The realities of the Chinese Internet
Actually, the writing of this opus led me to an abundance of comments (often incorrect and have nothing to do with reality) about the Chinese Internet, the Golden Shield, the Chinese IT infrastructure, etc. In this article, I, as living here for quite a long time, will try to give a brief overview of the local main Internet portals, speeds and pings, connection costs, the prevalence of the Internet and related industries (IPTV, Internet banking and their ilk). I hope you will be interested.
Connection, speed and cost
Naturally, there will be no Internet without a physical connection to it. Let's look at how you can connect to the Internet while living in China.
In total, there are three providers in China. Naturally, they are all state. Of course, there are a lot of small firms involved in connecting, configuring, sometimes even posing as providers, but they all use the infrastructure and technologies of the monsters listed below. (Oriental Cable Network), which only works in Shanghai, does not apply to the whole country, 清华大学 网络 (Tsinghua University Network), which houses the Cisco systems research center and a few exceptions. We will not consider them.
')
1) 中国 电信(China Telecom) ;
2) 中国 铁通 (China Railcom, already belongs to 中国 移动（China Mobile） );
3) 中国 网通 (Chinanetcom, already belongs to 中国 联通(China Unicom) ).
In 99% of cases, your connection to the Internet will be carried out using ADSL technology (if you do not live in a student campus, in a dormitory, or something similar). The cost of the Internet in all price lists here is indicated for the year. I did not find a tariff with a speed higher than 8 Mbit / s.
Having found some kind of service company (the advantage of which is that it uses the trunk channels of two or more monsters, in consequence of which the reliability of the Internet grows or by going directly to the office, you can choose a tariff. In Shanghai, as you can see, the 8-megabit channel costs at 80 yuan per month, in Zhangjiang, for example, the fee for a 5-megabit channel is 90 yuan per month. The price range varies by 5-10% depending on the city
mobile connection
The number of mobile operators is the same as the number of wired Internet operators. All the same China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom 、 All three companies are state-owned. The level of service, tariffs and speeds practically do not differ, the only significant difference is in the standards used. Let's look at them in more detail. By the way, not a single operator has prepaid tariff plans; once a month a certain amount will definitely be charged. When you buy a SIM card, a passport almost never requires (or rather, the Chinese do not have passports, but ... In general, they do not need Shenfengzhen either). Exceptions are special tariff plans (student, pension, for the execution of a contract for which a corresponding document is required. In general, their passport system is based on NFC (which is embedded in all second generation shenfenzhenzhen), the lion’s share of all information is stored in it, but this is a topic for a separate post.If there are willing, will issue.
Lyrical digression. In this section, the speech will be used large numbers. It goes without saying that I translate all the digits into our usual manner of numeration (not the system, it is there, like ours, the decimal). But in China itself, the numbers with which they operate increase in the following order. 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000000. 10000 is written with the hieroglyph [wàn] ， 100000000 - with the hieroglyph [yì]. That is, if the Chinese need to say "million", he will say "100 Wans", if "billion" - "10 and"). That is, the population of Russia (143,369,806) is one “and”, 4336 “van” 9806.
中国 移动 （China Mobile） )
The largest mobile and wired carrier in the world. 703 million subscribers. Subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Pakistan. The whole range of telecommunication services is from wired telephone to the mobile Internet. Used standards:
1) 2G - familiar to all GSM and EDGE.
2) 3G - TD-SCDMA. Purely Chinese standard, on which all manufacturers of phones for the domestic market are oriented.
3) 4G - TD-LTE. From the same opera. Well, with so many subscribers, you can lobby your standards.
As you can see, tariff plans start at 58 yuan per month, for which 150 minutes of calls within the country and 30 megabytes of the Internet are provided. For 10 yuan you can buy 150 sms-app for yourself, and for 100 yuan - 2 gigabytes of internet (for example, different packages are available).
中国 联通 （China Unicom） )
Favorite operator Laovaev, due to the fact that he uses all the familiar standard HSPA. This is my choice, so I can tell you more about this operator.
140 million subscribers, the second largest operator in China. Used standards:
1) 2G - familiar to all GSM and EDGE.
