1.In early 2011, the activity of “cracking down on abduction via micro-blog” was launched, and the action of “taking photos of and coming to the rescue of child beggars along your way” on the micro-blog attracted nation-wide attention and formed a powerful vehicle for the communication of public opinions. The event of “train crash accident” occurring on the railway between Yongjia Station and Wenzhou South Station on July 23 spread rapidly on micro-blog and caused heated debate. On December 16, Several Provisions of Beijing Municipality on the Administration of the Development of Micro-blog was promulgated, which provides that all organizations and individuals shall register micro-blog accounts with authentic identity information. Subsequently, the same measures were adopted by Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Tianjin, and etc. Many events have revealed that micro-blog has become a crucial platform for pubic opinions. According to the data of CNNIC, the number of micro-blog users in China reached 250 million in 2011, indicating a 296.0% increase compared with the previous year.

2.Since March 2011, such applications as Baidu Library and Baidu MP3 were accused of copyright infringement by representatives of writers, publishers and the music industry as well as China Audio-video Association in succession. In December, dispute over copyright arose between Tudou.com and Youku.com. On December 16, the Opinions on Several Issues concerning Giving Full Play to the Adjudicatory Function Related to Intellectual Property Right for the Promotion of Vigorous Development and Prosperity of Socialist Culture and Independent and Coordinated Economic Development was issued by the Supreme People’s Court, which further specified the rules for the determination of copyright infringement under the context of internet.

3.On April 12, 2011, Baidu application platform was fully opened to the public officially; on June 15, Tencent announced the launch of eight platforms; on July 28, Sina micro-blog open platform was officially put online; on September 19, Tmall under Alibaba announced open platform strategies. In 2011, large enterprises in the internet industry in China made announcement of open platform strategies one after another, which has changed the original industry operation mode and competition structure among enterprises, and a trend towards competition-cooperation is formed.

4.In May 2011, the State Internet Information Office was officially established with the aim of further strengthening the construction, development and management of internet, improving the level of administration of fictitious network society, and reflecting the great attention attached to the internet by authorities at the state level.

5.On May 18, 2011, the People’s Bank of China issued the first 27 third party payment licenses (the “Payment Service Provider License”).

6.On October 5, 2011, China.com submitted an application for bankruptcy to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Atlanta. It was listed in NASDAQ in 1999 as the first Chinese company in the internet industry that got listed in the U.S., and also became the first of its kind that applied for bankruptcy.

7.In November 2011, the National Development and Reform Commission carried out an anti-monopoly investigation over China Telecom and China Unicom with respect to broadband access, which is the first anti-monopoly investigation initiated against network operators since the implementation of the Anti-monopoly Law of the People’s Republic of China.

8.On December 21, 2011, the database information of 6 million users in the CSDN of the developers’ technology community was made public by hackers. Later, it was confirmed by Tianya.cn that part of its user data was disclosed, which raised great concern among internet users on the internet and information security.

9.On December 23, 2011, Wen Jiabao, Premier of the State Council, chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of the State Council, which set forth the route map and main targets for the development of the next-generation internet in China: by the end of 2013, small-scale commissioning of IPv6 network for commercial purposes shall be carried out, and mature business model and technology evolution route shall be formed; between 2014 and 2015, large-scale deployment and commercial use of IPv6 shall be conducted, and general intercommunication between IPv4 and IPv6 shall be realized.

10.As is shown by the data of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), by the end of 2011, there were 356 million mobile internet users in China. According to the data of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of the end of 2011, there were 128 million 3G users in China, representing a net annual increase of 81,370,000, and a total of 814,000 3G base stations. In addition, the construction of broadband wireless application technologies (WLAN) has been speeded up by the three major telecom operators. Up to the end of 2011, there were over 3 million Wireless Access Points (Wireless APs) deployed throughout China. The widespread coverage and application of 3G and WiFi have driven China’s mobile internet into a stage of rapid development.

11.According to the 29th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), by the end of December 2011, the number of internet users in China exceeded 500 million and reached 513 million; the number of IPv4 addresses reached 330 million, and that of IPv6 addresses reached 9398/32s, representing a substantial increase from 401/32s at the end of 2010; there were a total of 7,750,000 domain names, including 3,530,000 .CN domain names; the number of websites reached 2,300,000, and the international export bandwidth reached 1,389,529Mbps.

 

About the Chronicle of Events of China’s Internet Development

In order to make a full and accurate record of the course of internet development in China, CNNIC compiled and released for the first time in 1999 the Internet Timeline of China, which was later widely quoted by government authorities, research institutes, industry insiders and news media, and translated into many languages, and has become a precious resource for the study of the early development of internet in China. For continuous recording for the Chronicle of Events, CNNIC will make amendments and supplements thereto annually in the future.

Events recorded in the Internet Timeline of China are those having extensive and far-reaching impacts on various industries and even the entire society during the course of internet development in China. The compilation of the Internet Timeline of China is a work that requires efforts not only from CNNIC, but also the whole society. As it is also a process of progressive amendment and improvement, CNNIC sincerely hopes that readers and experts from all walks of life could provide comments and suggestions with respect to our Internet Timeline of China, so that we could make timely amendment and supplement thereto. Comments and suggestions may be sent to: internet@cnnic.cn.

Declaration: the copyright to the Internet Timeline of China is vested in China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). Please indicate the source for any reproduction, quote or publication thereof by any organization or individual.