The Blog Revolution According to China's biggest blogging service provider blogcn.com, the number of users has soared from 10,000 in June of 2005 to more than 500,000 now. A couple of years ago technology writer Fang Xingdong at his site blogchina.com coined the Chinese term boke(博客) to mean blogger. He encouraged his readers to try blogging by registering on blogger, com. 'Blogging is a true revolution,' he wrote. 'One needs zero technology training, zero institution and zero cost to become a blogger.' The number of Chinese online has quintupled over the past four years. 'China is already the largest mobile communications subscriber market in the world,' reports the Internet Herald Tribune, 'with more than 320 million subscribers.' Internet users, who numbered fewer than 17 million in 2000, are now estimated to be somewhere near 90 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre, the government's clearinghouse for Internet statistics. China is second only to the United States in the number of people online. How Did Blog Land in China? The rise of the blog phenomenon was made possible by blog-hosting services. Just as companies like Yahoo host email accounts, sites like blogger, com, based in the United States, host blogs. Blogs usually allow room for readers' comments, and because they often contain numerous links to other blogs and websites, they each act as a unit in a dynamic community. Together they form. an interconnected whole—the 'blogosphere'. In August 2002, Isaac Mao, who worked at the Shanghai office of the chip maker Intel, was one of the earliest people in China who had heard the word 'blog'. A regular web surfer, he was fascinated by the freedom these online journals gave to ordinary people to publish both their own and their readers' views online. Surfing the US website blogger.com, Mao was excited to find Zheng Yunsheng, a teacher at a technical school in Fujian Province. He left a message on Zheng's blog, and two weeks later Mao and Zheng started CNBlog.org. China's first online discussion forum about blogging technology and culture was thus established. They soon gathered a small but devoted group of participants, many of whom went on to develop the technology that makes blogging possible for China's half-a-million bloggers. How Has Blog Changed Cyber Citizen's Life? When Mao and Zheng started CNBlog.org, China had 67 million Intemet users. Today, it has more than 90 million, and most are hungry for information. The official China Internet Network Information Centre in Beijing says 62% of Internet users go online primarily to read news. Internet cafes are spreading rapidly throughout China, even in rural areas, largely thanks to official efforts to promote technology and improve the country's economic competitiveness. Technology writer Fang Xingdong in Beijing, who made his name with a book-criticising Microsoft's business in China, started a news and commentary website, BlogChina.com, which covers the development of China's IT industry. Why Is Blog So Different from Other Sorts of Website? Blogs do two things that other websites simply cannot. Zero cost is the first attractive characteristic. Fang coined the Chinese term boke to mean blogger. He encouraged his readers to try blogging by registering on blogger, com. 'Blogging is a true revolution,' he wrote. 'One needs zero technology training, zero institution and zero cost to become a blogger.' Secondly, blogs are personal. Almost all of them are imbued with the temper of their writer. This personal touch is much more in accordance with our current sensibility than were old magazines and newspapers. Readers increasingly doubt the authority of The Washington Post or National Review, despite their seemingly important titles and large' staffs. They know that behind the curtain are fallible writers