Chinese Electronic Journals

PAPER

Introduction

Chinese electronic journals are defined here as serials distributed via the Internet in the Chinese language. The titles of the Chinese e-journals are written in Pin-Yin, which is the standard romanisation of Chinese characters adopted in mainland China, except for those journals that have English names.

Much research on electronic journals has been published in recent years (Rowland, 1994, 1995), but little has been published on Chinese ones, mainly because these are few in number and mostly rather new. Since China began to open the door to the world, 220,000 Chinese students and scholars have gone abroad. Most of them have been to North America and Western European countries. Of 20 Chinese electronic journals described in this paper, 13 are published by overseas Chinese students and scholars associations or by Chinese students working voluntarily. The first, Hua Xia Wen Zhai (HXWZ, China News Digest -- Chinese Magazine), published by a volunteer organisation in the USA, dates from April 1991. China's Scholars Abroad Chinese Magazine (Chisa-cm) is published by the State Educatio n Commission in Beijing, P.R. China, and its electronic version, available on the Internet since January 1995, is the first electronic journal published in mainland China. This paper concentrates on HXWZ and Chisa-cm, gives brief information about other Chinese electronic journals, reports a user study carried out at Loughborough University in the UK, and makes suggestions about possible future directions for Chinese electronic journals.

Computer processing of Chinese characters

The computer processing of Chinese characters (CPCC) began in the 1970s. Numerous different coding and input systems have been developed. Mainland China (GB2312-80), Taiwan (CISCII and CCCII), Japan (JIS C6226-1978), and Korea (KIS 5618) each have their own national standard coding systems, and there are also two others in common use (HZ and big5) (Wu, 1990). These codes use either two or thre e (CCCII) bytes to represent one character, in contrast with the one byte per character of ASCII. Though there are many input techniques, these are mostly phonetic, using Pin-Yin and the QWERTY keyboard (Zhao, 1990), orthographic, using a five-stroke method devised by Wang Yongmin (Liu, 1987, 1991), or a hybrid of the two.

Chinese electronic journals on the Internet

Current Chinese e-journals can be categorised into two types. (a) Campus-wide or regional journals, which focus on local news and local activities run by the regional Chinese scholars and students association or Chinese society, and reflect the local culture, tradition, or economy, e.g. LZTX (Leeds Newsletter), BFLR (Chinese People in Buffalo). These Chinese e-journals aim to serve mainly local Chinese people, but readers all over the world can also access them via the Internet. These journals are useful to help Chinese people to understand and adapt to the local society. (b) National and international journals which cover quite comprehensive information such as news, literature, life, culture, etc. HXWZ, Chisa-cm, and FHY are examples of such Chinese electronic journals. Some Chin ese electronic journals, however, are scholarly or specialized journals. For example, YWZK is concerned with the romanisation and computerisation of Chinese characters, and WLZG is a Chinese political electronic journal which emphasises democracy in China.

Hua Xia Wen Zhai

Subject covered and frequency of publication. The information covered in HXWZ is comprehensive, including current news on China, poems, short stories, a glimpse of China, students' life abroad, women and letters between editors and readers, etc. HXWZ is published weekly and distributed on Fridays; irregular supplements are published as well.

Access. Hua Xia Wen Zhai is open to anyone; users can subscribe to current issues and get back issues freely. There is no charge to users, and passwords are not required. There are several methods of access to HXWZ. Anyone who has an e-mail account can subscribe to current HXWZ by sending a message to: LISTSERV@UGA.UGA.EDU; the subject of the message could be left blank, while the message body should be: SUB CCMAN-L Your_First_Name Last_Name. Besides subscribing to HXWZ by e-mail, either current issues or back issues of HXWZ can be obtained via anonymous ftp, gopher and WWW (World Wide Web). The URLs for HXWZ are as follows:

				[URL: ftp://cnd.org [132.249.229.100] ]

		In Canada: 	[URL: ftp://canada.cnd.org [142.132.1.50] ]

