“Information is not to be feared, Ideas are not enemies to be crushed,”

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Google Calls for Action on Web Limits

By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ

Published: March 24, 2010 nyt.com

A top Google executive on Wednesday called for rules to put pressure on governments that filter the Internet, saying the practice was hindering international trade.

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Alan Davidson, director of public policy for Google, told a joint Congressional panel that the United States should consider withholding development aid for countries that restrict certain Web sites. He said censorship had become more than a human rights issue and was hurting profit for foreign companies that rely on the Internet to reach customers. “The growing problem for Internet censorship is not isolated to one country or one region,” Mr. Davidson told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. “No single company and no single industry can tackle Internet censorship on its own.”

The fallout from China’s restrictive Internet policies widened on Wednesday when officials from Go Daddy Group, an Internet services company, told the commission that the company would halt registration of Chinese domain names. Christine Jones, general counsel of Go Daddy, said the company was concerned about privacy after Chinese officials requested photo identification and signatures of its customers. For the first time, she said, Go Daddy had been asked to retroactively obtain documentation for individuals who had registered a domain name.

“We’re concerned about the chilling effect,” Ms. Jones said. “We made the decision that we didn’t want to act as an agent of the Chinese government.” Ms. Jones described a chaotic scene for Internet companies in China. She said attacks from hackers were rampant, fraudulent payments were common, and spammers worked without fear of punishment from the government.

Representative David Wu, Democrat of Oregon, said he thought more companies would follow the example of Go Daddy and Google and cut back operations in China. “Pretty soon you have a cascade going,” Mr. Wu said. “There is a difference between compliance and complicity.” More than 40 countries actively censor the Internet currently, Mr. Davidson said, and 25 governments have blocked Google over the last several years. Mr. Davidson suggested asking countries to pledge to keep sites unfiltered in international trade agreements.

On Monday, Google closed its Internet search service in China and began directing users in that country to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong. So far, Mr. Davidson said, the company had noticed “intermittent” censorship of the Hong Kong site. Despite the restrictions, the company plans to maintain a sales team in mainland China, he said. Google’s decision to leave China was prompted in part by a series of attacks by hackers last year, which raised broader concerns about the flow of information in the country. The Chinese government has disputed that it was the source of the attacks, which focused on e-mail accounts of human rights advocates.

Mr. Davidson said Google would consider returning to the Chinese market if the government there removed its restrictions. But he acknowledged that there would likely be a “hard road ahead” because neither side is willing to cede ground. “It’s going to take a lot of work to combat that censorship,” he said.

In a statement to the commission, Chinese officials defended their policies, saying, “foreign companies need to abide by Chinese laws and regulations when they operate in China.” “The Chinese government encourages the development and popularization of the Internet and is committed to the opening up of the Internet,” the statement said.

The panel included members of the Senate and House and Obama administration officials. It was chaired by Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, and Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan. “Information is not to be feared, and ideas are not enemies to be crushed,” Mr. Dorgan said in opening remarks. “The truth is China too often wants a one-way relationship with the world.”

U.S. Embassy-Bangkok's webchat on student visas: Tuesday, March 30, 6:00pm.

Ace! NewsFlash

U.S. Embassy Bangkok Non-Immigrant Visa Webchat Interested in visiting the U.S. as a tourist? Looking to study in the U.S.? If you have questions about non-immigrant visas to the U.S. here is your chance to ask! The U.S. Embassy Bangkok Consular Section will be online to answer questions about non-immigrant visa services for Thai citizens and residents of Thailand. Join us for this special webchat! Date: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 Time: 6:00-7:00pm (Bangkok time) To participate: 1. Go to https://statedept.connectsolutions.com/bangkok 2. Enter as a Guest (Type your name) 3. Submit your questions (We accept questions and comments in advance of, and at any time during the program) We look forward to chatting with you then! Please Note: At this time questions can be submitted in English only.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Leaping the Great Firewall of China

Ace! NewsFlash

How Twitter and other technologies are keeping one step ahead of the censors.

By EMILY PARKER

Google rode into China four years ago on a wave of optimism about the Internet's power to spread information within closed societies. At that time I was living in Hong Kong, where I had been writing about China and the Internet for this newspaper. I described online petitions, vibrant Web communities, and netizens' successful attempts to unearth news that authorities tried to block.