2) 3G - again, familiar to all HSDPA up to 21 Mbit / s and HSUPA up to 7.2 Mbit / s
Due to the fact that 90% of China’s population is concentrated in 40% of the territory (these are coastal provinces from Hebei to Hainan), this region is in front of infrastructure in terms of mobile communications, Internet, high-speed trains, airports, highways. the whole planet. Accordingly, 3G connection is everywhere. Standard Speedtest produces 5 Mbit / s in the afternoon, at night up to 15-16 Mbit / s. Pings to intra-Chinese resources do not exceed 20-30 ms. Roaming inside the country is present, but it does not appear in the rates (when roaming in the country, tariffs are higher by 5-10%, I never saved traffic and calls while traveling, and the costs were within the average monthly rate), but in maintenance. For example, a starter pack issued in one province can not be replenished in another through payment terminals or shops. Well, and so on. However, with the level of development of Internet banking, the balance of a mobile phone can be replenished using client-bank on the phone itself. So there is not much difference. There is a personal account in which you can keep track of everything related to your account.
As you can see, there are already more expensive rates. But the Internet is not always worth believing, and in the local stores you can find stray starter packs, prices for which will be several times lower. But it must be sought. And so, for 66 yuan per month you get 50 minutes, 300 megabytes and 240 SMS. My starter pack, dug up in great fortune in an almost abandoned store, includes a gigabyte of traffic per month for 50 yuan (and about 300 minutes and 200 sms per month).
中国 电信 (China Telecom)
And this is the good old CDMA. I can hardly say anything about him, because I practically have never met people using them. 129 million subscribers. Examples of tariffs:
As you can see, for 89 yuan per month we get calls for 1.6 mao (1 yuan = 10 mao) per minute and 100 megabytes of the Internet. For 100 yuan, you can additionally buy 2 GB of Internet.
In general, there is a choice, competition is present, etc. Find something suitable is always possible.
Overseas ping frown
Sometimes they do not reach at all ...
Internet surfing on Chinese resources runs smoothly and without the slightest complication. The average ping is 50-60 ms. But attempts to reach foreign resources often turn into torture. The average ping to Ukrainian, Russian resources is 500-600 ms. Traceroute shows that up to most Runet resources (Vkontakte, Yandex, Habr) traffic goes through Sprint, that is, through America. According to information for 2010, the capacity of China’s Internet backbones to the outside world is 50 Gbit / s, which is extremely small for a country with a 1.3 billion population ... (Source - 知道 - something like Google Questions and Answers ). And in the evenings, attempts to open some external site turn into the agony of the F5 button.
Internet resources
So, what can you do and what can you do in the Chinese segment of the Internet? Since this segment, in comparison with the world, is extremely young, it is quite natural that the Chinesehave stolen borrowed and creatively rethought the ideas of leading world services and brazenly copied and adapted them to fit their needs. So let's get started:
百度 -Baidu
One of the largest portals in China. Like any search engine that has accumulated a huge number of other services. Q & A, Maps, News, Image Search, Documents, etc. Indexes only Chinese and pages written in Latin. He blatantly ignores the Cyrillic alphabet, and when we try to find the Vkontakte website, we see this ranking.
In general, all this is sad. In universities in the linguistic faculties for the study of a particular language, it is necessary to score a certain number of points at the final exams. The required number of points depends on the importance of the language for China and the relevance of translators. The highest scores are required for English and Japanese (the main international language and one of the main trading partners). On the specialty "Russian language" the passing score is the smallest, well, that even though it is not zero ...
QQ
QQ is the undisputed leader of the instant messenger segment. Something in between ICQ, Skype and Jabber. It also includes the social network QQ 空间 , mail QQ 邮箱 , many online toys that are tightly integrated with the messenger. Standard features - chat, group chat, audio-video calls, sending files. There are clients for all popular platforms (iOS, Android, Linux, MacOS)
新浪 微 博 - Sina Weibo
Analogue Twitter. There is nothing to describe. Notes up to 140 characters, hashtags, followers, verified accounts of stars. Everything is as usual.
支付 宝 - Alipay
The main, and in fact, the only system of Internet payments in mainland China. Naturally, there are no currencies other than the yuan (it is generally prohibited to exchange yuan for foreign currency and issue international payment cards without a written notice confirming what you want to spend this money on and where. If the girl goes to America using the Work & Travel program, then on the basis of confirmation the receiving party, directions from the organization in China, they draw up a payment card and exchange a certain amount for US dollars.
Here it is impossible not to mention the Chinese Internet banking. This is something specific.
Since 99% of payment cards in the hands of the Chinese are 银联 卡 ( UnionPay ), this causes the specifics of payments on the Internet. Payment by card number is only possible if it is a credit card (信用卡）. I have the same debit card (savings account as the majority of Chinese) - 龙 通 卡 （储蓄 卡）. Therefore, payments on the Internet are possible only through online banking - like Privat24, etc. That is, the payment system (Alipay) gives you the amount, transfers it to the bank website, you log in, confirm all this with your password and USB key password (or via SMS) and voila.
