China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping confirms that it will not shut down online mapping services of companies that have submitted their applications and are currently under examination, which leaves Google and Microsoft in the clear — for now. China introduced the new regulation, requiring a state license in order to operate maps in the country. The bureau had made it clear that it would shut down unqualified websites and those that have failed to apply for a license from July 1....

“In recent weeks, Chinese Internet users have reported difficulty accessing Gmail, causing speculation that the Chinese government is upgrading the infamousGreat Firewall of Chinato step up its efforts to control the flow of information on the web. It’s no secret that China isplanningto tighten its control of the country’s Internet access, but given the government’s unpredictability it’s hard to tell what this means for Gmail. While popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook have been blocked for a long time, LinkedIn was blocked at one stage and then made available again after a day....

Numbers don’t lie: more and more Chinese are disconnecting fixed-line telephones and turning to cell phones for communication, according to statistics released by theMinistry of Industry and Information Technology(MIIT). China Dailyreports that China’s mobile telecommunication operators added 19.83 million new subscribers in the first two months of this year, bringing the number of the country’s cell phone users to 878.83 million. Fixed-line telecommunication companies lost 918,000 users in the same period....

China’s government is coming out with new measures to control the ability of citizens to acquire domains and setup personal sites, and to block hundreds of sites that offer illegal downloads of music, films, and video games. In what appears to be another upgrade of the government’salready strict control of the Internet, Chinese authorities contest that the stricter controls are intended to protect children from pornography, limit piracy, and to make it hard to perpetuate Internet scams....

Two social network clones in China, Zhihu (知乎), a Quora Clone, and DianDian (点点), a Tumblr clone, have both been adopted by Kaifu Lee’s startup incubator,InnovationWorksfor hosting, mentoring, and funding. Chinese blog Techwebreportsthat InnovationWorks is apparently incubating two China clones as well as investing in these firms, though terms have not yet been released. Interestingly,Kai LukoffofTechricedescribes this commonpatternof Chinese Internet companies: “Copy first, innovate later.” True enough, this is evident in other “cloned” social networks such as Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like microblogging service from China, thatsurpassedits original western counterpart’s features by rolling out voicemail “tweets” and direct video uploads....