I believed that companies like Google would broaden the market for information. So when Google launched its Chinese site, Google.cn, I was uneasy about the company's decision to censor its search results to comply with Chinese law.

But Google eventually convinced me, along with other skeptics, that it had made the right calculation. "Our continued engagement with China is the best (perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there," the company wrote in its 2006 announcement to launch Google.cn. "We're in this for the long haul."

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Associated Press

Well, so much for that. Yesterday Google announced that it is so fed up with hacking, censorship and China's overall business climate that it has closed down Google.cn. Mainland Chinese users are now redirected to Google's Hong Kong site, where "sensitive" information will no longer be blocked by Google.

China immediately denounced Google's "arrogance" and "pressure tactics." And it appears to already be employing the same Great Firewall of censorship against Google.com.hk as it does against Google.com. Over the short term at least, this is not exactly a victory for Internet freedom.

So what happens now? The good news is that American technology companies can still promote Internet freedom in China. Google tried to bring information to the Chinese people; now let's try bringing Chinese people to the information. In other words, U.S. companies can set up shop outside of China but make it as easy as possible for the Chinese to access their services. Call it Twitter diplomacy.

Twitter, though blocked by the Great Firewall, has a small but fiercely loyal following on the mainland. Chinese use it to break news, offer frank opinions, and find like-minded individuals. Artist and social activist Ai Weiwei recently referred to Twitter as "a ray of light" in "a very dark room."

The fact that Chinese can access this service has much to do with Twitter's design. Twitter has an open application programming interface, or API. Twitter's API allows people to post and retrieve tweets on sites other than Twitter. "Coders in China can still find wholesale access to twitter.com blocked," says Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "The idea is that coders elsewhere get to Twitter, and offer up feeds at their own URLs—which the government has to chase down one by one."

The Twitter API is just one example of an innovative way a U.S. company can help Chinese netizens gain access to uncensored information. Western companies can also address the Great Firewall by developing safer and cheaper virtual private networks that allow Chinese to access the Web as if they were outside of China. What's important is that these are fundamentally technological approaches, not overtly political ones.

Some netizens are thrilled about Google's move. The Chinese twitterverse is alight with words like "justice" and "courageous" and "milestone."

But many Chinese also understand that the problem of censorship is not going away, and they need a more practical, long-term strategy to overcome it. More than one Chinese blogger expressed to me, with a sense of awe, that Google did what they could not. They were not simply referring to Google's confrontation with the Chinese government. They also meant that if things didn't go its way, the company could simply turn and walk out the door.

Ms. Parker, a senior fellow at Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, is writing a book about democracy and the Internet.

China vs Google: proxy for confrontation with the West

Ace! NewsFlash

Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press

Security officers tried to stop people from lighting candles outside Google's Chinese headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday.

By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING — This is a nation that builds dams, high-speed rail lines and skyscrapers with abandon. In newly muscular China, sheer force is not just an art, but a bedrock principle of its seemingly unstoppable rise to global prominence.

Google vs. China

Who has more to lose in the showdown over Internet censorship?

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Related

• Google Faces Fallout as China Reacts to Site Shift (March 24, 2010)

• China’s Internet Giants May Be Stuck There (March 24, 2010)

• Times Topics: Google Inc. | China

Now China has tightened its grip on the much more variegated world of online information, effectively forcingGoogle Inc., the world’s premier information provider, to choose between submitting to Chinese censorship and leaving the world’s largest community of Internet users to its rivals. It chose to leave.

Google’s decision may not cause major problems for China right away, experts said. But in the longer run, they said, China’s intransigent stance on filtering the flow of information within its borders has the potential to weaken its links to the global economy.

It may also sully its image — promoted to its own people as well as to the international community — as an authoritarian country that is economically on the move, perhaps even more so than the sclerotic, democratic West. “The Chinese are very serious about pushing their soft-power agenda,” Bill Bishop, a Beijing Internet entrepreneur and author of the technology blog Digicha, said Tuesday. “Google just put a big hole in that sales pitch, and I think they know that.”

