January 5
A teleconference was held in Beijing by seven ministries or commissions including State Council Information Office, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Culture, State Administration for Industry and Commence, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and General Administration of Press and Publication of the People's Republic of China with the aim of performing special actions on governance of vulgarity on the internet within the whole country.
2009
Amendment (VII) to the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China that adopted in 2009 added crimes of illegally obtaining computer data, exercising illegal control over the computer information system, and providing programs and tools for illegal hack into and control over the computer information system, and is a major supplement to China's legislative system against cyber crimes.
February 28
Premier Wen Jiabao of the State Council exchanged with net citizens and accepted special visit from both Central People's Government website and Xinhua website before the holding of the 2nd Session of the 11th National People's Congress and the 2nd Session of the 11th National Political Consultative Conference..
May 19
Ministry of Industry and Information issued Notice to Preassembly of Filtering Software for Safe Surfing on the Compute.
June 26
Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Commerce jointly issued notice about Virtual Currency Transaction Management of Network, which regulated that the same enterprise shall not manage the issuing and transaction of virtual currency at the same time and the virtual currency shall not be used to purchase real objects.
August 18
Ministry of Culture issued Notice to Enhancement and Improvement of Web Music Examination, which regulated that the operational units shall report to Ministry of Culture for examination or records of information if they wish to operate on web music products.
August 7
Premier Wen Jiabao of the State Council inspected Wuxi Micro-nano and Sensing Engineering Technology Research and Development Center and put up with the proposal of building China Sensing Information Center ("Sensing China" Center) as soon as possible. On November 3rd, Premier Wen Jiabao delivered a speech titled with Make Technology Lead China in Sustainable Development and instructed that breakthrough shall be made especially on key technologies of sensing network and internet of things.
September 7
The State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform issued State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform's Interpretation of Part of Articles about Comprehensive Law Enforcement on Animation, Web Games and Cultural Market in 'Three Determinations' issued by Ministry of Culture, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and General Administration of Press and Publication , which said, "Ministry of Culture shall be responsible for industry planning, industry base, project construction, exhibition transaction and market supervision relating to animation and web games. State Administration of Radio, Film and Television shall be responsible for management of animation programs in movie animation as well as web audio and video. General Administration of Press and Publication shall be responsible for management of animation in the publication stage and carry out pre-examination on online publication and issuing of publications about games.
November 16
National Work Group for Combating Pornography and Illegal Publications issued Emergency Notice to Strict Attack on Mobile Website Production and Spreading of Obscene and Pornographic Information. In December, nine ministries or commissions including International Communication Office of the CPC, Office of the National Campaign on Anti-prostitution and Anti-delinquency, Ministry of Industry and Information, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Culture, State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council jointly carried out special actions on deep governance of obscene, pornographic and vulgar information on the internet and mobile media within the whole country.
November 3
Then Premier Wen Jiabao gave a speech entitled "Let Science and Technology Lead China's Sustainable Development", encouraging researchers to make breakthroughs in sensor networks and the Internet of Things.
December 25
Beijing Association of Online Media organized a "jury of moms" in an attempt to reinforce public supervision over the Internet, clear the channel for it, and address prominent issues that go against social morals and are harmful to the healthy growth of minors.
December 26
The 12th Session of the 11th National People's Congress, Standing Committee Conference passed, by voting, Tort Law of the People's Republic of China (executed as of July 1st, 2010), which regulated for the first time on network right infringement problems and their disposal principles.
December
At the beginning of December, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television shut down more than 530 BT (BitTorrent) websites including BT China in the clearance and rectification of websites with illegal and violating programs
January 1
Fun.tv officially launched the creative video advertising product --- Fun AdVideo.
January 7
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued three 3G licenses, TD-SCDMA, CDMA2000 and WCDMA to China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, respectively, marking China's formal entry to the 3G era and start to establish world leading 3G networks.
January 11
Jiayuan and the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly hosted a group dating activity for master and doctoral candidates of the latter.
January 13
Capital Today and Bull Capital Partners co-invested USD 21 million in jd , initiating the investment wave in the home appliance B2C sector in China.
January 14
Giant Interactive launched the first angel investment scheme "Win at Giant", the first of its kind in Chinese online game industry.
January 19
Ctrip released the first corporate citizenship report.
January 23
Ctrip spent over RMB 10 million providing the guaranteed refund service.
2009
Yinyuetai was founded, an online music sharing platform for high-definition MVs.
February 11
Qunar formed partnership with cntv , the No.1 news website in China, to make in-depth cooperation in branding and channels and create a win-win interactive marketing mode.