Only in China, your iTunes account must be replenished by the required amount. You can also tie a card, but for this you need to have it. What is it for a Chinese to get an international payment card - see above.
淘宝网 （Taobao)
In the submission, I think, does not need. Part of a huge holding 阿里巴巴 (Alibaba), which includes the well-known Aliexpress and a bunch of small sites. Prices, compared with Aliexpress or Dealextreme, are 30-40 percent lower. Taobao is not just an online auction, it is a huge system combined with Alipay, where you can buy everything from socks to cars and yachts. Percent 90% of my clothes, equipment, etc. bought there.
And so on…
金盾 工程 Golden Shield
Great Chinese firewall. To its creation here approached with all responsibility. If by the time of launch in 2003 there were a little more than a lot of holes in it, now it is almost an impenetrable barrier. All packets with specific words in their headers are blocked. Certain domains containing certain words are blocked. I am not a professional, I am only learning, but of all that I have tried, nothing works. I tried everything - proxy server, VPN, Tor ， i2p, free and paid anonymizers, etc. etc. The only thing that somehow works is anonymizers. But it’s not for me to enter my usernames and passwords on an incomprehensible website. Tightly blocked (including their frames) Youtube, Twitter, Facebook. Porn resources do not work. Separate Wikipedia pages are blocked. Coupled with the fact that providers in the country once or twice, this creates an insurmountable barrier for Chinese people eager for knowledge and makes it easy to control the seemingly uncontrolled Internet. The same applies to international payment cards. For internal 银联-cards on the Internet, you can only pay for Alipay (Tenpay), which is easily controlled. When using international cards, processing can be from any bank, including from an international one, whence information about who bought what and where and where you didn’t get it right away. So get international. Payment card (as I wrote) for an ordinary Chinese is 99% impossible. True, anyone can go to Hong Kong or Macau, download everything they need (issue Visa Instant), and come back.
IPTV
All internet providers provide this service. In the remote village 大有, in which 900 people, and in which I lived for two weeks, it is present. Price, depending on the number of channels - from 20 to 40 yuan per month. Everything is standard, as you can see in the picture - movies, channel broadcasting, karaoke, news, games, etc.
PS 1 yuan RMB = 16 cents = 4.95 rubles.
Thank you for your attention, and special thanks to tavel for an invite. I hope you enjoy it, and in the future I will again delight you with reviews of local IT realities (information about which I have accumulated - more than enough).
Connection, speed and cost
Naturally, there will be no Internet without a physical connection to it. Let's look at how you can connect to the Internet while living in China.
In total, there are three providers in China. Naturally, they are all state. Of course, there are a lot of small firms involved in connecting, configuring, sometimes even posing as providers, but they all use the infrastructure and technologies of the monsters listed below. (Oriental Cable Network), which only works in Shanghai, does not apply to the whole country, 清华大学 网络 (Tsinghua University Network), which houses the Cisco systems research center and a few exceptions. We will not consider them.
')
1) 中国 电信(China Telecom) ;
2) 中国 铁通 (China Railcom, already belongs to 中国 移动（China Mobile） );
3) 中国 网通 (Chinanetcom, already belongs to 中国 联通(China Unicom) ).
In 99% of cases, your connection to the Internet will be carried out using ADSL technology (if you do not live in a student campus, in a dormitory, or something similar). The cost of the Internet in all price lists here is indicated for the year. I did not find a tariff with a speed higher than 8 Mbit / s.
Having found some kind of service company (the advantage of which is that it uses the trunk channels of two or more monsters, in consequence of which the reliability of the Internet grows or by going directly to the office, you can choose a tariff. In Shanghai, as you can see, the 8-megabit channel costs at 80 yuan per month, in Zhangjiang, for example, the fee for a 5-megabit channel is 90 yuan per month. The price range varies by 5-10% depending on the city
mobile connection
The number of mobile operators is the same as the number of wired Internet operators. All the same China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom 、 All three companies are state-owned. The level of service, tariffs and speeds practically do not differ, the only significant difference is in the standards used. Let's look at them in more detail. By the way, not a single operator has prepaid tariff plans; once a month a certain amount will definitely be charged. When you buy a SIM card, a passport almost never requires (or rather, the Chinese do not have passports, but ... In general, they do not need Shenfengzhen either). Exceptions are special tariff plans (student, pension, for the execution of a contract for which a corresponding document is required. In general, their passport system is based on NFC (which is embedded in all second generation shenfenzhenzhen), the lion’s share of all information is stored in it, but this is a topic for a separate post.If there are willing, will issue.