China’s leaders appear fully aware of their dilemma. But at this stage in China’s history, and given the Communist Party’s determination to maintain absolute rule, they still put political control ahead of all other concerns. “What does Google’s exit say? What it says publicly is what everyone deeply engaged in China knows privately,” Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a Brookings Institution scholar and former Clinton administration adviser on China, said in an interview.

“This is a system with very substantial domestic imperfections,” Mr. Lieberthal said. “And the view from afar that this is simply an unstoppable juggernaut — that they have found the keys to the magic kingdom — is not correct. China’s leaders understand this as well as anyone.” The conclusion of Google’s four-year Internet experiment in China — an effort to transplant Western free-speech norms here — was anything but smooth. On Monday, it effectively shut down the search engine it hosted inside China, after declaring in Januarythat it would stop cooperating with Chinese censors.

As Google began redirecting tens of millions of mainland Chinese users early Tuesday, Beijing time, to its Hong Kong-based Web site, google.com.hk, parts of the company’s remaining mainland operations quickly came under pressure from Google’s Chinese partners and from the government itself. China’s biggest cellular communications company, China Mobile, was widely expected to cancel a deal that had placed Google’s search engine on its mobile Internet home page, used by millions of people daily. One official in China’s media industry said that the company was scrapping the deal under government pressure even though it had no replacement lined up.

Censorship, of course, is not new in China. The government has never released its grip on the information industry, and if anything has steadily tightened supervision of the Chinese Web in the past couple of years. Those restrictions have not noticeably inhibited its economic growth, which remained robust even as the West staggered through its worstrecession in decades. But China also does not acknowledge to its own people that it censors the Internet to exclude a wide range of political and social topics that its leaders believe could lead to instability. It does not release information on the number of censors it employs or the technology it uses for the world’s most sophisticated Internet firewall. Its 350 million Internet users, many with fast broadband connections, are assured they have the same effectively limitless access to information and communications that the rest of the world enjoys.

Google publicly challenged that stance in January, and reinforced its ideological opposition to China’s policies by finally pulling the plug on its mainland search engine after a failed round of talks with Chinese officials. That forced Chinese leaders to defend their control of the Web, which they did partly with an outburst of nationalism and vitriol.

The cost, at least with some influential sectors of its own society, could be steep. In the technology sector, Google is viewed as an innovator that has spurred rapid development of the Chinese Web. Its departure will leave some Chinese companies with greater influence, but could also stifle competition, some fear. "Google is good at innovation, and when it leaves, the rest of the companies in China will lack motivation. Without its countervailing power, the industry won’t be as healthy,” said Zhang Yunquan, a professor at the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Fang Xingdong, chief executive of Chinalabs.com, said the vast majority of Chinese Internet companies invested little in research and “simply copy each other’s technology.” With Google’s departure, their profits may rise, but China’s Web space will begin to stagnate, he predicted.

Despite China’s mantra that the Google issue should not be “politicized,” it is, at the end of the day, highly politicized, especially inside China. Xiao Qiang, founder and editor in chief of China Digital Times, said that China’s leaders once saw the Internet as having both political and commercial uses that balanced each other to a degree. “But increasingly they see it as a political space,” he said.

The implication of that thinking, post-Google, is that companies that want to be major players on the Chinese Web will have to prove their political fealty to the leadership, much as traditional media companies do. “Chinese companies have to be collaborators,” Mr. Xiao said. One Western official in China said that the leadership is now treating the Internet as a “core interest,” an issue of sovereignty on which Beijing will brook no intervention. The most commonly cited core interests are Taiwan and Tibet, the third-rail issues in China’s international diplomacy.

That could make it even harder for China to negotiate Internet freedom issues with the United States and other nations. In fact, even among those who argue that China will do just fine without Google, China’s battle with the Internet giant is seen as a proxy for its broader confrontation with the West over rights, trade, climate change, and declining American hegemony. “I believe Google got some support from the U.S. government,” said Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University. “This means the American government will adopt a tougher, more aggressive policy toward China.”

David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai, and Edward Wong and Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 24, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Long Live Google, Fight Chinese Censorship!

Ace! NewsFlash

Google Faces Fallout as China Reacts to Site Shift

Andy Wong/Associated Press

A woman lit a candle in front of Google’s China headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday after the company stopped censoring the Internet for China by shifting its search engine off the mainland.

