One More "catfish" Always Not A Bad Thing

As mobile phones are increasingly "amiable", the call cost is lower too. In the past, if the cost of the calls was below RMB 200 a month with the phone always power-off, I didn’t have tolerance for the happiness. And now, dozens of yuan a month has been more than enough.

There is no doubt that this change benefits from the break of the telecommunication monopoly, and the starting point for breaking the monopoly was the establishment of China Unicom. On July 19, 1994, China United Telecommunications Co. Ltd. set up, which is a significant milestone in the history of the development of China's telecommunications industry

At that time, the Global of China Mobile costs monthly 50 yuan for fee and usage charges 0.48 yuan / min, while Unicom costs monthly 30 yuan for fee and usage charges 0.32 yuan / minute which quickly attracted a lot of people. The final result of the first round of the competition was that the Global usage charges from 0.48 yuan / minute fell to 0.40 yuan / minute. Do not ignore this small district 8 cents, but the "catfish effect" brought the first gift to mobile phone users.

When we looked back, without exception, almost every time, the price offense was launched firstly by China Unicom. It is the positive confrontation many a time that not only causes the cell phone charges all the way plummet, but also causes the telecom operators to continuously upgrade their own quality of services and rich the contents.

Recently, aiming at the rumors that China Mobile may be split, Jianzhou Wang, the chairman and CEO of China Mobile, said that he was not worried that the company will be split up because the trends of the reorganization of the telecommunication industry is quit different from that 10 years ago. 10 years ago, large companies split into smaller companies, but now, small companies merge into large companies, which is the direction of government support. In fact, from 2004, various discussions and speculation on telecommunications restructuring have never interrupted, and the remarks of Jianzhou Wang once again stirred up the anticipation of the restructuring in the telecommunications industry.

Among four major telecom operators of China Telecom, Netcom, Mobile and Unicom , China Mobile is thriving – the profit growth of China Mobile from January to August in 2007 is up to 2.4 times the sum that of the China Telecom, China Unicom and China Netcom. Based on this background and with the problem of "when to license 3G, how many licenses, license to whom", the issue of split of China Unicom has become the most economically viable option. It is imperative to improve the monopolistic situation, and in such a constant deepening of the reform of the telecommunications, Unicom will continue to play a key role.

Despite various restructuring plan complicated, the core purpose which is to change the current imbalance competition situation in the market has been clear. Therefore, whether Unicom is divided into two new mobile operators or it’s allocated to the China Telecom and China Netcom, the most important thing of the problem lies in whether such reorganization could promote competition, thus makes the development of the whole industry into an optimal direction, rather than evades and further consolidate its monopoly to monopoly status.

What operator’s name shown on the phone screen? It’s not important to the overwhelming majority of ordinary users, in fact. What they care about is whether they can enjoy more quality services, as well as more favourable rates. Telecom appears ready to go ahead reorganization, and hope that such reorganization could stimulate the original "catfish" to greater vigor, or welcome more "catfish", instead of hastily making a clean break with the "catfish" that has ever made his contributions in work.

Why Christmas So Attractive?

Recently, a company in Dongguan, Guangzhou in China notified the staff not to celebrate Christmas in the company. The manager said, what they believe is Sinology, what they advocate is Chinese traditional festival, that’s why they don’t allow the staff to celebrate western festival such as Christmas. (24th December Nanfang Metropolis)

Qingming Festival, Mid-autumn Festival, Spring Festival…the celebration atmosphere for these traditional festivals gradually died away, but, Christmas and other Western Festivals become more and more popular. In recent years, more and more people advocate that we must all be on guard of the cultural aggression. This point pushes through the modification of holiday system to some extent. “Ban Christmas” demonstrated a kind of “Culture Discipline”. But, Can it completely be banned? I think, it’s Impossible and not necessary.

Comparing to the thousand-year history of Spring Festival, Christmas is quite a young festival, which is known to Chinese people in past 30 years. Why is it so popular? Obviously, it’s related to political civilization, advanced economy as well as mighty culture. However, the root is Christmas has the popular cultural factor which is liked by Chinese people. If we can throw away cultural discrimination and attitude of self-protection, Christmas is absolutely irresistible. Cordial Santa, always easygoing and makes us feel warm. That’s a little bit different from Chinese festival’s solemnities and formal.

Romantic. When we imagine our dear Santa climbing down the Chimney and putting the fancy gift in our prepared socks, we will feel very happy. It is like a beautiful legend. Thinking of our Chinese Traditional Festivals, people always have to take nostalgia and other things into consideration. That’s why Christmas becomes more and more attractive.

Relaxed. Spring Festival always makes us feel exhausted. Visiting relatives, sending gifts to each other, ceremonies and dining together... which are all unavoidable. But Christmas is different. No pressure, no mission, only one diner, and everyone can enjoy himself totally. What Christmas brings to us is relaxation and pleasure which is really treasure in contemporary society.

Warm, relaxed and romantic…these are brought by Christmas, which are expected by Chinese people but difficult to obtain. That’s decided by the cultural connotation but not religion property. So, don’t go to extremes, and make yourself enjoy it. Chinese should carry forward our traditional festivals, but not at the cost of banning other countries’ festivals. And just welcome some interesting festivals in other countries and have a good time.