Regulations for starting an internet cafe in China

Have you ever wanted to start an internet cafe (or internet bar, wangba, as they call it)? Were you put off by all the red-tape — in Chinese? Fear not, here is the complete regulations concerning starting and operating internet cafes in China, translated (and heavily abridged) by me. (I actually did this as part of a project on internet censorship at the Citizenlab).

While I was living in Hangzhou, I started a site called In The Middle, where I would take pictures of informational/propaganda posters, and translate the contents - partly for my own learning experience, partly for everyone’s interest (they are actually quite interesting - both the political ones, and all the others: telling you what to do if you’re son is overweight, etc.).

(The translations at In The Middle should be quite good, although often it is hard to translate what is very idiomatic and “sloganistic” speech. The translation of the internet regulations are more a summary then a word-for-word translation, although I think I got most of the details.)

There are other sites of Chinese propaganda on the net, but most of them feature older and more revolutionary posters, like The Chairman Smiles, Picturing Power and the biggest collection: Stefan Landsberger’s Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages, and they are also more focused on the “revolutionary art“, than the messages.

Stian

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 30th, 2004 at 4:36 and is filed under asia, politics, tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.