According to the BBC, overseas hackers have been disrupting Chinese websites for the past month. At stake in this online battle? The independence of Tibet and other politically sensible topics that have brought China to the center of media attention.

One the latest targets of the cyber-attacks has been ”Red Heart”, a website movement in which 7 million Chinese MSN users added a patriotic red heart to their usernames. The hackers posted the Tibet independence flag on 5sai.com, the site that initiated the movement. The hacking also came with the usual ”denial of service” (DoS). The attackers’ IP addresses were in some cases attributed to Europe - although one should keep in mind that it is notoriously difficult to determine with a high level of precision who is behind a cyber-attack. As the Olympics come closer and tension does not seem to decrease it looks like, for once, it is time to look West.

Spontaneous patriotic campaigns by Internet users are not unheard of, even in China. The (mistaken?) bombing of the Belgrade embassy by the US air force had prompted a number of serious hackings of american governmental websites - including the homepage of the U.S. embassy in Beijing and U.S. Department of Interior. It is however one of the first large-scale hacktivist movement against Chinese sites. It looks like the Games have already started on the Internet.

Will widgets (software applications) allow the emergence of truly global mobile operators? Last week Vodafone and China Mobile (600 million subscribers together) joined with Softbank to launch the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL). Their focus is on improving mobile’s user interface, and in particular enable different widgets and applications to run smoothly on different handset platforms and operating systems across different mobile operators.

Behind JIL’s widgets project something more profound is taking place. Remember that the world’s two largest mobile phone operators entered into a strategic alliance in 2000 (sealed by Vodafone’s USD 2.5 billion acquisition of 2% of China Mobile). They have been collaborating on a number of projects over the years - more recently they jointly backed LTE, preparing the ground for 4G. At stake this time is no less than the development of a universal software specification.

So is this the signal that the two operators are finally coming out of the woods and prepared to use their huge subscriber base to drive the future of the mobile industry? For sure, cooperation will be useful to speed the roll-out of mobile internet services. It will also allow them to better face the upcoming battle with Google and Yahoo  - who are also keen to occupy the mobile space. It is also interesting for China Mobile - and China in general - since it will be one of the first attempt to approach standardization in a bottom-up fashion - from the market - rather than top-down - from the government. We may be witnessing China Mobile’s first steps into becoming a global mobile operator…