Society

When the Swedish furniture giant Ikea first opened its shop in Beijing in 1999, it hoped Beijingers would embrace its Scandinavian style of minimalism. It achieved its goal.

Danish freelance furniture designer Thomas Winther-Rasmussen, 33, said it's the emphasis of light in the rooms that makes Scandinavian design and furniture different from others.

In Scandinavia, it gets dark many hours earlier in winter while in summer the night shortens.

Furniture in a typical Scandinavian home reflects this. The furniture would be made of blond woods, like beech, ash, pine and oak, instead of dark woods often used in southern European countries. And the fabrics are natural materials, like linen and cotton.

Winther said the expression "Scandinavian design" is just a marketing term.

It refers to a certain design movement in Scandinavia that started in the 1950s.

It is also a kind of democratization of furniture with the aim of making the well-designed furniture available to the masses, he said, adding "something that IKEA in Sweden and FDB furniture in Denmark have adopted".

The design of the furniture would generally be light-colored, airy and minimalist with sleek lines and little decoration.

"The designs are created out of a simple basic idea," Winther said.

"For example, a chair, the designer has an idea for the construction and way of sitting, and then he would work with the lines of the chair to achieve this lightness and simplicity."

Classic Scandinavian furniture designers are generally craftsmen who have a very good feeling for the structural capabilities and the quality of the wood.

"This approach is part of reason why the Scandinavian designs stay so timeless," he said.

Winther also believes that the ideas behind the Scandinavian design reflect the Scandinavian society.

"We are quite open, with democracy and relatively little corruption," he said.

"I believe the simplicity, honesty and lightness of our furniture reflects the designers' progressive thinking and liberation of the mind."

While some Chinese buy famous Danish designer Arne Jakobsen's egg chair at 100,000-120,000 yuan each, some Chinese people prefer Italian or French styles.

Winther believes that Chinese people tend to look for something that is more elaborate and with more decoration.

"There is still no real appreciation of the basic and natural among Chinese," he said.

"But maybe Ikea will change that."

A court in East China Wednesday handed down jail terms of up to three years to 11 people for their roles in writing and distributing viruses designated to steal usernames and passwords of online games.

Lv Yizhong and Zeng Yifu wrote Trojan horse viruses that were used to steal 5.3 million usernames and passwords of online games, found the Gulou District People's Court in Xuzhou city, Jiangsu province.

Yan Renhai, his girlfriend Chen Huiting and dozens other agents sold or used the viruses to steal online game coins and virtual equipment for illegal gains, the court said.

Lv and Zeng made 646,000 yuan ($94,597) in illegal gains, and Yan and Chen made 310,000 yuan.

Lv was sentenced to three years in jail and Zeng two and a half years. Yan was sentenced to two years and eight months and Chen, two years, in prison, according to the court.

The 11 also received a total fine of 833,000 yuan ($121,980).

A total of 80 people from 16 provinces and municipalities were involved in the 30-million-yuan case. Dozens others in the case are to receive court sentences in the near future.

China has begun constructing a bridge to link southern Guangdong province, China's main manufacturing hub, with Hong Kong and Macau.

When completed by 2016, officials say it will be the world's "longest sea-crossing bridge" - spanning nearly 50km (30 miles).

One branch of the bridge will reach Zhuhai in Guangdong province.

A remarkable 44% of Americans believe China is the world's leading economic power and only 27% think the U.S. is, according to a recent survey by the Pew Center. James Fallows, the Atlantic Monthly journalist, thinks that is proof that Americans have lost their minds. He argues that China can't be the world's leading economic power. Too many of its people live without indoor plumbing, no mainland science researcher has won a Nobel Prize and the country has no global brands. How can a place like that be an economic superpower?

The normally adroit Fallows surprisingly misses the real point. China already is a superpower in many regards. Despite its poverty, no matter what industry you're in or where in the world you operate, you can no longer ignore China's economic might. That is power.

Here are three trends to look for in 2010 that demonstrate China's superpower status:

First, China is wielding national influence in places it never affected before. Over the last several decades it provided an ideological counterpoint to the United States, doing business in its push for oil with unsavory regimes like Iran and Sudan that democracies traditionally wouldn't work with. Now China is gaining influence with America's closest allies, too. During the financial crisis it doled out billions in contracts in Great Britain and France. This year it surpassed the U.S. to become the largest trading partner of both Japan and Brazil. It conducts more than $100 billion a year in trade with both the Middle East and Africa. In Africa it is laying down highways and other infrastructure projects. Already 750,000 Chinese workers have moved there.