After publishing last post I wanted to touch a bit more on the people that makeup Beijing. First of all, the students - there is certainly no lack of them in this city. Wherever they come from remote provinces (and the majority of them do) or from Beijing itself, they all learn to spend much time on internet. They get on a school’s BBS forums and don’t even consider looking for eBays of our world. Why? Because no matter what they are posting, an item for sale or a love letter, they are looking to express themselves – and doing it on local closed forums makes sense. Sure they go and use big sites like Baidu, Sohu, and perhaps even some social networking sites; but if you ask them wherever they would prefer to be part of some web1.5 school version of their bbs or a fully featured web2.0 social networking site – guess what the answer will be?

What’s even more interesting is that these college students represent a connection between the very remote and the new metropolitan China. They come from somewhat better-off families with very little access to new media. And as things go in China, what does a graduate with computer science degree does after graduation – he goes and supports his family informing them of all the “new”.

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Filed under: China Market