Baidu finally pushing users to upgrade from IE6

Finally there seems to be an initiative to push mainline China users into the 21st Century on the web.

If you browser Baidu.com with Internet Explorer 6, then you'll find a message attached to the front page:

Interestingly they only link to IE8, and some other Chinese related browser, which by the way are all power by IE. (The browser simply use an IE8 component to display the pages, the interface is all custom, but it is kind of cheating in my opinion).

What about Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc..?  Well a lot of Chinese websites relay on (horrible) ActiveX components. Even the main Chinese bank (Bank of China), requires an IE ActiveX component to be installed if you want to do online transactions. If you are running Linux, BSD or Mac then you are screwed.

China just isn't ready for the rest of the world. When you apply this statement to the Internet world, then  websites and the browser situation is just the tip of the iceberg.

Perhaps this closed, basis directional way of business will do China wonders in the short-term. They certainly want to keep things 'their own way' and try to avoid following things from outside as much as possible. But in the long run, the world is a interlinked web of financial and data transactions. Long-term growth for China may be hampered, they there are actually already signs of slow-down in the news.

For this reason, I think India is going to be better off in the long, they are far more open and more innovative in many ways. Economist Yasheng Huang seems to agree with this view too.