Lyrical digression. In this section, the speech will be used large numbers. It goes without saying that I translate all the digits into our usual manner of numeration (not the system, it is there, like ours, the decimal). But in China itself, the numbers with which they operate increase in the following order. 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000000. 10000 is written with the hieroglyph [wàn] ， 100000000 - with the hieroglyph [yì]. That is, if the Chinese need to say "million", he will say "100 Wans", if "billion" - "10 and"). That is, the population of Russia (143,369,806) is one “and”, 4336 “van” 9806.
中国 移动 （China Mobile） )
The largest mobile and wired carrier in the world. 703 million subscribers. Subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Pakistan. The whole range of telecommunication services is from wired telephone to the mobile Internet. Used standards:
1) 2G - familiar to all GSM and EDGE.
2) 3G - TD-SCDMA. Purely Chinese standard, on which all manufacturers of phones for the domestic market are oriented.
3) 4G - TD-LTE. From the same opera. Well, with so many subscribers, you can lobby your standards.
As you can see, tariff plans start at 58 yuan per month, for which 150 minutes of calls within the country and 30 megabytes of the Internet are provided. For 10 yuan you can buy 150 sms-app for yourself, and for 100 yuan - 2 gigabytes of internet (for example, different packages are available).
中国 联通 （China Unicom） )
Favorite operator Laovaev, due to the fact that he uses all the familiar standard HSPA. This is my choice, so I can tell you more about this operator.
140 million subscribers, the second largest operator in China. Used standards:
1) 2G - familiar to all GSM and EDGE.
2) 3G - again, familiar to all HSDPA up to 21 Mbit / s and HSUPA up to 7.2 Mbit / s
Due to the fact that 90% of China’s population is concentrated in 40% of the territory (these are coastal provinces from Hebei to Hainan), this region is in front of infrastructure in terms of mobile communications, Internet, high-speed trains, airports, highways. the whole planet. Accordingly, 3G connection is everywhere. Standard Speedtest produces 5 Mbit / s in the afternoon, at night up to 15-16 Mbit / s. Pings to intra-Chinese resources do not exceed 20-30 ms. Roaming inside the country is present, but it does not appear in the rates (when roaming in the country, tariffs are higher by 5-10%, I never saved traffic and calls while traveling, and the costs were within the average monthly rate), but in maintenance. For example, a starter pack issued in one province can not be replenished in another through payment terminals or shops. Well, and so on. However, with the level of development of Internet banking, the balance of a mobile phone can be replenished using client-bank on the phone itself. So there is not much difference. There is a personal account in which you can keep track of everything related to your account.
As you can see, there are already more expensive rates. But the Internet is not always worth believing, and in the local stores you can find stray starter packs, prices for which will be several times lower. But it must be sought. And so, for 66 yuan per month you get 50 minutes, 300 megabytes and 240 SMS. My starter pack, dug up in great fortune in an almost abandoned store, includes a gigabyte of traffic per month for 50 yuan (and about 300 minutes and 200 sms per month).
中国 电信 (China Telecom)
And this is the good old CDMA. I can hardly say anything about him, because I practically have never met people using them. 129 million subscribers. Examples of tariffs:
As you can see, for 89 yuan per month we get calls for 1.6 mao (1 yuan = 10 mao) per minute and 100 megabytes of the Internet. For 100 yuan, you can additionally buy 2 GB of Internet.
In general, there is a choice, competition is present, etc. Find something suitable is always possible.
Overseas ping frown
Sometimes they do not reach at all ...
Internet surfing on Chinese resources runs smoothly and without the slightest complication. The average ping is 50-60 ms. But attempts to reach foreign resources often turn into torture. The average ping to Ukrainian, Russian resources is 500-600 ms. Traceroute shows that up to most Runet resources (Vkontakte, Yandex, Habr) traffic goes through Sprint, that is, through America. According to information for 2010, the capacity of China’s Internet backbones to the outside world is 50 Gbit / s, which is extremely small for a country with a 1.3 billion population ... (Source - 知道 - something like Google Questions and Answers ). And in the evenings, attempts to open some external site turn into the agony of the F5 button.
Internet resources
So, what can you do and what can you do in the Chinese segment of the Internet? Since this segment, in comparison with the world, is extremely young, it is quite natural that the Chinese
百度 -Baidu
One of the largest portals in China. Like any search engine that has accumulated a huge number of other services. Q & A, Maps, News, Image Search, Documents, etc. Indexes only Chinese and pages written in Latin. He blatantly ignores the Cyrillic alphabet, and when we try to find the Vkontakte website, we see this ranking.
