China Knows a Good Thing When they See It

Here's an order to make a salesperson's day: China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS), which oversees the country's police force, plans to issue more than 1.3 billion second-generation resident identification cards based on RFID (radio frequency identification) chips, according to an industry analyst at In-Stat China.

I've used this Golden Arches icon here just to make the point that China is not the technological or cultural backwater of civilization some people would want to assume it is. Not that eating gross hamburgers makes a person civilized... but China keeps an eye on the world outside... they are not stupid. Of course, they don't have that thorny little issue of privacy cropping up in their midst. A person doing that over there runs the risk it would seem of having their 'identity' whisked away and made forever anonymous... out of sight, out of mind, out of range?

The article goes on to say: The number of tags shipped annually in China is expected to rise quickly in coming years, hitting total sales of 2.9 billion tags by 2009...

Have it your way? Well, not exactly, but it is still good news for the future of RFID applications and tag component pricing.