Several PC makers said yesterday they were voluntarily including China’s controversial Internet filter software in new shipments despite Beijing’s decision to postpone making it mandatory.
The government had been set to introduce the Chinese-made filtering program — called “Green Dam Youth Escort” — but announced the delay hours before its implementation on Wednesday.
However, customer service staff at PC manufacturers, including Taiwan’s Acer Inc (宏碁) and China’s Haier Group (海爾), said they were installing or packaging the software with new PCs.
They added that it was easy to uninstall.
“You will find it with our PCs, as the state has requested. But ... you can easily find a patch on the Internet to uninstall it,” one of Acer’s service staff told reporters on the phone, asking not to be named.
Beijing has said the software was aimed at filtering out pornography, but computer experts found it was also programmed to suppress politically sensitive material, prompting criticism at home and abroad.
Lenovo (聯想), China’s biggest computer maker, did not immediately reply to questions on the Green Dam software, but the official English-language China Daily newspaper said it was included on the firm’s PCs.
A Tokyo-based Sony spokeswoman told reporters the program is on its China-made computers to “click on and install” if the customers wanted it.
“We have distributed it with our personal computers as a set-up file in the hard drive software,” she said.
“The users can choose whether to activate the software or not. So it’s up to the customers to choose whether to install it or not, but it’s already on the hard disk,” the Sony spokeswoman said.
She declined to speculate on how much longer Sony would keep installing the software, saying: “We cannot really comment on the future.”
An official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which licensed the technology from two local software developers, told the newspaper on Thursday that the directive’s delay was only temporary.
“The government will definitely carry on the directive on Green Dam. It’s just a matter of time,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.
Some other PC makers said they are still discussing with the government and are not installing the software without Beijing’s final word.
US personal computer giant Dell said in a statement: “We continue our discussions with the Chinese government and are not shipping Green Dam software.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last