http://www.cnd.org:80/CNDhistory.html (World Wide Web Directory, ~04/1995)
* * * C H I N A N E W S D I G E S T * * *
Special Issue: China News Digest Is Celebrating Her Sixth Anniversary
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Monday, March 6, 1995
Table of Contents
1. CND Celebrates Sixth Anniversary
2. The Making of China News Digest
3. The Current CND Working Staff Members in the Year of 1995
4. The Supporting Team from the Friends of CND
5. CND Readers Around the Globe
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1. CND Celebrates Sixth Anniversary
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By: CND, 3/6/1995
March 6, 1995 marks the sixth anniversary of China News Digest (CND).
China News Digest was founded by a group of Chinese students and scholars in the U.S. and Canada today six years ago. Thanks to the hard work of CND volunteers as well as the support of tens of thousands of readers, CND has become a news distribution organization unparalleled in the computer network world. CND readers can be found in all of the world's continents, in more than 50 countries and regions including Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The world is no longer what it was when CND was founded. Many changes have taken place in this period of time. CND has developed from the original English service to CSS (Chinese Students and Scholars) in the U.S. and Canada into a news digesting and information distribution service of different sections customized toward readers in Canada, Europe/Pacific, the U.S., and China. In addition to the English regional services, the CND-Global section provides three times a week China-related news of interest to all readers around the globe. CND also broadcasts the first network-based Chinese language periodical, Hua Xia Wen Zhai. CND publications are distributed via e-mail lists, ftp, gopher and world wide web servers.
These changes and expansions notwithstanding, one thing remains unchanged. That is, CND will maintain its voluntary and non-profit nature of the organization and continue to aim at providing news and other information services to readers who are concerned primarily about China-related affairs. CND will remain to be independent and strive to be impartial on issues and news it reports. CND will, as it has been doing in the past six years, continue to bring the latest China-related news to its readers, who are the very reason for CND's existence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. The Making of China News Digest ----------------------------------------------------------------------------Originally by: XIONG Bo and XU Gang, 1991
China News Digest was born out of the ever-increasing need for information exchange on the network among Chinese students and scholars.
On March 4, 1989, two Chinese students in Canada, ZHU Roupeng and LIANG Luping proposed a plan for a communication network for Chinese students in Canada and asked two Chinese students, XIONG Bo and ZHOU Ziye in the United States, for help. This cross-border arrangement was intended to evade the pressures from the Chinese Consulates in Canada, which had a higher degree of control on Chinese students than their U.S. counterparts.
After less than two days of preparations, the first CND package was broadcasted on March 6, 1989 to about 400 readers in Canada. The package was first written by XIONG Bo, edited by ZHU Ruopeng and distributed by ZHOU Ziye. The initial distribution list was provided by LIANG Luping.
At the beginning, CND was broadcasted two or three times a week. By April 1989, it became a daily service. As the unforgettable events in China began to unfold, the list of CND readers began to expand rapidly and the service was eventually expanded to the United States and the rest of the world.
In the meantime, new volunteers began to join in. In June 1989, the group had five members, broadcasting from two personal accounts, one to Canada, one to U.S. and other countries. There were about 1,000 readers at the time. The group called itself News Digest (ND), with XU Gang as the first manager. From then on, CND has held all-member elections annually, with WEI Yagui, TANG Deming, LIN Wei, and XU Ming Yang elected as managers, each for a one-year term. The current CND manager is WU Fang.
The readership of ND kept growing in the Summer of 1989, with two big additions during this period:
1) the Electronic Newsletter for Chinese Students (ENCS) was closing due to the shortage of manpower. The head of ENCS contacted ND staff members during the IFCSS Chicago conference and expressed willingness to hand over the reader list to ND so that the news service could be continued for the ENCS readers. The merge of the lists was completed by the end of August, 1989;
2) YAO Minghui and LIN Yaxiong set up a listserver account in Arizona State University and started their own news service to students in the United States. They later joined the ND group and hence greatly improved ND's broadcasting power.
In September, 1989, the group was renamed as China News Digest (CND), and was serving about 4,000 readers, mainly in the U.S. and Canada, through two listserv accounts in Arizona State and Kent State University, and a mailing list in University of Toronto in Canada.
It was also decided that regional services, CND-US and CND-Canada, would be opened to provide readers with more local news. By the end of September, 1989 CND had about ten working staff volunteers.
In addition to providing China-related news, CND has been making extensive report on student activities on campuses in the U.S., Canada and Australia. CND also established several special columns to meet special needs of its readers. The first one, Organization Introduction was opened in the winter of 1989. More columns and services were added later, such as Books and Journals Review, Q & A, Market Watch and Sports Highlights columns. CND also pays special attention to issues concerning CSS and gathers information to make special news broadcasts for readers' reference, such as the Olympic Games, and the Most Favored Nation trade status between the U.S. and China, and issues of concern with regard to the Permanent Resident Status for CSS overseas. Special packages on these and other special topics have been archived for easy retrieval by CND readers.