By MIGUEL HELFT and MICHAEL WINES

Published: March 23, 2010

Google pushed. Now China is pushing back.

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Who has more to lose in the showdown over Internet censorship?

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People laid flowers on the Google logo at its China headquarters building on Tuesday in Beijing.

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The company’s problems in China escalated on Tuesday as its ties to some Chinese partners began to come apart and the government reacted angrily to Google’s attempt to bypass government censors.

Google, the world’s largest Internet company, once viewed China, the world’s largest Internet market, as a bottomless well of opportunity with nearly 400 million Web users, and an even larger number of potential customers for its nascent, but vital, mobile phone business.

But by directing search users in China to its uncensored search engine based in Hong Kong, Google may have jeopardized it long-range plans.

“I don’t understand their calculation,” said J. Stapleton Roy, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “I do not see how Google could have concluded that they could have faced down the Chinese on a domestic censorship issue,” said Mr. Roy, a former United States ambassador to China.

Google called the move sensible and said it hoped to keep its sales, research and other operations in China.

But some of those other businesses quickly came under pressure.China Mobile, the biggest cellular communications company in China and one of Google’s earliest partners in its foray into smartphones, was expected to cancel a deal that had placed Google’s search engine on its mobile Web home page. Millions of people use the page daily. In interviews, business executives close to industry officials said China Mobile was planning to scrap the deal under government pressure, although it had yet to find a replacement.

Similarly, China’s second-largest mobile company, China Unicom, was said by analysts and others to have delayed or scrapped the imminent introduction of a cellphone based on Google’s Android platform. One popular Web portal, Tom.com, already ceased using Google to power its search engine. The company is controlled by Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire who has close ties to the Chinese government.

Technology analysts and the business executives said Google might also face problems in keeping its advertising sales force, which is crucial to the success of its Chinese language service on PCs and mobile phones.

In an interview on Tuesday, David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said he did not see the company’s decision to serve Chinese search customers from outside China as an act of defiance. He said the move was consistent with Chinese law and with the company’s goal to stop participating in censorship. While it is possible that Google’s prospects in China could suffer, the company has yet to see any concrete business impact from its decision, he said.

“We certainly expected that if we take a stand around censorship that the government doesn’t like that it would have an impact on our business,” Mr. Drummond said. “We understood that as a possibility.”

But Mr. Drummond said that over time, Google would benefit from taking a principled stand in China and elsewhere. “It is good for our business to push for free expression,” he said.

Several analysts suggested that the government could shut down the company’s Chinese search service entirely by blocking access to Google’s mainland address, google.cn, or to its Hong Kong Web site,google.com.hk, though that had not happened as of Tuesday.

Users who went to google.cn were automatically being sent togoogle.com.hk. Google’s search engine in Hong Kong provides results in the simplified Chinese characters that mainland Chinese use. Chinese in Hong Kong use the traditional characters, which can contain more strokes and are more difficult to read and write. Government firewalls either disabled searches for highly objectionable terms completely or blocked links to certain results. That had typically been the case before Google’s action, only now millions more visitors were liable to encounter the disrupted access to an uncensored site.

Some China experts say they were perplexed by Google’s handling of the crisis, given its stated goals of keeping business operations in China.

David M. Lampton, director of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said it was not surprising for China to balk at the idea of an American company using Hong Kong, and China’s own “one country, two systems” policy, as a way around censorship.

“That would be seen as fundamentally politically subversive in China,” Mr. Lampton said. “I am not sure whether it was an attempt by Google to give the Chinese a way out, but instead it magnified the political controversy.”

Others said Google’s move also put Chinese authorities in a difficult situation, as the government might be wary of agitating loyal Google users in China, who tend to be highly educated and vocal.

“To block Google entirely is not necessarily a desirable outcome for the government,” said Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting, a technology research firm in Beijing. “It’s going to boil down to whether authorities feel it is acceptable for users to be redirected to that site without having to figure it out themselves.”

The potential loss of cellphone search customers could prove particularly painful over time, analysts say. As on PCs, Google makes money on mobile phones when people click on its ads. If carriers like China Mobile and China Unicom remove Google as their principal mobile search service, it could cut Google’s mobile business.

