Subject: File: "ORGINTRO 1"

From: BITNET list server at KENTVM (1.7f) <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 May 1993 12:12:26 -0500

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **
*                                                                          *
* ORGANIZATION  INTRODUCTIONS                                              *
*        series                                           Issue: 1         *
*              debut                                      Nov. 16, 1989    *
*                                                                          *
*    ---  /------      /     |        |       |---------|       |          *
*        /|-----|     /---/  |   |----|----|  | ---|--- |      /\          *
*    \    |  |  |    /   /   \   |    |    |  | ___|___ |     /  \         *
*        -|--+--|-    \ /    |\  |----|----|  |    | \  |    /    \        *
*     /   |  |  |     / \    |        |       | ---|--- |   /      \       *
*    /    |--|--|    /       |        |       |---------|  /        \__    *
*                                                                          *
*                                                                          *
* China Net                                      ----------  \/  ----------*
* China News Digest                                 -----   CCCS   -----   *
* China Study Forum                                     ---  /\  ---       *
* Social Culture China                                                     *
*                                                                          *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **
---------------------------  Table of Content ------------------------------

No. Subject                                                       # of lines

0.  Preface                                                           98
1.  Introduction of E-mail Newsgroup:  Social.Culture.China           85
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
No. 0

                             Preface

    Numerous organizations have been established by overseas Chinese since
they came across the Pacific Ocean. Some of them are just discussion groups
with a few sores of participants, others are big associations, claiming tens
of thousands of members; some are political, others are professional. As a
Chinese living overseas now, or  for anyone who are interested in China and
Chinese, it is quite natural to ask the following questions:

1). What are the motivations that make them associated?
2). How well are they organized?
3). What function are they playing in the overseas Chinese communities?
4). What are the influences of their activities on the situations in China?

    Trying to answer these questions, we initiated this program of
Organization Introduction. We have sent letters to about 30 organizations
listed in the Appendix to invite them to introduce themselves to our
readers. Now we have received a number of Introductions and some others have
promised to send their Introductions later. Here we express our sincere
thanks to  those who have made their contributions to make this program
possible. Also we hope that more organizations will join this program.

    Now we start posting the Introductions we have got to our readers. we
welcome comments and suggestion from our readers about this program.
However, we encourage our readers who would like to know more about a
specific organization to contact the organization of his interest directly.

    We would highly appreciate any help from our readers by providing more
information about any overseas Chinese Organizations that are not listed in
the Appendix. We would like to get as many organizations to participate as
possible.

    Thank you for your interest and we hope that you will enjoy this
program.

                             Dong Ping Deng (Social Culture China)
                             Weihe Guan (China-net)
                             Hong Lin   (China Study Forum)
                             Gang Xu    (China News Digest)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Appendix: List of Organizations Invited

Invitation letters have been sent to the following organizations:

1) The Chinese Association of Agricultural Students and Scholar (CAASS)
2) American Association of Chinese Comparative Literature (AACCL)
3) Chinese Business Association (CBA)
4) Chinese Young Economists Society (CYES)
5) The Chinese Historians in US (CH)
6) Association of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers in North America
   and Europe (OCPA)
7) The Chinese Political Scientists Association
8) Sino-eco (Chinese Ecologists Club)
9) China News Digest (ND)                 (e-mail group)
10) China Net                             (e-mail group)
11) China Study Forum (CSF)               (e-mail group)
12) Social Culture China (SCC)            (e-mail group)
13) AI HUA Society       (Ai HUA SHE)
14) Visa-net                              (e-mail group)
15) The National Coordination Committee on Chinese Student Affairs (CCSA)
16) Alliance of Chinese Patriots
17) Chinese Alliance For Democracy (MIN LIAN)
18) Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC)
19) Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars in Canada (FCSSC)
20) Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars in US (IFCSS)
21) Silicon Valley for Democracy in China
22) The Front of Democracy in China (MIN ZHEN)
23) Human Rights in China (ZHONG GUO REN QUAN)
24) Press Freedom Herald                  (news paper)
25) The voice of June 4th                 (radio station)
26) The Chinese Intellectual              (magazine)
27) The Outcry                            (magazine)
28) The Overseas Chinese Voice            (magazine)

PS. We would highly appreciate it if anyone would provide us with the
mailing address  or the phone number of the following organization so that
we can send our invitation letter to it:

29) United Association of Students and Scholars of People's Republic of
    China (UASSPRC)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

