According to my local paper, Chinese language instruction is hot:

“I tell you, this Chinese fever is on again,” Wong-Avery said. “Everyone knows it will be one of the most used languages in the world.”

Even China is having trouble keeping up with demand. China says it needs 11,000 more language teachers for foreigners who visit seeking instruction. According to this article, “Last year, a record 110,844 students from 178 countries came to study at universities all over the country, a 43 percent increase from 2003.”

According to Shanghai Daily eBay is dropping its fee for online stores, matching competitor Taobao.com‘s free offering. Says the article:

Now why would eBay China do this?

According to the article, eBay China is hosting just 10,000 cyber stores as of the end of Q3 compared to 1 million hosted by Taobao.com. eBay was missing the mark when it thought that small business owners would shell out US$62/month to host a store when other small business owners weren’t paying a dime.

Could Taobao be doing to eBay in China what Yahoo! did to eBay in Japan? To eBay’s credit, it has registered a few million more individual users than Taobao, so it’s way too early to make any clear predictions. Although this sudden change in business model is not a sign of strength, it is a sign that eBay isn’t going to go without a fight.

According to Business Week, China might soon revise GDP upwards by a whopping 20%. Says the article:

That would make China the world’s fourth-largest economy, suddenly overtaking Italy, France, and Britain. And it would peg the mainland’s output at 18% that of the U.S. and 30% as large as Japan’s, “bringing us several years closer to the day (still a couple of decades out) when China’s GDP overtakes that of Japan and the U.S.,” says Stephen Green, an economist at Standard Chartered in Shanghai.

What makes this increase particularly meaningful is that the service sector is playing a larger role than previously assumed in driving the economy. This means that China isn’t just growing because the rest of the world is throwing money its way. Chinese consumes are actually consuming.

That’s promising news for companies who want to begin selling to the Chinese instead of simply buying from them.

As a sidenote, according to my calculations, there will be more native Chinese speakers online by 2010 than native English speakers. a

This is a great Wall Street Journal article on China’s culture and how it relates to technology — primarily voice mail.

An excerpt:

Many Chinese who have worked for inefficient, state-owned companies may not comprehend the idea of being obligated to return phone calls or to respond to customers. Plus, Chinese workers are away from their desks most of the day, conducting meetings in the traditional, face-to-face Asian style, Mr. Wang says. They don’t expect anyone to be around to answer their office phone and check messages. That is one reason cellphone-based text messaging, which is cheaper than installing a complex office voice-mail system, is popular.

Nor do many Chinese expect to leave messages. Duncan Clark, a telecommunications consultant in Beijing, has voice mail in his office but says many people seem mystified when they call and hear his recorded message. Callers often say, “Wei? Wei?” — the traditional Chinese phone greeting roughly meaning, “Hello? Hello?” — over and over, believing they are speaking to a real person. Others consider it a loss of “face,” or dignity, to leave a message with someone of lower corporate rank. “It’s basically a cultural gap,” says Mr. Clark, a Westerner who speaks fluent Mandarin.

Speaking of cell phones, according to News.com there are 3.6 cell phones for every PC in China, compared with a ratio is 0.9 cell phones for every PC in the US.