February 11
Gongyi.qq launched the volunteer activity system, an efficient and convenient volunteer recruitment system for pubic-welfare organizations and volunteers with multiple options. On one hand, it lowered the threshold for the general public to participate in public service activities and on the other, helped pubic-welfare organizations recruit volunteers in a fast and convenient way.
February 14
Alimama under Alibaba formed partnership with fanhuan .
February 14
Jiayuan hosted the Valentine's Day event at Beijing Asia Hotel, attracting a historic-high number of participants. On February 14, jiayuan and Hubei TV jointly hosted the 2nd "1+8" group dating activity.
February 1
Sohu launched the "High-Definition Movies & TV Series" channel and obtained the exclusive right to the premiere of over 1,000 movies and TV series.
February 2
Japan.baidu was launched in an attempt to jointly explore the B2C market with Japanese companies.
February 2
Tudou announced the launch of the advertising commission system in Beijing, via which content providers and podcasting service providers could share the advertising revenue with tudou .
February 2
Ctrip launched China's first online flight accident insurance sale platform.
February 5
Lenovo Board of Directors announced changes to the company's management to better execute its long-term global strategy. Liu Chuanzhi and Yang Yuanqing were reappointed as Board Chairman and CEO, respectively.
By March
Zol .cn had attracted 63 million daily visits on average, over seven million registered users, with influence on over eight million IT goods and service purchasers per day. It had become the first-choice website for Chinese IT product buyers.
March 10
Baidu signed the cultural brand publicity & promotion cooperation agreement with Shanxi province in Beijing to open columns dedicated to Shanxi brands and to help develop its cultural industry.
April 13
Vancl launched the so far biggest customer experience upgraded campaign, including policies of "free delivery for all", open-the-box-and-try-it-on, return & exchange for any reason within 30 days of purchase, and delivery within 24 hours, a blockbuster to the industry and warmly welcomed by its customers.
April 18
Tudou and China Film Group jointly hosted the 2009 Tudou Festival Awarding Ceremony in Shanghai, attracting nearly 1,000 participants to the event venue on the Garden Lane.
April 30
Qihoo 360 Security Center joined hands with Shanda Games to put up a reward of RMB 10 million for reporting of plugin and trojan of the game Aion.
April 9
Changyou under Sohu was listed on Nasdaq, the first IPO of Chinese companies on Nasdaq in 2009. The "twin stars" of Sohu boosted the confidence in world economy and its performance was a pride of Chinese people all over the world.
May
UC changed the name of its browser from UCWeb to UC Browser.
May 14
Qihoo 360 Security Center was the first to discover the first security hole with Win7 in the world.
May 17
Youku released the 3G strategy and started the Youku 3G Mobile TV project.
May 18
Vancl launched the third version of its official website, added the feature of user comments and displayed more contents and formats.
May 25
Qihoo 360 Security Center was the first to discover the DirectShow 0day loophole of Microsoft and received public acknowledgement from the latter, the first Chinese PC security service provider receiving the honor.
May 3
Dangdang announced its reach of profitability, making it the first profit-making online shopping company in China with the average gross profit margin of 20%.
June
Tudou and youku started to incorporate their video technology with taobao successively to improve the customer experience and then launch the "video e-commerce application".
July
Qihoo 360 Security Center launched the 360SE (version 3.0), with the isolation mode to protect netizens from plugin and trojan.
July
Beijing Telecom opened its flagship store on youa , an online shopping platform under Baidu, to sell 3G related products.
July
Dangdang launched the business solicitation platform.
July
Suning Appliance signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Baidu to enter the B2C market of home appliances.
July 11
360 Security Center was the first to discover the loophole that Microsoft Office memory would destroy 0day.
July 15
Bai.sohu was open to registration, marking Sohu's entry into the SNS market.
July 22
The State Council Information Office of China and the British Department for Business, Innovation and Skills co-hosted the 2nd China-UK Internet Round Table in Beijing, under the theme of "Respond to Challenges and Share Opportunities", attracting over 110 representatives from Chinese and British government departments, academic institutions, Internet industry organizations and prestigious enterprises.
July 23
E-House (China) Holdings Limited announced to merge its real estate information services with Sina's online real estate services and plan to submit the prospectus to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
July 24
Taobao launched the integrity self-check system, the biggest self check against hype in the C2C history.
July 30
Tudou announced a complete makeover to its front page and 14 vertical channels.
July 30
Post bars for students were all upgraded and adopted the mode of "alumni records".
July 30
Sina launched free .cn email addresses which were said to possess many blockbuster features: the storage capacity of 3G and the ability to receive or send 30M attachment at most each time. They were open to registration via various channels on the same day.
