Baidu.com Inc (百度), China's most-used Internet search site, has introduced an online encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia that excludes information censored by the Chinese government.
Baidu aims to use the Baidupedia service, started last month, to attract users to its Web site and may later sell advertising alongside the content, Cynthia He, a spokeswoman, said in Beijing, where the company is based.
The introduction of the Baidu encyclopedia service comes after access to San Diego-based Wikipedia was blocked in China because it carried content critical of the government. Baidupedia, which like Wikipedia offers information written by its users, will censor material submitted for posting. Google Inc, the world's biggest search engine and Baidu's main competitor, introduced China sites in January.
``We are following the same laws that the entire Chinese Internet is held to,'' He said.
China controls content disseminated via the mass media through state-ownership of all newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations.
China censors online content using the world's most "sophisticated" Internet filtering system, according to a joint study by the University of Toronto, Cambridge University, Oxford University and Harvard Law School.
Web sites banned in China include those of the British Broadcasting Corp and human rights group Amnesty International.
The Chinese-language version of Wikipedia has been blocked in China since late last year, the Financial Times reported yesterday, without citing a source.
Google's Chinese-language search site Google.cn excludes links to content such as pictures of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, which were put down by the government.
Baidu.com had a 56.6 percent share of a Chinese search market at the end of last year, according to Shanghai-based research company IResearch Inc. Google had a 32.8 percent of the market and Yahoo! Inc. had a 5 percent share. Mountain View, California-based Google owns about a 2 percent stake in Baidu.
People can preregister to receive their NT$10,000 (US$325) cash distributed from the central government on Nov. 5 after President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday signed the Special Budget for Strengthening Economic, Social and National Security Resilience, the Executive Yuan told a news conference last night. The special budget, passed by the Legislative Yuan on Friday last week with a cash handout budget of NT$236 billion, was officially submitted to the Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon. People can register through the official Web site at https://10000.gov.tw to have the funds deposited into their bank accounts, withdraw the funds at automated teller
PEACE AND STABILITY: Maintaining the cross-strait ‘status quo’ has long been the government’s position, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan is committed to maintaining the cross-strait “status quo” and seeks no escalation of tensions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, rebutting a Time magazine opinion piece that described President William Lai (賴清德) as a “reckless leader.” The article, titled “The US Must Beware of Taiwan’s Reckless Leader,” was written by Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank. Goldstein wrote that Taiwan is “the world’s most dangerous flashpoint” amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that the situation in the Taiwan Strait has become less stable
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FRESH LOOK: A committee would gather expert and public input on the themes and visual motifs that would appear on the notes, the central bank governor said The central bank has launched a comprehensive redesign of New Taiwan dollar banknotes to enhance anti-counterfeiting measures, improve accessibility and align the bills with global sustainability standards, Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee yesterday. The overhaul would affect all five denominations — NT$100, NT$200, NT$500, NT$1,000 and NT$2,000 notes — but not coins, Yang said. It would be the first major update to the banknotes in 24 years, as the current series, introduced in 2001, has remained in circulation amid rapid advances in printing technology and security standards. “Updating the notes is essential to safeguard the integrity
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