Digital veteran Benjamin Joffe explains how innovation in China’s digital scene develops. How are China’s winning IT companies developing in a very competitive market, and how they make money.

After becoming the shop floor of the world, China is now focusing on its position as global innovator. IMD-professor Bill Fischer examines in Forbes whether those ambitions can become true. Counting patents is certainly not the way.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted on June 1 its first test flight with the Silver Hawk UAV in the Binhai area, targeting commucation between navy vessels at sea, writes Wendell Minnick in Defense News.

Google might still be hoping to get another foot into the China market, but internet entrepreneur Marc van der Chijs reports now on his weblog that a local company is successfully filling the void for Google Streetview, already covering 41 cities.

China’s regulators have been scrapping preferential treatment of local firm to win procurement contracts from the government, originally meant to strengthen indigenous innovation. “It is a sign the government is listening to the needs of foreign companies,” says Shaun Rein in the China Daily.

The lack of an independent legal system is holding back China’s innovative power; protecting the rights of entrepreneurs and innovators is key, business analyst Paul French tells in NPR. And then there is social welfare, health care pensions and a few other things.

The chain of disasters at the nuclear plan in Fukushima have caused a shock in China’s energy policies, but solar and wind power industries in particular are beneficiaries of Japan’s nuclear tragedy, writes energy expert Bill Dodson.
“The Chinese alternative energy business has found ways to turn danger into opportunity.”

Most social media users know these non-human ‘followers’, who increase traffic without participating in a real conversation. Sam Flemming reports that his company CIC has analyzed these skeleton or zombie users. News: internet celebrity Lee Kaifu has a million of them.

Competitors from China are becoming better, IMD-professor Bill Fischer concludes in Forbes. Cheap labor and competitive pricing are replaced by a far greater asset: listening better to their clients. Fischer zooms in on UnionPay, China’s only electronic retail network.

Shanghai-based erial internet entrepreneur Marc van der Chijs reports on his weblog about the slightly disappointing Techcrunch Disrupt conference in New York.