On Internet (news) services for Vietnamese Abroad: A Chinese Model

[AnHai Doan <anhai@cs.washington.edu>]

Dear friends, those who are interested in knowing or making a 
contribution to the Vietnamese community abroad are warmly recommended to 
read the following simplified version of CND history.

CND (Chinese News Digests) was founded in 1989 by a number of Chinese 
students and scholars in Canada and the US, with the goal of providing 
timely and comprehensive China-related news to the Chinese community.
CND has been growing vigourously since, and has become a truly global 
service, with more than 30,000 readers in and ouside China. I myself was 
at one point CND reader, and can testify that CND indeed provides 
an invaluable service to the Chinese community around the world.

Hai.

(You can visit the CND website at www.cnd.org .)
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The Six-Year History of China News Digest

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.

...
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. 
...
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.
...
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.
...
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.

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3. The Current CND Working Staff Members in the Year of 1995
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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.
...
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4. The Supporting Team from the Friends of CND
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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.
...
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5. CND Readers Around the Globe
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_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.
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