Also, the spread of Android phones, which is just beginning in China, was meant by Google to ensure the availability of its services like search and maps on smartphones. Yet this month, Motorola replaced Google’s search on Android phones in China with Bing, Microsoft’s rival service, because of the uncertainty surrounding Google’s fate in the country.

Estimates from analysts and some Google insiders put the company’s annual revenue in China at $300 million to $600 million, a small fraction of Google’s nearly $24 billion in annual sales. But investors were counting on that strategically important business to grow rapidly.

“Having that potential is worth quite a bit to investors,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech.

Google shares have lost nearly 6 percent of their value since the company said in January that it might pull out of China. During the same period, the Nasdaq 100 index rose by nearly 5 percent.

For his part, Sergey Brin, a Google founder and its president of technology, on Monday held out the possibility that some day Google and China would patch up their differences.

“Perhaps we can return to serving mainland China in the future,” he said.

Edward Wong, Jonathan Ansfield and Xiyun Yang contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 24, 2010, on page B1 of the New York edition.

HUMBOLDT STATE UNIVERSITY’S ADMISSION FOR FALL 2010 IS OPEN UNTIL MAY 31

Ace! NewsFlash

Humboldt State University’s admission for fall 2010 is open until May 31, 2010 for international undergraduate students and graduate MBA students only. HSU offers small classes that allow close student-teacher interaction and strong academics.You could join their growing international student population of 140 students from over 30 countries. Humboldt State is a California State University which combines academic excellence with real-world experience and recreational pursuits in a perfect natural setting for studying and living, located 5 hours north of San Francisco in the heart of the ancient redwood forests on the California coast. At HSU, students can study, surf, and catch a concert, all in a single day.

Five percent of international students receive financial assistance in the form of partial tuition waivers (in exchange for working in various HSU offices). At least 25% of international students work on campus.

Academics & Rankings

As one of 7,800 students at Humboldt State University, a student can choose from 61 academically-rigorous majors. In classes with an average of 24 students, professors provide personalized attention to help students with their studies.

· Humboldt State has been named a “Best Western College” and a “College with a Conscience” by the 2008 Princeton Review.

· U.S. News & World Report ranks HSU among the best western universities with masters’ programs.

· HSU is internationally known for its programs in the natural sciences including Forestry, Wildlife, Biology, and Oceanography.

· Dedicated to undergraduate research, HSU provides hands-on experience in all programs.

Majors

A wide range of subjects as well as unique majors (49 undergraduate majors and 12 graduate programs). For a complete list of all the majors and programs offered at HSU, please go to www.humboldt.edu/~humboldt/programs/type.

Intensive English Language Institute (IELI)

The IELI offers English language courses for students in small classes, with personalized attention, and cultural and recreational activities that foster a sense of belonging. Students who are ready to take university classes while continuing to improve their English skills can enroll in the IELI Bridge program. Visit http://www.humboldt.edu/~ieli for more information.

Campus and Community Life

· The International Programs Office staff support international students as well as providing study abroad advising, and advise students on their academic choices and adjusting to life in California.

· The Global Connections Club, along with other student clubs, helps make Humboldt a home away from home. On campus, students can use modern exercise equipment in the Recreation Center; learn SCUBA diving in the HSU pool; practice T’ai Chi; attend world class-concerts; and enjoy festivals and theater performances; and go hiking through the redwood forests.

· Regional bus service is free to all HSU students. Routes take students north to the airport and to the beaches of Trinidad or south to the city of Eureka and beyond.

Housing and Dining

Many students live on campus in residence halls, including the Special Living Communities which house students with common interests. The International Living Community houses international and American students and promotes the sharing of their experiences and cultures. Other students find houses and apartments in Arcata and nearby towns.

Undergraduate & Graduate MBA Admission

Website has admissions information for international students, including the application process, requirements, costs, and visa information. Please visit www.humboldt.edu/international.

Admission for international undergraduate students and MBA graduate students for the fall 2010 semester is open until 31 May 2010. Please note that complete applications (the application and all supporting documents) must be received by 31 May for consideration for the fall 2010 semester.

MBA graduate students need to contact the School of Business as well as applying to Humboldt State. Please go to http://www.humboldt.edu/~sbe/degrees/mba.html for additional information on the MBA, including entrance requirements.