July 4
360 Security Center was the first to discover the 0day loophole with Microsoft MPEG-2 videos that was to explode, pushing Microsoft to release an emergency patch worldwide and protecting personal computers from the loophole.
July 8
Douban shut down the features of group reply, reply to the diary, signature change, group setting change, I say, and message board, and the access to some groups was limited.
August
360 launched 360 Mobile Security (beta 1.0), marking its entry into the mobile security field.
August
Dangdang was granted the 12315 express channel license and opened the 12315 complaint hotline, the first B2C e-commerce company winning the honor in China.
August
The membership of vip exceeded 200,000, placing 500 orders per day on average.
August
The beta version of Sina Weibo was launched, so far the most used weibo product in China.
August 11
Focus .cn was renamed Sohu Focus, aspiring to be China's biggest real estate media company.
August 14
Xiaonei was renamed renren .
August 18
The latest version of suning was put into trial operation and officially launched on February 1, 2010.
August 21
Alibaba Group announced to embed koubei into taobao as part of the grand Taobao strategy.
August 26
The 28th Asia-Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) Open Policy Meeting, undertaken by CNNIC, was held in Beijing, the first APNIC meeting held on Mainland China.
August 6
Tencent launched the monthly donation scheme, a new online charity program aimed at individual donors. It allowed people to make sustainable small-amount donations on the monthly basis to public-service projects and pool the donations via the platform of qq .
September
M.dangdang was upgraded and added the feature of purchase on the mobile phone, the first of its kind in China's B2C sector.
September
Sina acquired zhongle and officially used the domain name for its SNS website, showing the complementary relationship between the domain name, the company and the website and Sina's domain name strategy.
September 4
Li Kaifu resigned from Google China and founded his own venture capital firm. Google appointed Liu Yun as his successor to run the business and operation division.
September 8
The market value of Tencent exceeded USD 30 billion, making it the third biggest Internet company in the world.
September 15
Qihoo 360 Total Security version 6.0 was launched together with the cloud antivirus engine.
September 16
China Online Video Anti-Piracy Alliance was co-founded in Beijing by 110 stakeholders of online video copyright including joy.cn, voole and tv.sohu . This is so far the biggest anti-piracy alliance in the online video industry in China, a move against pirated video websites.
September 25
Shanda Games was listed on Nasdaq in the United States.
September 28
Alibaba announced that it had reached the equity investment agreement with net.cn to spend RMB 540 million in cash purchasing the stocks of the latter in two phases.
September 28
Sina announced a major share deal: its management headed by its CEO Cao Guowei would spend about USD 180 million buying about 5.6 million common shares of the company to become its biggest shareholder. By then, Cao and other members of :Sina's current management would gain the actual control over the company.
2009
From the second half of 2009, sina , sohu , 163 and people .cn started to launch or test their weibo feature successively. Weibo (microblog) attracted users such as social celebrities, pop stars, companies and common people and became one of the hottest Internet applications in 2009.
October 13
Youku cooperated with Nokia and Sony Ericsson, two prestigious mobile phone manufacturers, marking a strategic milestone for its 3G strategy and allowing youku to lead the 3G development in the online video industry.
October 14
Tudou launched the 3G strategy and customized the first video application for Nokia N97 handset.
October 19
Baidu and China Unicom announced to sign the strategic cooperation agreement on the search service.
October 20
The Qihoo 360 Security Center made a high-profile release of the permanently free 360 antivirus software (version 1.0). It's truly free with no time limit or whatever, without any activation code used in paid antivirus software.
October 23
Tudou announced that it became the exclusive operation partner and content provider of the "Original Channel" of Mobile TV, the first of its kind in China.
November
Dianping released its mobile application Android vl.0.
November
Dangdang 's cash-on-delivery service had covered over 800 cities, the widest service scope for an online mall in China.
November 2
The 2009 China Internet Conference, hosted by the Internet Society of China and under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, was open at Beijing International Convention Center, under the theme of "Crisis, Change, and Opportunity --- the Power and Confidence of China's Internet against the Financial Crisis."
November 12
The beta version of Baidu Zhidao, an online document sharing platform, was launched.
November 12
Qunar announced the acquisition of the C-round venture capital investment of USD 15 million in Beijing. The latest investment was led by GGV Capital. Previous investors included Mayfield, GSR Venture and Tenaya Capital.
November 24
China Eastern Airlines Group signed the strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba Group. It would open an official store on taobao to sell flight tickets for all cabins and legs.
November 27
Lenovo purchased all the equities of Lenovo Mobile Communication Technology Co., Ltd. from investors headed by Hony Capital, showing that Lenovo would march into the fast growing mobile Internet market in China.
November 27
Sina announced to raise USD 180 million from private placement.
November 30
Beijing Kingsoft Security Software was founded with Lei Jun as the legal representative.
November 3
Baidu and Qtrax, a music downloading service provider, formed partnership.
November 3
Youku, China Television Production Committee under Chinese Radio and Television Association and the Copyright Union of Internet Society of China jointly established the CEO Joint Meeting for Online Film & Television Development.
November 4
China Mobile launched a more secure version of Fetion and announced that Fetion services would be open to non-China-Mobile subscribers too in two months.
November 9
Tudou , with the market value of USD 500 million, became the only Chinese Internet company among the world's 60 most valuable innovative websites selected by Silicon Alley Insider, a famous science & technology blog.
December
Qunar overtook ctrip and became the world's biggest Chinese online travel website.
December
Sohu and ku6 co-raised an international copyright purchase fund worth of over RMB 10 million and Sohu worked with the Warner Bros. to provide free online on-demand movies for the first time in the world.
December
New breakthrough was made with the online payment system: large-amount payment via the online banking system and payment with credit card were vigorously promoted.
December 1
Baidu started to use the Phoenix Nest Professional, the professional edition of its new Internet search engine advertising program.
December 4
Tudou Video Marketing Awarding Ceremony was hosted in Beijing, attracting the participation of nearly 1,000 audience. Nokia's Internet Millionaire campaign won the award for the year.
December 4
Baidu officially obtained the ownership of the Tieba trademark and the independent domain name tieba was officially put into use.
December 8
Baidu Zhidao Document Sharing was renamed Baidu Wenku (literally "library"), with some functions upgraded.
December 29
Taobao and Hunan TV, the top media & entertainment organization in China under Golden Eagle Broadcasting System, formed strategic partnership in Changsha, a groundbreaking move in the cooperation between traditional TV and e-commerce.
December 30
Tieba launched China's first interactive marketing product Baidu Dengta (literally lighthouse) to help enterprises gather consumers for interactive marketing.
Until December 31st
It is shown according to the statistical data of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the net citizens in China has reached 384 million; the popularity of internet reached 28.9%; net citizens of wide band reached 346 million; users of web shopping reached 108 million and transaction of web shopping market reached 25 million yuan; mobile net citizens reached 233 million, with 120 million added in a year. There are 232 million IPv4 addresses, with 16.82 million domain names. There includes 13.46 million domain names and 3.23 million websites. And International band width has reached 866,367Mbps.
January 6
The first Cultural Festival of China Net Citizens, hosted by China Internet Association, was officially initiated. It covers fields of technology, sports, fashion, culture, animation, etc. concerning internet. At this conference, the date of September 14th was elected to be Net Citizen Festival.
2009
A series of corruption incidents such as "hide-and-seek" (a young man was claimed to die in a hide-and-seek with inmates in the detention center), Deng Yujiao (a female hotel staff who stabbed two town government officials out of self defense at work, causing one death), "Luxury Cigarettes" (a director of district housing management department in Nanjing was found smoking luxury cigarettes and wearing luxury watches after photos of him in a meeting were uploaded to the Internet), and "Entrapment" were exposed on the Internet and attracted extensive attention. The Internet's role as a watchdog was widely recognized.
March
The Luo Caixia identity theft case aroused controversial discussions on tianya.cn and attracted the attention of over 50 media organizations including CCTV and China Youth Daily.
March 10
The Internet Society of China, ifeng , Baidu, Sina, NetEase, Tencent and Sohu jointly established the Internet Credibility Promotion League.
April 24
The 6th Red Journey of Computer-Mediated Media in Beijing was launched in Hunan. Participants explored Shaoshan in Hunan, the hometown of Mao Zedong, and learned the enterprising Shaoshan spirit to change the world.
May 19
The domain name resolution system of baofeng experienced network attack and failure. It caused recursive domain name resolution server of telecommunication enterprises to receive a lot of abnormal request and result in blockage, then services provided for six provinces including Jiangsu, Anhui, Guangxi, Hainan, Gansu and Zhejiang are affected. At 1:20 A.M., May 20th, internet services of the affected regions basically returned to normal.
June 18
A red headline on net.china .cn claimed that the website of Google China contained a lot of pornographic and vulgar links and "strongly condemn" Google for spreading such information.
July 16
A post thread under the headline "Jia Junpeng, your mom's calling you home for dinner" appeared on the World of Warcraft bar of Baidu Tieba, and attracted over 390,000 views and over 17,000 replies within only six hours, becoming the most popular Internet meme in 2010. Tieba (post bar) has become the birthplace for Internet catchphrases and cultural phenomena.
November 23
The 9th Chinese Network Media Forum was open in Xiamen, under the theme of "Build the Safe Internet and a Harmonious E-World."