In general, all this is sad. In universities in the linguistic faculties for the study of a particular language, it is necessary to score a certain number of points at the final exams. The required number of points depends on the importance of the language for China and the relevance of translators. The highest scores are required for English and Japanese (the main international language and one of the main trading partners). On the specialty "Russian language" the passing score is the smallest, well, that even though it is not zero ...
QQ is the undisputed leader of the instant messenger segment. Something in between ICQ, Skype and Jabber. It also includes the social network QQ 空间 , mail QQ 邮箱 , many online toys that are tightly integrated with the messenger. Standard features - chat, group chat, audio-video calls, sending files. There are clients for all popular platforms (iOS, Android, Linux, MacOS)
新浪 微 博 - Sina Weibo
Analogue Twitter. There is nothing to describe. Notes up to 140 characters, hashtags, followers, verified accounts of stars. Everything is as usual.
支付 宝 - Alipay
The main, and in fact, the only system of Internet payments in mainland China. Naturally, there are no currencies other than the yuan (it is generally prohibited to exchange yuan for foreign currency and issue international payment cards without a written notice confirming what you want to spend this money on and where. If the girl goes to America using the Work & Travel program, then on the basis of confirmation the receiving party, directions from the organization in China, they draw up a payment card and exchange a certain amount for US dollars.
Here it is impossible not to mention the Chinese Internet banking. This is something specific.
Since 99% of payment cards in the hands of the Chinese are 银联 卡 ( UnionPay ), this causes the specifics of payments on the Internet. Payment by card number is only possible if it is a credit card (信用卡）. I have the same debit card (savings account as the majority of Chinese) - 龙 通 卡 （储蓄 卡）. Therefore, payments on the Internet are possible only through online banking - like Privat24, etc. That is, the payment system (Alipay) gives you the amount, transfers it to the bank website, you log in, confirm all this with your password and USB key password (or via SMS) and voila.
Only in China, your iTunes account must be replenished by the required amount. You can also tie a card, but for this you need to have it. What is it for a Chinese to get an international payment card - see above.
淘宝网 （Taobao)
In the submission, I think, does not need. Part of a huge holding 阿里巴巴 (Alibaba), which includes the well-known Aliexpress and a bunch of small sites. Prices, compared with Aliexpress or Dealextreme, are 30-40 percent lower. Taobao is not just an online auction, it is a huge system combined with Alipay, where you can buy everything from socks to cars and yachts. Percent 90% of my clothes, equipment, etc. bought there.
And so on…
金盾 工程 Golden Shield
Great Chinese firewall. To its creation here approached with all responsibility. If by the time of launch in 2003 there were a little more than a lot of holes in it, now it is almost an impenetrable barrier. All packets with specific words in their headers are blocked. Certain domains containing certain words are blocked. I am not a professional, I am only learning, but of all that I have tried, nothing works. I tried everything - proxy server, VPN, Tor ， i2p, free and paid anonymizers, etc. etc. The only thing that somehow works is anonymizers. But it’s not for me to enter my usernames and passwords on an incomprehensible website. Tightly blocked (including their frames) Youtube, Twitter, Facebook. Porn resources do not work. Separate Wikipedia pages are blocked. Coupled with the fact that providers in the country once or twice, this creates an insurmountable barrier for Chinese people eager for knowledge and makes it easy to control the seemingly uncontrolled Internet. The same applies to international payment cards. For internal 银联-cards on the Internet, you can only pay for Alipay (Tenpay), which is easily controlled. When using international cards, processing can be from any bank, including from an international one, whence information about who bought what and where and where you didn’t get it right away. So get international. Payment card (as I wrote) for an ordinary Chinese is 99% impossible. True, anyone can go to Hong Kong or Macau, download everything they need (issue Visa Instant), and come back.
IPTV
All internet providers provide this service. In the remote village 大有, in which 900 people, and in which I lived for two weeks, it is present. Price, depending on the number of channels - from 20 to 40 yuan per month. Everything is standard, as you can see in the picture - movies, channel broadcasting, karaoke, news, games, etc.
PS 1 yuan RMB = 16 cents = 4.95 rubles.
Thank you for your attention, and special thanks to tavel for an invite. I hope you enjoy it, and in the future I will again delight you with reviews of local IT realities (information about which I have accumulated - more than enough).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/172663/
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