Explore

Under “explore”, http://www.humboldt.edu/explore/, you will see Humboldt State’s location, take a virtual tour of the campus, and view pictures of students learning, living, and playing.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

New US$100 notes coming soon!

Ace! NewsFlash

HOT NEWS! U.S. Government to Unveil New $100 Note

The new design for the US$100 note will make its debut on Wednesday, April 21. Learn more here… (Read More)

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Reasons to avoid Chiang Mai for Spring Break!

Ace! NewsFlash

Clouds with no silver lining

Chiang Mai, the jewel of northern Thailand, is shrouded in a blanket of cancerous smoke. Famous tourist landmarks like Doi Suthep lie hidden, smothered by smog and invisible to the eye

Chiang Mai is choking, as is most of northern Thailand. Grey smoke billows from thousands of deliberately lit fires, both large and small. Mountains, temples and city tower blocks dim into a dull grey background. An ineffectual sun tries to shine through the dusty haze.

DELIBERATELY LIT: Many of the fires have been lit by locals

Take a drive in any direction and it looks like a scorched earth policy has been enacted for Chiang Mai and its surrounds. Roadside shrubs and grass verges are burnt to blackened lanes; trees planted on centre road median strips are crisped to their charcoaled bare branches.

Long-term residents make plans to take refuge in southern beach towns. Others, unable to get away, spend time following the rising air quality figures on the Pollution Control Department's website with little hope of relief from the smoke. Emergency rooms at most of the city's hospitals juggle services to cope with the increase in people coming in with asthma, allergies, chronic bronchitis, pneumonia and emphysema.

• Dr Chaicharn Pothirat, the head of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Allergy at the Department of Medicine at Chiang Mai University, says once the air quality in Chiang Mai drops, peoples' health risks increase. "The number of people seeking emergency help for asthma, allergies and COPD [Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease] is much higher now the air is so polluted and today the PM10 levels are so high they are dangerous."

Welcome to Chiang Mai, if you can make out the sign

PM10 levels are used to indicate the density of miniscule particulate matter in the air we breathe. The particles are so small the human eye cannot see them, but they can be lethal if these tiny particles find their way into our lungs and stay.

Numerous international and local scientific papers have identified cancer as the most common cause of death in Thailand and lung cancer as the second. A paper put out by the National Cancer Institute identifies lung cancer as the top cancer killer of Chiang Mai men and the second in women.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says particulate matter (PM) "affects more people than any other pollutant. The major components of PM are sulfate, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, carbon, mineral dust and water. It consists of a complex mixture of solid and liquid particles of organic and inorganic substances suspended in the air".

The Pollution Control Board, Regional Area Air Quality Data webpage shows Chiang Mai's PM10 levels are dangerously high at 268.4, Mae Sai 328 and Mae Hong Son a staggering 437.8. To put the severity of northern Thailand's current high figures in context, international standards consider anything more than 50 a serious threat. Dr Chaicharn says Chiang Mai PM10 is at least five times higher than the acceptable international standards. Some doctors argue there is no such thing as "safe levels" of particulate matter.

The World Health Organization's Fact Sheet #313 estimates that air pollution causes two million premature deaths worldwide each year. WHO's fact sheet also paints a disturbing picture for Chiang Mai and northern Thailand residents, citing that "even relatively low concentrations of air pollutants have been related to a range of adverse health effects".

HAZE: The smoke from fires has limited views of the mountains in the North of the country.

Wandee loves Chiang Mai's lifestyle and moved there from Bangkok to work as a writer and to raise her four-year-old son, but now says she may have to consider leaving if the pollution does not improve. Speaking from her sickbed she explained.

"Last year I took my son to Bangkok because of the smoke. This year I'm sick. My eyes want to cry. My throat hurts. I cough all day and night. I can't sleep, I can't breathe and my nose is blocked. I'm worried about my son - he's so young. I'm thinking of taking him to Bangkok. It's expensive, but my son's health is more important. I've had to take him for the last two years. It's ironic, but I moved to Chiang Mai from Bangkok because I thought the air was good."

