China Decoder

China Decoder Blackout to Protest Internet Censorship

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:37:50 -0600

To raise public awareness of SOPA and PIPA, I will not be translating any Chinese news today. Contact your congressman.

China's EV Demo Program Falls Flat; 25 Pilot Cities only Meet 38% of Target

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:52:35 -0600

According to a recently released report from China's First Institute of Electric Propulsion, the 25 cities participating in China's nationwide electric vehicle demonstration program had reached only about 38% of their deployment goals, as of October 2011.

The "Ten Cities Thousand Vehicles" program, launched in 13 cities in ...

China's New Energy Vehicle Industry Plan to be Revised, Again

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:07:19 -0600

According to sources at the 2011 Global New Energy Vehicle Conference held in Beijing on January 5, China's long-awaited new energy vehicle industry development plan has gone back to the drawing board once more, but may be resubmitted to the State Council for another review in the near future ...

Chinese Official Explains New Rules for Internet Industry

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:17:55 -0600

On December 29, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued a new set of regulations to establish order in the country's internet service industry. Reporters met with Li Guobin of the MIIT's administrative law department, who explained the background and purpose of the new rules ...

Beijing Lists 17 Industries Most in Need of Talent

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:08:22 -0600

Beijing issued its "12th Five Year Plan Human Resource Development Plan" on Wednesday, marking 17 industries most in need of qualified personnel over the next five years. The plan identified more than 280 specific categories of professionals needed across fields including new generation information technology, new energy vehicles, and aeronautics ...

2011 Year in Review: China's Electric Vehicles Disappoint

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:05:11 -0600

"I still have to insist on this viewpoint, whether or not you're willing to listen: Anybody who tells you that electric vehicles are going to pull suddenly ahead in China is lying," said Yin Chengliang, deputy director of Shanghai Jiaotong University's Automotive Engineering Institute, speaking at the 2011 ...

Tang Jun: Chinese Enterprises Better Avoid Cloud Computing

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:59:31 -0600

Tang Jun, former president of Microsoft China, said at an annual CEO conference held by IT Time Weekly on December 6 that "cloud computing" is a form of commercial hype. Tang elaborated that as cloud computing is still in an early standards-setting stage, Chinese enterprises had best avoid the concept ...

Beijing to Open Party and Government Parking Lots to Public

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:45:38 -0600

The standing committee of the Beijing municipal government convened recently over a draft of new parking regulations for the nation's capital. Beijing is home to nearly 5 million motor vehicles, but with less than 2.5 million proper parking spaces, the city's car-owners are forced to fight for ...

Continuing technical improvements

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:35:09 -0600

Exciting changes are afoot here at chinadecoder. Juicy details are as follows:

Translations for Weibo trends are now being automatically grabbed from Wikipedia. This is a fairly surefire way to accurately translate things like movie titles or names of pop stars, which appear frequently in China's tweets, and will help cut down on the amount of tedious manual term lookups that need to be done.

I also experimented with integrating Bing translator into the Weibo app, but I find that even Bing's automatic translations of simple things like "hello" are iffy at best, so it's still disabled for now.
Original Chinese article content is now ajaxerifically loaded on request. I suspect that Google is seriously penalizing the pagerank of translations on this site, because it sees Chinese content alongside the English and mistakenly thinks that the page is in Chinese. By loading the Chinese articles via Javascript, I hope to trick Google into being less stupid.

32 Candidates Compete to Head China Unicom Provincial Branches

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 17:21:07 -0600

China Unicom has completed a round of qualification testing for potential managers to head its provincial subsidiaries nationwide, according to an industry insider. While final results of the tests have yet to come in, the telecom giant has reportedly narrowed down to a group of 32 nominees, although it is ...