Where do the World's Billionaires live?

Where do the World's Billionaires live? Check the following hometowns map of billionaires.













Data from Forbes.com

China rockin' to "Super Girl"

Hunan: From red state to 'supergirl'

For nearly three hours, Chinese stopped — and voted. No, it wasn't a political revolution, but a mass thumbs up to a 21-year-old from Sichuan who belts out the song "Zombie" from the Irish rock band Cranberries as part of her act.

Zhou Bichang, left, Li Yuchun and Zhang Liangying performed last week during the finals of the "Super Girl" singing contest in China's Hunan province. Li won the "American Idol"-style contest, with 400 million television viewers watching the grand finale.

China's "Super Girl" is an "American Idol"-style TV show whose grand finale of dancing and singing drew 400 million viewers here Friday night, more than the combined populations of the United States and Britain.

In China, "Super Girl" created a stir from bamboo-forest villages to the crab shacks of Shanghai and is seen as a new phenomenon. Nothing this large and spontaneous has ever pushed its way unapproved into China's mainstream media before.

Some 8 million, mostly younger, Chinese paid the equivalent of 2 cents to send a "text message of support" (the word "vote" is avoided) via cellphone for one of the three Super Girl finalists.

Li Yuchun, a music student whose tomboy looks and confidence onstage are the talk of Chinese chat rooms, won with 3.5 million votes. The three finalists, all in their early 20s, became instant celebrities in a nation that really hasn't made much room for the pop-star concept, except when they come from Hong Kong or Taiwan.

"Super Girl" owes its popularity to its authenticity, to indirectly giving voice to individual Chinese through a vote, and to its unscripted creation of a happy feeling, said a dozen young Chinese interviewed in Beijing Friday.

The program did not, for example, emerge from the Beijing studios of official Chinese programming, but from a provincial station in the gritty heartland of Hunan that has a satellite uplink.

The contest is officially the "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest." Any female, young or old, talented or not, can participate — not just the beauty-queen types from central casting.

Some 120,000 girls and women took part in the past year, in a sudden and unexpected burst of enthusiasm that has Beijing authorities slightly worried about the precedent it may set for more unregulated forms of pop culture.

"This is totally new to Chinese people," says Wei Feng, a student from the Beijing Foreign Language Institute. "The whole thing is about singing whatever you want, and millions of young girls in those provinces have never had that chance before."

In fact, the two top scorers Friday were "girl next door" types, with the more feminine Zhang Liangying, who sang, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," coming in a distant third.

Super Girl Li has a small army of young supporters who see her as a role model.

"[Super Girl] represents a victory of the grass-roots over the elite culture," argues Beijing sociologist Li Yinhe.

"It is vulgar and manipulative," intoned an official statement from China Central TV (CCTV), the national state-run broadcaster, which added that the program was not high-toned enough, due to the gaudy clothing worn by contestants, and that the show could be canceled next season due to its "worldliness."

Technically, CCTV officials can shut down "Super Girl," since they hold a monopoly position on broadcast decisions. Many ordinary Chinese say it won't be worldliness that prompts any shutdown, but the fact that CCTV's advertising revenue Friday night was lower than that of its modest Hunan competitor.

A pilot of an official version of "Super Girl" produced by CCTV reportedly failed.

"Most Chinese TV is formulaic," says Luo, a young Beijing University graduate, who would only give his first name. "We can figure out after 15 minutes what will happen, but on "Super Girl" we can't predict what they will say."

Update: Supergirl 2006 show is undergoing.

China Expected To Award 3G License In 1Q 2007

The Chinese Government will start awarding third-generation wireless licenses in the first quarter next year, following the completion of 3G trials ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China Netcom Chief Executive Zuo Xunsheng said Wednesday.

Many telecommunications industry executives and analysts had expected 3G licenses to be issued in China by now, but the issuance has been delayed until the homegrown transmission standard, TD-SCDMA, could be used alongside technologies from Europe and the USA.

China Netcom, which is the listed arm of China's second largest fixed line operator by subscribers; dominant mobile operator China Mobile; and, the country's biggest fixed-line operator, China Telecom, are participating in a TD-SCDMA trial.

"It will be too late if we don't see the first license by then," said China Netcom's Zuo Xunsheng, referring to the Chinese government's aim to see the launch of 3G service before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Zuo said the TD-SCDMA trial is taking longer than expected with unresolved problems such as compatibility with other 3G standards in international roaming services.

"The trial was expected to be finished in July this year, but I think the deadline has been moved to December instead," he said.

Zuo said 3G related investment, including a nation wide network, will cost an expected CNY80 billion to CNY100 billion.