Journalist Jeff Hodson has had enough. "I can't take it any more. Every year the politicians talk and talk and talk, but nothing gets done to stop the pollution." This is the third year the Hodson family has evacuated because of the smoke. "Last year we left for five weeks. My eyes sting, my kids have coughs and my wife has headaches. They're going crazy locked inside all day. My kids are two and four."

Hodson says it cost him about 100,000 baht to move out last year and wonders if there's not some way citizens can take a class action against the government for failing to enforce laws to stop the burning. "Someone has to take responsibility, someone has to enforce the law. There are serious health risks involved, like cancers. What price do we put on our children's health?"

But not everybody is able to leave the city. Ewun has been driving a tuk tuk around Chiang Mai for four years and says Chiang Mai's smog is getting worse. "I'm used to pollution, but I can't handle this. My eyes are sore, I can't see and my throat hurts. Tourists are running away, they don't want to come here when it's like this. Yesterday, I couldn't take any more. I went home. I'm losing money, my customers all complain. It's too smokey to work. Someone should fix it."

But finding "someone" to fix the annual burning off is not easy. A trawl of newspaper clippings shows there is plenty of media space devoted to local politicians talking about how they plan to fix the pollution. Buzz words like recycling, eco-friendly, composting, pollution hotlines, posters, clean air campaigns and healthy food fairs all are uttered.

In a recent edition of The Chiang Mai Mail, Boonlert Buranupakorn, the president of Chiang Mai's Provincial Authority, said he planned to work with agencies to "speed up the installation of water spraying machines around the city roads to make the city wet so as to reduce dust in the air".

But residents say it's the same every year. Politicians and city officials talk, but nothing changes. Politicians have blamed everyone from Korean Bar-B-Que restaurants, slash and burn hill farmers, backyard rubbish burners, gardeners and even neighbouring countries such as Laos and Burma for the polluting smoke.

Meanwhile, in spite of the political spin from officials and government officers, northern Thailand continues to burn, often within sight of the law enforcers. Somchai is a professional driver. He drives a luxury mini-van to tourist spots and is a regular traveller on northern roads. He says he was surprised to see land burning opposite a fire fighting office. "They advertise their number for us to call if we see a fire. It's a joke - government officials do nothing. They just talk, but never take action." Somchai says politicians should be aware that the smoke pollution affects everyone. "People are getting angry. My customers don't like it, it's bad for my kids, the smoke and roadside fires makes it dangerous to drive."

A drive out of Chiang Mai confirms what Somchai says. A mountain top, necklaced with flames and billowing smoke, is within a couple of hundred metres of an official checkpoint. Somchai says this year the indiscriminate burning has worsened. "Nobody seems to care. Every year it's the same. They make noises about doing clean-ups, but nothing ever gets done. It will be the same again next year."

Dr Chaicharn agrees and says officials have to do more and policy makers have to take the annual smog seriously. "I and my colleagues are fed-up of dealing with sickness that could be prevented if policy makers tackled the problems with serious intent and stopped the burning before it's too late."

Hodson, like most of the people interviewed or spoken to for this article, felt politicians were more part of the problem than the solution, and if nothing is done he'll have little option but to take his young family elsewhere. "Chiang Mai is a great place, but the pollution is the main reason I won't be staying long-term. Most of the time it's a lovely place, but when they start burning I can't stop them and the government doesn't stop them. What choice do we have?"

The WHO acknowledges air quality control is not something individuals can do much about. "Exposure to air pollutants is largely beyond the control of individuals and requires action by public authorities at the national, regional and even international levels."

In the meantime, Dr Chaicharn says parents should follow his advice. "Don't take exercise outdoors, while the air quality is bad. Keep your children inside. If you have to go outside, wear a mask and if you drive a car, don't take air from the outside. This pollution not only affects lungs, but is also a factor for people with diabetes, high blood pressure, circulatory diseases and heart conditions."

Dr Chaicharn and his colleagues have just completed a study that proves that when the PM10 levels increase then so does the number of people seeking emergency care. "When the PM10 levels go up, then so does the number of people requiring treatment for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Every time the PM10 increases by 10% we see an increase of two to three per cent of people needing emergency treatment."

Somchai says if government policy makers don't enforce the laws and curb the annual burning, Chiang Mai might soon become infamous as the lung cancer research capital of Thailand.

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