		In Europe:	[URL: ftp://uk.cnd.org [144.82.29.135] ]

		gopher:		[URL: gopher://cnd.org ]

		WWW: 		[URL: http://HXWZ-www.cnd.org/HXWZ/index_gif.html ]

				[URL: http://www.cnd.org/HXWZ/index_gif.html ]

		In Canada	[URL: http://canada.cnd.org:800/HXWZ/index_gif.html ]

Contributions and editorial contact. Contributions should be sent to HXWZ@CND.ORG including contributor's name and e-mail address in the HZ, or uuencoded GB or big5 file (indicate if you wish to be anonymous). If users have any comments on the contents of HXWZ, they can contact the editors by sending e-mail to CND-CM@CND.ORG.

China's Scholars Abroad Chinese Magazine (Chisa-cm)

The purpose of this magazine is to help Chinese scholars and students abroad to keep up with the recent developments in China, to provide them with some necessary services and to offer them entertainment. Chisa-cm includes "News of the Week", "Economics", "Science & Technology", "Life & People", "News from the Hometown", "Random Ta lks", "Students Abroad" and "For Your Services". It is published on a weekly basis and distributed via the Internet on Fridays.

Access Like HXWZ, Chisa-cm is open to anyone. Users connected to the Internet can obtain issues of Chisa-cm using one of the following methods free of charge. To subscribe to Chisa-cm, send an e-mail to: LISTSERV@CHISA.EDU.CN. The subject line is not required. On the first line of the mail body, write: SUB CHISA-CM Your_First_Name Your_Last_Name. You can also access Chisa-cm by usimg one of the following URLs.

		[URL: ftp://chisa.edu.cn/pub/chisa-cm/1995 ] 

		[URL: gopher://gopher.chisa.edu.cn ]

		[URL: http://www.chisa.edu.cn ]

Contact. Comments and suggestions can be sent to: CHISA-EDITOR@CHISA.EDU.CN. For technical problems, send your mail to CHISA-TECH@CHISA.EDU.CN. The Chisa-cm editors prefer to read mail in Chinese (GB coded in uuencode, HZ format or big5 coded in uuencode).

Other Chinese electronic journals

Use of and user reaction to Chinese electronic journals

Reading Chinese electronic journals on screen

Most of the existing Chinese electronic journals are published in GB (Guo Biao, the national standard in mainland China), big5 or HZ format. Different Chinese viewers are needed in order to read the different formats and different software has to be used on different computer terminals. The ftp site ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software on the Internet stores many Chinese software packages, wh ich can be used to view Chinese texts on screen on different computer platforms such as MS-DOS, UNIX, MS-Windows and Apple Macintosh.

Electronic mail can only transfer ASCII files. Chinese electronic journals must be encoded into an ASCII format presentation before sent to subscribers. To read the electronic mail version of Chinese electronic journals, it is necessary to convert the Chinese electronic journals back into their binary format by using the software uudecode in UNIX or uud.com in MS-DOS. If Chinese e lectronic journals are obtained via ftp, gopher or WWW, there is no need to decode them. You only need to run a appropriate Chinese software package which can support GB, big5 or HZ code.

Hard copy

There are some Chinese electronic journals, such as HXWZ, Chisa-cm and MRY, which have PostScript versions intended to meet users' needs for hard copy. In order to obtain hard copy, you need to convert GB, HZ or big5 coded issues of Chinese e-journals to PS files by using gb2ps, hz2ps or big5ps. All these are available at ftp://cnd.org under the directory pub/software/un ix/print/.

Use

According to the WWW Access Statistics for HXWZ, its WWW server www.cnd.org is currently receiving about 32,000 http requests per day by readers from all over the world, based on log files since 1st May 1995. From 1st April 1995 to 1st May 1995, users in 47 countries accessed HXWZ via WWW. For example, there were 2646 requests from China and 1800 from USA. Only five months after the establ ishment of Chisa-cm, 2463 users had subscribed to it by 27th May 1995.