No. 1

======     A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO SOC.CULTURE.CHINA NEWSGROUP      ======

                     By Sun, Kang (Sun@YaleVMS)

1. What is S.C.C.?

S.C.C.  (stands for Soc.Culture.China) is a  NEWSGROUP  on  the  world-wide
computer network USENET.    It was created on November 17, 1987.  Since the
beginning, there have been many articles of  different  subjects,  cute  or
not,  poured  into  this  newsgroup, which engender many debates as one can
imagine.  All kinds of discussions,  debates,  information  exchange,  news
update  happen  on  SCC. It reaches to countries like USA, Canada, England,
Australia,  West  Germany,  Japan,  France,  Norway,  etc.  Its  readership
accounts  to  about  9,000 worldwide, and its traffic is about 100 articles
daily in average.

2. Brief history

Early in 1987, a project under the the name "ChinaNet" was  proposed  by  a
research  group  at  Texas  A&M University to connect BITNet to China. This
project immediately attracted many  Chinese  students  and  scholars.  They
tried  their best to help with the project. Meanwhile, a mailing list, also
called ChinaNet, was created to coordinate the efforts. As  more  and  more
people  signed  up  to  the list, ChinaNet's popularity increased daily. It
played an important role in coordinating  the  1987  Open  Letter  Campaign
simply  because  it was then the most convenient way to reach large Chinese
population. The mailing list soon became  moderated  because  of  too  much
irrelevant  debate  through it. It was clear then that a media dedicated to
China and Chinese affair was in demand. Most of the ChinaNet readers  voted
"yes"  to  the  motion of forming a newsgroup. So came S.C.C.. Although the
ChinaNet project was aborted for ridiculous reasons, S.C.C. stands  active.
Note that the "ChinaNet" mailing list in this article has little to do with
the "China-net", which is a relative young mailing list based on Stanford.

3. How a newsgroup differs from mailing list.

Consider the two ways of getting information: post mail and bulletin board.
If  you  happen to be on a mailing list, (junk mail) comes to your mailbox,
which you either have to read or discard. If you don't  do  anything,  your
mail will soon pile up in your mailbox; while you go to read bulletin board
as you wish. Basically, a newsgroup is a like a  column  on  an  electronic
bulletin  board.  In  particular, S.C.C. is a column dedicated to China and
Chinese affair on the world-wide bulletin board named USENET. But you don't
have  to  live  in the same town or nearby to read the same bulletin board.
Electronically, living in the same town means having access to or "residing
on"  the  same network. Newsgroup articles are stored in a public area of a
nearby computer shared by many computers  and  users.  A  program,  usually
under  the  name RNews, NetNews, News, etc, is designed to read and to post
news articles. You can usually decide if  you  want  to  read  or  to  skip
articles of particular subjects or columns (newsgroups).

4. For Non-USENET residents

For  those  non-USENet  residents,  a  voluntary  rebroadcasting service of
S.C.C.  has been established in the form of a  mailing  list.  The  service
first  started  in  Cornell  University,  then  moved  to  Carnegie  Mellon
University  and  now  is  stationed  in  Yale  University  with   automatic
rebroadcasting  mechanism.  (The  mailing list is still handled in CMU.) If
you sign up to the service, you will get archived article packages daily in
your E-mailbox. Make sure you don't have direct access to USENET before you
sign up to our service, so to avoid unnecessary overflow in your mailbox.

To   subscribe  to  S.C.C   rebroadcasting   service,   send   E-mail    to
[email-masked] with Subject line: Sub SCC-L full_name.

And  to  cancel  your  subscription,  send  E-mail to the same address with
Subject line : Signoff SCC-L.

For readers from Canada, send your subscription and unsubscription  request
to [email-masked].

Happy networking :-))

-----------------
Disclaimer:  Part  of  this text is taken from an old and longer version of
"Introduction to S.C.C.", which  was written  jointly by many  people. This
author likes to acknowledge their efforts.

-----------------
About  the  author:  Mr.  Sun,  Kang,  Vice President of the Association of
Chinese Students and Scholars at  Yale  (ACSSY)  for the 1989-90  term,  is
currently  working  for  his Ph.D degree in Robotics. In his spare time, he
enjoys hacking on computer networks and his Mac+. His well-regarded work on
network includes  the S.C.C. broadcasting  service  and a Survey on Chinese
Word Processors.