On March 18, 1990, CND further expanded its service to areas outside of North America by establishing its Europe/Pacific section -- CND-EP.
A major project was successfully launched on the April 5 of 1991. With increasing readership, CND began to distribute its first issue of Chinese Magazine named Hua Xia Wen Zhai. This weekly digest has quickly attracted many CND readers and by the beginning of 1992, its readership reached more than 4000 (direct subscribers). Currently Hua Xia Wen Zhai has over 15,800 direct subscriptions via e-mail. In addition, every week there are about 4600 netters retrieving the magazine's PostScript files and print them on laser printers. There are also 8900 times of retrievals of the magazine's GB-code file for each issue from CND's ftp server. Many other readers read it via USENET newsgroups.
The highlight of the year in 1993 was the generous donation from our readers which enabled the acquisition of our own machine, cnd.org, with her own internet connections and the subsequent service to the CND readers. CND is delighted to see that the machine is heavily accessed by our readers. Every week, over 17,000 internet users from more than 11,000 internet sites use the CND ftp server and retrieve CND publications more than 50,000 times.
In February 1993, a new working group within CND was formed. The objectives of this new group, named CND-IB for "InfoBase," are to develop and maintain an electronic information base for public access through the international network. The information base will include information that is related to China and/or Chinese and has historical and/or long-term service values to the public. The group has already collected a large amount of information for public access via cnd.org machine. The CND InfoBase group is continually expanding the database. Reader contributions are welcome and can be submitted to cnd-ib@cnd.org.
To help facilitate more communication between the Internet community with China, CND sponsored China InterNET Letter (CINET-L) in August 1993, a newsletter that serves as a forum for computer professionals in China to exchange computer/technical information with the rest of the world. Since May 1994, China have established direct internet connections, while CINET-L remains a useful resource to internet users in Mainland China.
In January 1994, CND decided to establish another internet site of its own to ensure continuity in service. On June 4, 1994, CND opened its world wide web server http://www.cnd.org/ to the public. The WWW server is currently visited more than 7,000 times per day. It hosts all the CND publications and the CND InfoBase material, and points to many other China-related sites. CND also established two mirror sites uk.cnd.org and canada.cnd.org to provide faster access for readers in Europe and Canada.
In November 1994, in order to voluntarily comply with the copyright law and to reduce the editors' heavy workload, a new working group, news-writer, was established. This group consists of volunteers who are not current CND staff members but are willing to contribute their time and skills to CND English services. The main task of this group is to rewrite news brief items or to compile and rewrite full item news based on the original news sources for CND posting. Thanks to the hard working rewriters, this group now has become a crucial sector of CND to ensure its smooth operation.
On February 13, 1995, approved by the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation, CND is officially registered as a non-profit organization with headquarters in the State of Maryland, U.S.A. The registered name of CND is China News Digest International, Inc. CND will continue the traditions of being globally-oriented and providing quality service free of charge to its readers.
While CND's total direct subscription has now reached more than 35,200 in about a dozen mailing lists, and serving tens of thousands more readers via the CND ftp/gopher/www servers, the number of its volunteers remains at around 50 people. Each volunteer may be involved with news collection, writing, editing, proofreading, coordinating, technical support to editing groups and to readers, etc. CND volunteers are mostly overseas Chinese students and scholars. They are full-time students, professors, researchers or other professionals. Many of them are in the U.S. and Canada, some in Europe, Australia and Japan. They work cooperatively through the computer network. As the years pass by, groups of CND members have held joyful mini-gatherings whenever they have the chance. Still many of them have never met their colleagues in person.