"The investment will be made in about three years, which translates to around CNY20 billion a year," said Zuo, who didn't specify which 3G Standard his estimation was based on.

"There should not be any problem with our cash flow," said Zuo, adding the Hong Kong listed company had a free cash flow of more than CNY7 billion in the first half this year.

The company issued CNY10 billion commercial paper in July.

"We want the 3G network to be built by the Hong Kong-listed company, but in the worst scenario, the mainland parent (China Network Communications Group Corp.) will build the network and let the Hong Kong-listed company operate the service," said Zuo.

Zuo wouldn't comment on how many licenses, nor which standard, he expected would be awarded in the first quarter next year.

Netcom's mainland parent China Network Communications Group Corp. is also the second largest shareholder of Hong Kong dominant fixed-line operator PCCW with its 20% stake in the company

Macquarie Bank and US private equity firm TPG-Newbridge were vying to buy PCCW's assets, but faced opposition from China Network Communications Group, which says it wants PCCW to remain controlled by Hong Kong people.

PCCW chairman Richard Li last month sold the control of PCCW to banker Francis Leung for HK$9.2 million, which put an end to the talks with the two foreign suitors.

However, the Financial Times reported on its Web site Monday that Macquarie Bank is considering joining the consortium being put together by Francis Leung to buy PCCW.

Macquarie denied the report on Tuesday, but added it is still interested in discussions to buy PCCW assets.

Zuo said China Netcom won't oppose to foreign investor's interest in PCCW, as long as the control is in Hong Kong people hand.

"A more diversified funding (for PCCW) isn't a bad thing," said Zuo.

Market Size and Forecast of China Online Friends

According to the survey of iResearch, the China online friends-making market develops very rapidly and the market size reached 127 million RMB at the end of 2004 among which the market size of general friends-making is 90 million RMB, online dating is 37 million and there is no income of business friends-making market. iResearch expects that with the rapid development and maturity of Internet users, the market size of online friends-making will continue to grow and it will reach 991 million RMB in 2008 among which the market size of online dating will reach 653 million RMB, general friends-making will reach 320 million RMB and online business friends-making will reach 16.2 million RMB. The average growth rate of the whole online friends-making market is 71.7%.

Internet becomes a "matchmaker" for young Chinese

Zheng Yang, a 25-year-old architectural designer, spends at least five hours a day surfing on the Internet, but not just for work or sending e-mails to friends.

To Zheng, the most important thing is that he can conduct on- line talks with his girlfriend, a primary school teacher in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, south China.

A shy young man, but Zheng is active in the virtual world. Besides his girlfriend, he has many on-line good friends.

"It's not a rare thing for a netizen to have on-line friends of the opposite sex and even to find a girlfriend or boyfriend," said Li Zhenlin, a graduate student of a Beijing-based university. " Many of my classmates and friends have had such an experience."

Li and his girlfriend surnamed Wang, first met on the Internet, and on-line discussions facilitated and became the starting point of their love story.
Currently, "Net-love" is no longer a strange word to many young Chinese, and on-line recreational activities have sprung up.

Statistics available show that the number of netizens in China reached 79.5 million by the end of last year, and 32.2 percent of them said the purpose of surfing on the Internet was to have fun and make friends.

For this reason, famous Chinese websites such as Sina.com and Netease.com have launched special columns titled "Super men and women" to attract Internet surfers.

www.zj.com, the largest regional website in China, has opened a "UU Club" for 6 million local netizens in east China's Zhejiang Province.

With the catchword "Making Local Friends", the club was designed in the hope of becoming the biggest and the safest platform for Zhejiang's netizens to make on-line friends, sources with the website said.

Influenced by time-honored tradition, many senior Chinese citizens do not quite agree with young people's pursuit of on-line friends, especially a girlfriend or a boyfriend.

"My mother doesn't approve of my way of pursuing a girlfriend on the Internet," said Zheng Yang, the young architectural designer in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province.

Zheng said his mother hoped he could find his girlfriend in real life but not on the Internet, as she believed that on-line friends were not trustworthy.

For much of Chinese history, marriages between young men and women were decided by the will of their parents and the words of a matchmaker. Young couples often had not even met before they got married.

Young Chinese were able to choose partners freely after the founding of New China in 1949. Some become lovers on their own, but some were introduced to each other by relatives and friends due to various reasons, such as limited social circles, or being too timid and shy.

It has become an irrefutable fact that young people welcome the new method of making friends, said a manager of a local net company in Zhejiang Province. "It's time to think more about how to help young people enjoy themselves on the Internet."