User study at Loughborough

A questionnaire survey and interviews have been undertaken at Loughborough University in the UK, in order to measure the use of and user reaction to Chinese electronic journals. The questionnaire forms were sent to 70 Chinese students and scholars in the University; 40 of the recipients completed and returned the questionnaire form. The questionnaire focused on three issues: (1) general inform ation about the respondents; (2) use of Chinese electronic journals; (3) user reaction to Chinese electronic journals. Ten of the 40 respondents were interviewed. The interview aimed to obtain the users' general comments on Chinese electronic journals and their main difficulties in using them.

The general information included the respondents' age structure, duration of stay abroad, and status. Of the respondents, 79% (32) were aged 30-39, 13% (5) were over 40 and 8% (3) were 20-30. For the respondents' duration of stay abroad, 32% (13) had been in the UK for 4 years or more, 20% (8) for 3 years, 18% (7) for 2 years and 30 % (12) less than two years. Of the 40 respondentss, 57% (23) w ere taught postgraduates or research students, 25% (10) were visiting scholars and 18% (7) were staff.

Of the 40 respondents, 35 were aware of some Chinese electronic journals. HXWZ was mentioned by 21 respondents and Chisa-cm by 10 respondents. Other Chinese electronic journals which were mentioned were: FHY, LYTX, BJG, FHY, and XYS. Of the 35 respondents who know some Chinese electronic journals, 33 used them. There were 19 users who subscribed to Chinese e-journals; 14 users access Chinese e lectronic journals on the Internet in other ways (ftp, gopher or WWW). The most common method used to access Chinese electronic journals was ftp. Of the 33 users, 26 accessed Chinese electronic journals only via ftp, three via WWW, two via gopher, one via ftp and WWW, and one by ftp, gopher and WWW.

One respondent had subscribed to HXWZ in May 1991, and became the first subscriber to the Chinese electronic journal at Loughborough University. After that, two others subscribed to Chinese electronic journals in the same year. In subsequent years the numbers were: 1992, 6; 1993, 10; 1994, 15, 1995, 19. Most of them have subscribed to only one journal; only one user has subscribed to two j ournals (HXWZ and Chisa-cm).

Among 33 users, 13 of them liked to view Chinese electronic journals on screen; 7 preferred reading hard copy, and 13 users both viewed them on screen and read print-out hard copy. Of the users, 30 estimated that the average amount of time they spent reading Chinese electronic journals was one hour or less per week, and three spent two hours per week. Twelve users got their viewer software from the Internet, and others copied or borrowed their software from friends. Some of the software packages used were: Ccxterm, Chinese Star, ChiRK, BYX, DDWIN, Gblist and Njstar. No one used scholarly Chinese e lectronic journals for their research, because they did not know any scholarly Chinese electronic journals. Only one user had contributed to a Chinese electronic journal.

User reaction

From the user's point of view, Chinese electronic journals are important information sources which can provide them with current-affairs and other information about China when they are abroad. Of 33 Loughborugh users, 92% (30) think so, and 19 often talked about the news/information they got from the Chinese electronic journals with others. Most of the respondents regard them as a cultural lin k to China, and refer to them as a window through which they can look at the recent development of China. One interviewee said: "It is very important and useful for all the Chinese abroad". Someone suggested: "It should cover more information about China". They do not think the existing Chinese electronic journals are of high quality, because there are no scholarly ones wh ich can be used for their research or study. A interviewee hoped: "People, especially overseas Chinese, need Chinese electronic journals on a broad subject area in the near future".

The main problem for the users is the lack of high-quality Chinese software for viewing on screen. On the other hand, they can get hard copy, but it usually takes about half an hour to print the PostSscript version. There are a lot of Chinese software packages for displaying Chinese texts available on the Internet and if they searched for these, the problem could be overcome.

The future development of Chinese electronic journals

This section predicts the future trends of Chinese electronic journals, especially their development in mainland China, based on the following developments: (a) the China Internet; (b) the computer market in China and (c) the publishing of journals in China.

The China Internet

Chinese electronic journals are based on the Internet, on which they are published and distributed, so the development of Chinese electronic journals is dependent on improved networking. In recent years, the computer networks in China have been improved and have been connected to the global Internet. Chisa-cm is produced, published and delivered by one of the Chinese networks, CERnet (China Edu cation and Research Network). The main networks operating in China are as follows.

CAnet, co-initiated by ICA (Beijing Institute for Computer Applications) and the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) began in 1986. It is an e-mail-only international connection. In October 1990, Mr Tianbai Qian, CAnet director registered the top domain "CN" for China, and since then China has its own domain name. Because it was the earliest international network connection (1987) and many institutes connect to ICA for e-mail exchange, it has special meaning in the China network history.

IHEP-Internet Networking: IHEP (China Institute of High Energy Physics) established its own local area network (LAN) in 1988. The first direct international 64 Kbps leased line in China via AT&T satellite was established to SLAC (Standford Linear Accelerator Center) in March 1993 with the DECnet protocol. At the end of 1993, IHEP obtained permission for full access to ESnet portion of the US Internet. In May 1994, IHEP started running TCP/IP, and thus obtained access to full Internet operation. Some useful software under Internet (like WWW) has been installed on IHEP computer nodes. In 1994, IHEP Computer Center opened accounts for more than 500 top scientists in different research areas in China and many universities and institutions have connected their LANs to the IHEP ne twork directly. IHEP has gained the support from National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) for the future network development.

CERnet is the first nation-wide education and research computer network in China, and is presently under construction. The CERnet project is funded by the Chinese government and directly managed by the Chinese State Education Commission. It will be a major part of the China Internet and will help to boost China's education, research and economic developments. CERnet has a three-layer hie rarchy consisting of the nation-wide backbone, regional networks and campus networks. The network center is located at Tsinghua University, Beijing and the backbone nodes are in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Xi'an, Wuhan, Chengdu and Shenyang. The digital data network will be used as the basic communication carrier and the data transmission rate starts at 64 Kbps and rises to 2.048 Mbps . It is a TCP/IP based network and will support all Internet applications.

In the first phase (1994-1996) of the implementation of CERnet, the national network center, ten regional network nodes, the nation-wide backbone and the Internet connection will be established. More than 100 universities and institutes will be connected to CERnet in this implementation phase. In the second phase (1997-2000), CERnet will connect all universities and institutes, andthousands of mi ddle schools, primary schools and other education and research entities in China. Since China has the largest population, CERnet will become the largest education and research network in the world.

The computer market in China

With the development of economic reform and modernisation, the computer industry has developed well in China (Yan, 1995) and the need for computers is increasing at a great rate (Mong, 1995). In 1981, only 1000 computers were sold. By the end of 1993, there were 6,000 computer companies and factories in China; the total number of computers used in China was more than 2 million. In 1994, 700,000 were computers sold, of which 428,000 were PCs. It is estimated that 659,000 PCs were sold in China in 1995.

The publication of journals in China

The publication of journals plays an important role in Chinese publishing, because the history of journal publishing in China is some 150 years old. In 1990, following an official readjustment of the periodical's structure, newly approved ones that meet the country's needs numbered 133. By the end of that year, officially registered periodicals totalled 6142, of which social sciences accounted fo r 3043 and natural sciences and technology for 3099. Journals are the most important part of Chinese periodical publication.

The future of Chinese electronic journals

There is no doubt that there are few technical difficulties in publishing Chinese electronic journals, although some of the desired technology is still too expensive for widespread use. More Chinese electronic journals will be produced by Chinese students and scholars associations for use mainly by overseas Chinese, whose numbers continue to grow. In mainland China, as the Internet is develope d, the needs for both computers and journals are increasing at an incredible rate. We therefore predict that the number of Chinese electronic journals will grow both in China and the world outside China.

There are few scholarly Chinese electronic journals, and so the information covered in the Chinese electronic journals is not thought to be good enough for research. More scholarly journals, such as journals of science, technology and humanities, should be established for the use by students, scholars and researchers. In China, there are 1,090 universities, 390,000 professors and staff member s, 94,200 postgraduate students and 2,184,000 undergraduate students. More than 100 campus networks will be connected to CERnet by 1996; the rest of the universities and institutes will be connected to CERnet within four years. Almost every university has at least one scholarly journal, and it is possible that some scholarly Chinese electronic journals published by universities,, based on the un iversity's scholarly paper journals, will appear as the campus networks are linked to the CERnet.

All the existing Chinese electronic journals only contain Chinese texts, and some contain typewritten tables rather than graphics. Generally, scholarly journals, especially scientific journals, need figures, graphics, and even sound or moving pictures. This will lead to the use of hypertext and multimedia technology. It is likely that Chinese electronic journals will be put on to Gopher and WWW servers.

References

Liu, Y. (1987) New development of computer and natural language procesing in China. Information Science, 8(1), 64-70 (in Chinese).

Liu, Y. (1991) Difficulties in Chinese information processing and ways to their solution. In Vair, V.H. and Liu, Y., editors, Characters and Computers. Amsterdam: ISO Press.

Rowland, F. (1994) Electronic journals: Present trends and likely futures -- their impact on library and information services. Information UK Outlooks, issue no. 8.

Rowland, F. (1995) Recent and current electronic journal projects. Chapter 2 in Rowland, F., McKnight, C. and Meadows, J. , editors, Project Elvyn: An experiment in electronic journal delivery. East Grinstead, UK: Bowker-Saur

Wu, Z. (1990) Computer processing of Chinese characters: An overview of two decades' research and development. Information Processing & Management, 26(5), 681-691.

Zhao, B. Z. (1990) The technology of Chinese information processing . Beijing: Yu Hang Press (in Chinese).Table 1. Chinese electronic journals, listed in order of foundation

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Name	Abbreviation	Location	Access
Hua Xia Wen Thai	HXWT	USA	See text
Yu Weng Zhuan Kan	YWZK	NY, USA	WUA@UN.ORG
Xue Zhi Lian Tong Xun	XZLTX	USA	ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/ifcss/NL
Lian Yi Tong Xun	LYTX	Canada	listserv@VM1.McGill.ca, listserv@ucalgary.ca
Li Zhi Tong Xun	LZ TX	Leeds, UK	http://agora.leeds.ac.uk/xiaoda/cssa.html
Chuang Ku	CK	Canada	CHINSCH@ACS.UCALGARY.CA
Wei Da Tong Xun	WDTX	Wisconsin, USA	INFO@CMGROUP.ENGR.WISC.EDU
Fen Hua Yuan	FHY	Canada	listserv@CUNEWS.CARLETON.CA
Bei Ji guang	BJG	Sweden
Ge La Si Ge Xue
Lian Tong Xun	GLSGXLTX	Glasgow, UK	CBBS 21@VMS.STRATH.AC.UK
Bu Fa Lou Ren	BFLR	Buffalo, USA	CSSNBUF@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
Hong He Gu	HHG	Canada	ftp://opas1.ccs.carleton.ca/pub/fcss/cm/hhg
Lond Da Hua Ren	LDHR	Lund, Sweden	ftp://cnd.org/pub/community/Lund
Hua De Tong Xun	HDTX	Berlin, Germany	M_LUO@UNIBW-HAMBURG.DE
Wi Lai Zhong Guo	WLZG	USA	JUST@PANIX.COM
Weiming	Kentucky, USA	listserv@ULKYMV@LOUISVILLE.EDU
Yu Jin Xiang	YJX	Netherlands	TULIP@DUTIWS.TWI. TUDELFT.NL
Mei Ren Yu	MRY	Denmark	JJK@EMI.DUT.DK
Xin Yu Si	XYS	USA	CX3575@COEWL.CEN.UIUC.EDU
Chisa-cm	Chisa-cm	P.R. China	See text

All the above except YWZK and WLZG are concerned with Chinese news, life and culture. YWZK is a specialised journals concered with the romanisation of Chinese characters. WLZG is a political journal published by the Liberal and Democratic Party of China.