As the making of history progresses in China, the making of CND also continues.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. The Current CND Working Staff Members in the Year of 1995 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: CND, 3/6/1995 CND is currently made up of about 50 volunteers from Australia, Canada, Europe and U.S.A. It is a friendly and cooperative team that works very hard to deliver news and other services to readers on a daily basis. We welcome more of our readers who can have serious long-term commitment to volunteer work to join us. BAO MinQi (U.S.A.) CHEN Huxiong (U.S.A.) CHEN Jian (U.S.A.) CHEN Jan (Australia) DING Yungui (U.S.A.) FENG Xiaofu (U.S.A.) GUAN Weihe (U.S.A.) HU Kerry (U.S.A.) HUA Xinmin (Canada) HUANG Yinrong (U.S.A.) JIA Daluo (U.S.A.) LI Hao (U.S.A.) LI Jian-Min (U.S.A.) LI Tongbin (U.S.A.) LI Xiaowen (U.S.A.) Chuck LIN (U.S.A.) LIN Wei (U.S.A.) LIU Chengyan (U.S.A.) LIU Dong (Canada) LU Shuping (U.S.A.) MA Sifeng (U.S.A.) Charles MOK (Hong Kong) TIAN Ming (U.S.A.) TU Ya (U.S.A.) WANG Huangxin (U.S.A.) WANG Baoqing (U.S.A.) WEN Bing (Canada) Dan WU (U.S.A.) WU Fang (U.S.A.) WU Yanan (Canada) XIAO Yu (U.S.A.) XIE Tianwei (U.S.A.) XIONG Bo (U.S.A.) XU Gang (Japan) XU Ming Yang (Australia) XU Jie (Finland) YAO Hong (U.S.A.) YAO Minghui (U.S.A.) YAN Weihua (U.S.A) YU Zijian (U.S.A.) ZHANG Feng (U.S.A.) ZHANG Ming (U.S.A.) ZHANG Yunfei (U.S.A.) ZHAO Hua (U.S.A.) Cindy ZHENG (U.S.A.) ZHENG, Liedong (U.S.A.) ZHOU Wei (U.S.A.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. The Supporting Team from the Friends of CND ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: LI Jian-min, 3/6/1995 In November, 1994, CND established an active group, news-writer group, with the support from more than 60 CND friends. The primary task of this group is to rewrite all the news items for all English branches of CND for posting. This group has been working efficiently since and become one of the crucial sectors of CND. We hereby would like to sincerely thank all of the Writer Team members for their continuous support and their excellent work for CND. We welcome more readers who are intersted in English writing to join the team. The following is a list of the Writer Team members who have served as or have signed up for executive writer (EW) terms: CHEN X. Jim (U.S.A.) DU He (Australia) S. Farhad (U.S.A.) FENG Wei (Canad) H. Ferguson (Canada) GAO George (U.S.A.) GUO Xiaolu (U.S.A.) HE Ye (U.S.A.) HONG Guang (U.S.A.) LI Luchen (U.S.A.) LI Xiaolin (U.S.A.) LING Frank (U.S.A.) LIU Weijun (U.S.A.) Zhenzhen (U.S.A.) Tricia (Canada) MAO Zhenyu (U.S.A.) J. Munro (U.S.A.) L. Ngai (Australia) SHAN Jim (Canada) SHEN Shiji (U.S.A.) SU Zhengwei (U.S.A.) TANG Xiangmin (Canada) WANG Kun (U.S.A.) WANG Lixiang (U.S.A.) WEI Ke (U.S.A.) XI Mawei (U.S.A.) XIE Gerald (Australia) XU Jingping (U.S.A.) YU Caroline (U.S.A.) YU Zhiping (U.S.A.) ZHANG Jane (U.S.A.) ZHANG Kewen (U.S.A.) ZHANG Ray (U.S.A.) ZHANG Ron (U.S.A.) ZHANG Tien (U.S.A.) ZHOU Feng (U.S.A.) ZHOU Yang (U.S.A.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. CND Readers Around the Globe ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _From: Wei Lin Source: CND, 3/6/95
Last year in the CND 5th Anniversary Issue, in the article "Geographical Profile of CND Readers" we reported that CND Readers resided in 43 regions/countries in Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, North America and South America. They were:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China(Mainland), Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Saudi-Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, USA. Also the Former USSR (excluding Estonia), the Former Yugoslavia (excluding Slovenia), and other undetermined regions.
Now we also have readers from Bermuda, Croatia, Indonesia, India, Luxembourg, Poland, and Slovak Republic.
Most of our readers are Chinese students and scholars, but overseas Chinese, concerned friends from various countries, and many China-study scholars and students are also amongst our readers. The total number of CND readers is unknown, but is far more than the 35,200 entries represented in our mailing lists alone, as more and more readers read CND publications from redistribu- tion lists, newsgroups and other bulletin boards, and ftp/gopher/www servers.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Executive Editor of This Issue: Fang WU | | CND-Global Coordinator: Jian LIU | | CND Mailing Lists Maintainers: Minghui YAO, Dan WU | | CND Reader Technical Consultants: XIAO Yu, Minghui YAO | | CND Manager: Fang WU | | (Team members are in U.S.A. unless indicated otherwise) | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | China News Digest (CND) offers the following services: | | (1) Global News (Every Other Day) (2) US Regional News | | (3) Canada Regional News (4) Europe & Pacific Regional News | | (5) HXWZ (Weekly Chinese Magazine) (6) InfoBase | | CND back issues, database and related information are available via: | | ftp://cnd.org [132.249.229.100]; gopher://cnd.org; http://www.cnd.org | | For Readers in Canada: ftp://canada.cnd.org [142.132.1.50] | | For Readers in Europe: ftp://uk.cnd.org [144.82.29.135] | | To subscribe or get information, mail request to: CND-INFO@CND.ORG | | To contribute news, please send it to: CND-EDITOR@CND.ORG | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ HTML by WL