China expects to dominate the next internet revolution, according to Dr Xiaojun Wang, organiser of the 2007 ChinaIreland international conference on information and communications technologies held this week at Dublin City University.
Dr Wang told the conference that China had to play catch-up with the US during the first generation of the internet, but now it hopes to have gained what is termed a "mover advantage".
China's confidence is centred on IP addresses. The US holds about 1.3 billion, or 30 per cent, of all potential IP addresses, but a new iteration of IP called version 6, or IPv6, is set to shift the balance in favour of Asia.
IP is arguably the world's single most popular network protocol. Data travels over an IP-based network in packets. Each IP packet includes both a header (which specifies source, destination and other information about the data) and the message data itself.
The current IP version 4 was developed in the US, but it is Asian countries such as China which have taken major steps in developing the next generation of networking protocols with IPv6.
One main benefit of IPv6 is that it will solve the problem of IP address shortages. For instance, China's allocation of IP addresses is equal only to that of the campus of, for example, the University of California, even though it has some 80 million internet users. And that is a major reason why Asian countries, especially China, Japan and South Korea, are developing IPv6 technology.
Dr Martin Collier, senior lecturer in the school of electronic engineering at DCU, told conference delegates IPv6 would mean that far more IP addresses could be handed out.
"So we could, for instance, connect every light bulb in the world to the internet. It would be possible to turn the lights in your house on and off from a hotel in Australia."
There are privacy implications with IPv6, however. Dr Collier cited the example of a hospital checking a patient's heart condition with monitors, while the same technology could be used by an insurance company on the same patient, leading to a refusal to cover the patient because of possible high risk.
"The new technology can bring benefits when used for the common good," said Dr Collier.
Despite China's wish to be a dominant internet power there was no mention of the Chinese government's heavy-handed approach to internet censorship. For instance, Google results are filtered in China and blogging posts are often instantly removed.
The Chinese version of MySpace, which was launched a few months ago, has numerous censorship-related difficulties which other international versions of the service do not have. Discussion on topics such as religion and politics are non-existent and filters prevent anyone from posting anything about the Dalai Lama or about independence for Taiwan.
When asked about this dichotomy in relation to the internet, George He, senior vice-president and chief technology officer at Lenovo, said: "We just provide PCs. Every government has their regulations on managing the network. We'd have no comment on the policy of our government."
