The Asia Pacific is the most dynamic digital landscape in the world, home to the fastest adopters of new technologies and the largest concentration of mobile and social media users. An escalation in online activism, changing cyber dynamics, developments in digital diplomacy and the exploitation of big data are shaping the region's engagement with the world.
- Chinese authorities allegedly shut down the internet in Linshui after mass demonstrations demanding a high-speed rail line through the county turned violent. Read about how the protests — from censorship to anti-communist party hacking — are playing out online.
- Tech startups in Pakistan want to disrupt the country's inefficient and dangerously unregulated labour market.
- The most important market for Chinese smartphone makers may actually be India.
- This podcast, on Japan's unique Twitter culture, looks at why it is common for Japanese users to have multiple accounts and maintain a different identity on each.
- Internet company Baidu has built a Beijing-based artificial-intelligence supercomputer that allegedly has Google beat on image recognition. (H/t @niubi).
- Chinese President Xi Jinping has asked officials to befriend and recruit non-Communist Party intellectuals from new media organisations and to encourage them to make contributions to 'purifying cyberspace'. (H/t @fryan.)
- Vietnamese mobile messenger app Zalo now has 30 million users, making it the only Southeast Asian-founded chat app that has conquered its home market.
- The media outlet for China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has published a series of feisty articles on defending cyber sovereignty and battling for online terrain. English translations here and here.
- While hosing down alarmist interpretations of the above articles, the University of Hong Kong's China Media Project steers readers towards the revelation that an elusive 'All-Military Internet Security and Information Expert Consultation Commission' had its first sitting in Beijing.
- A new report highlights fears Cambodia's new cyber laws will be used to further curb online free speech.
- Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement has spawned a unique brand of digital protest art.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook was in China last week: