Internet Society of China and the China Communications Standards Association to publish a set of search engine marketing regulations aimed at “developing the sector as a reliable source of news and business”.

Officially, the idea is to drive out disreputable companies who tarnish the reputation of search engine marketing in China. Something of a twist since this comes one year after Baidu came under fire for blocking searches containing words associated with the melamine milk scandal or having accepted money from fraudulent medical companies to figure prominently in search results!

What if this self-enligthened effort at self-regulation was to spread outside of China?  And, more importantly, will Google join the bandwagon?

Their focus has now turned to the Internet of Things. Earlier last month, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s (MIIT) National IT Standardization Technical Committee has established a working group of sensor network experts to create a draft national standard for the Internet of Things.

They come in the footsteps of Europe’s Casagras project (including participants from France, the UK, Japan, Korea and…China) which aims at establishing standards for the communications and encoding used for the objects of the Internet of Things.

While China and other countries had little to say in the “standardization of the Internet”, it will be interesting to see whether a different (and functional) governance model emerges from opening participation to other countries.

P.S.: Casagras, which stands for Coordination And Support Action for Global RFID-related Activities and Standardisation, has just issued its final report on RFID and the inclusive model for the Internet of Things

They can result in anything from a consumer paying for a fast computer but getting a slow computer, to more serious problems including failures in applications involving health and safety. In fact nowadays semiconductors are found everywhere, including in medical equipment, automotive or aerospace applications, or communications infrastructure for first responders.

Before you skin your computer to check if Intel is really inside, you should know that the most common problem is a remarked product, where the counterfeiter scrapes off the marking on the outside of an integrated circuit and remarks it with a different brand, speed, or part number. So, next time your computer slows down, don’t immediately blame Microsoft or your anti-virus provider…

A millenium later, it is time to look back at the major technological development of the People’s Republic. For its 60th birthday, the official news agency Xinhua has highlighted the following achievements in the field of science and technology:
- Li Siguang’s theory on geomechanics which allowed the discovery of the Daqinq oil field (1959)
- the explosion of China’s first atomic bomb in Xinjiang (1964) which projected the country in the league of nuclear powers
- Yuan Longping’s development of hybrid rice varieties (in the 1970s) which helped China move towards autonomy
- connection to the Internet (May 1994)
- the launch of China’s first lunar exploration satellite (2007) and the coining of a new word for a Chinese traveling in space (taikonaut)

Nowadays, China cooperates with foreign multinationals (when it doesn’t buy them out) to explore oil at home and abroad; it plans to build 50 nuclear reactors over the next 10 years, to plant the Chinese flag on the moon. Finally, it quietly became the country with the largest number of netizens.

Let’s see what the next 60 years bring us!

The question is of course how “deep in the value chain” such an initiative can reach. Many manufacturers are already working closely with first-tier suppliers to ensure reasonable working conditions. But the real challenge lies in offering similar working conditions to employees working for second-tier and third-tier suppliers in some remote factory, somehere in China.

That’s when China Mobile steps in. The Chinese operator promises to offer technology support to the Symbian Foundation - in return, Symbian will support China Mobile’s construction of TD-SCDMA 3G network. And with close to 500 millions subscribers, it is not an insignificant endorsement.

China Mobile’s support is naturally not devoid of interest. Between the battle for an OS and the iPhone’s entry in the Chinese market, the trial of strength between the operator and the manufacturer is far from over.

Beijing is using a typical mix of incentives to gain critical mass: governments at all levels are offering solar panel producing firms subsidies - free land, R&D grants - while bank offer very attractive loans.

Unfortunately the battle for an eco-frienly environment is is far from won: the objective to grow the installed capacity from 2GW to 20GW (the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactors…) of solar energy by 2020 is less than half the capacity of coal-fired power plants built annually.

P.S.: China Mobile established the world’s largest solar energy-powered base station cluster in Tibet

Take nuclear energy for instance. During the 90s, the country has only 3 reactors in operation - 2 in Daya Bay and 1 in Qinshan. Today, 11 reactors are running with more than 8 Gigawatt (GW) of installed capacity.

In 2006, nuclear energy accounted for 1.1% of electricity production, nothing in comparison with  thermal’s 77.8% (of which  68.7% from coal…) or even hydro-power’s 20.7%. But 16 new reactors are under construction (for 15 GW) and 34 more (for 32 GW) are planned till 2020. That will place China at par with the world leader France which currently counts 59 reactors and 63GW - just remember that the Chinese population is 200 times larger.

The good news: the country has pledged a 20% reduction of its energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP) by 2010.