Get Paid for Reading Chinese News!

I seem to remember some hype a while back about a company that wanted to pay people for surfing the internet. It seems to have faded into obscurity since then. What I never expected is that now a Chinese company seems to be trying something similar! It’s called “NewsBar” (or something). [Note: As China is still happily suckling at Bill Gates' bosom at least as far as browsers are concerned, this page is not Mozilla friendly.]

It works like this. You download the site’s “newsbar” and install it on your computer. Then you can accrue “news points” by reading Chinese news online (3-4 hours per day, max). At the end of the month, all “news points” are converted to RMB based on that month’s conversion rate (which varies, but has a guaranteed minimum value). The example they gave in the FAQ was someone earning 200 RMB in one month for 4,750,000 “news points.” I have no idea exactly how newspoints are calculated, and the FAQ doesn’t say.

The money can either be electronically deposited into one’s account or a money order can be sent by mail. 30 RMB is the minimum balance to cash out.

I just never would have imagined something like this would be attempted in China at this point. What’s next? Private websites earning real revenue through internet advertising in China??