Weblog with daily updates of the news on a harmonious, socialist society, from the perspective of internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and principal of the China Speakers Bureau Fons Tuinstra
Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr
Labels: AgBank, China, China Speakers Bureau, real estate, Shaun Rein
Changing families valuesFor Western companies, the rise of the female consumer in China is a welcome change. For years, multinationals ignored Chinese women because their contribution to household income was so small—a fact “that’s changed dramatically,” says Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group. In the 1950s women contributed just 20 percent of household income. That rose to about 40 percent in the 1990s and then reached 50 percent last year, according to Rein....But those women might have other ambitions than the women in the US or Europe today, says Paul French:
Rein’s firm recently found that women younger than 35 are the most optimistic segment in China, with a whopping 80 percent of the 3,500 women surveyed saying they’ll spend more in the second half of 2010 than they did in the first half. With trends like these, Chinese women may bring new meaning to the term “the power of the purse.”
At the same time, advertisers are finding that Chinese women crave security, and that portraying women in advertising as fully independent may not work. Paul French, founder of Shanghai market research firm Access Asia, says women want job success, a husband, and 1.0 children with a villa in the suburbs, so advertisements are “similar to cupcake ads in America in 1953,” he says. “Let’s create the perfect family.”And warns Tom Doctoroff:
“Chinese women are not indulgent consumers,” says Tom Doctoroff, greater China CEO at the advertising agency JWT.More in Newsweek.
Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, householdd, Paul French, Shaun Rein, Tom Doctoroff, women
Wendel Minnick by Fantake via FlickrThe announcement came during a two-day tri-service military exercise in southern Taiwan from Aug. 24-25.
During the exercise, a Ministry of National Defense (MND) source said the radar deal was part of phase two of the IDF's F-CK-1C/D Hsiang Sheng upgrade program. Specifics of the deal were not released.China has not yet reacted.
Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, military, USA., Wendell Minnick
Shaun Rein by Fantake via FlickrLook at Google. Our research suggests that Google failed in China in large part because consumers believed that Baidu had far better Chinese-language search capabilities, not just because of an unfair playing field. In head-to-head search comparisons we conducted, Baidu's results weren't necessarily much better than Google's, but its branding as the site that knows Chinese better than Google and that has technology as good has helped it dominate. Unused to serious local competition, Google was slow to roll out local services and marketing campaigns that would resonate with Chinese consumers. Similarly, Ctrip, an online travel site, is beating up Expedia, and Taobao, the online auction site, remains far ahead of eBay. They are better branded, and they fit the needs of local consumers better.More trends multinational companies have to watch out for in China in Forbes: rising labor costs and the new focus on domestic consumption.
Labels: baidu, branding, China, China Speakers Bureau, ctrip, ebay, expedia, Google, Shaun Rein, taobao
Paul French via FlickrMr Towle has been in China for five years, and has no plans to leave. Under his leadership, the operation is clearly gaining momentum. Tesco did not make the best start in China, paying £140m (a rather steep price-earnings multiple of 51 times) in 2004 for a 50pc stake in Hymall, a Taiwanese supermarket chain with 25 stores.
“So many weird things happened at those stores,” said Paul French, a retail analyst at Access Asia. “It probably would have ended in a labour dispute these days. The staff hated the Taiwanese management and they used to talk about sabotaging the products and so on.
"The UK management sent over some people to try to tell the Taiwanese what to do and in the end they just got rid of them all. Since then, it has all been running well.”
A year after his arrival in China, Mr Towle took 90pc control of the venture for a further £180m and last year Tesco finally clinched the remainder.
Inside his stores, Mr Towle, who has been with Tesco for 25 years, working up from the bakery section, can reel off the prices of any of his products and will happily discuss catchment areas, layout and volumes.
“He’s a good old-fashioned grocer,” said Mr French. “Basically, to understand the Chinese consumer, you have to be a barrow boy grocer. They get it immediately. What was needed was a good deal of ruthlessness. In a business where you have a 2pc margin, you need to be ruthless.”More in The Telegraph.
Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, Paul French, retail, Tesco
Wendell Minnickvia FlickrThe United States is taking advantage of Vietnamese angst over Chinese arrests of Vietnamese fishermen, threats against multinational oil companies operating in Vietnamese waters, increased naval exercises and the establishment of a submarine base on Hainan Island.Beijing appears to have abandoned its “smile campaign” toward Southeast Asia; Vietnam is responding accordingly, said Richard Bitzinger, a regional defense analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore.Tension between the countries is likely to rise, later in the year, writes Minnick:
The United States and Vietnam are to hold their first military-to-military talks in the final quarter of this year. Vietnam could agree to send officers to advanced education courses in the United States, said Carl Thayer, an expert on Vietnam at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.More background here.
Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, military, USA, Vietnam, Wendell Minnick
Zhang Juwei by Fantake via FlickrThe recent CASS report said the rate that would be expected if women had exactly as many children as allowed would be 1.47. The government uses the higher figure believing that many “black children” were missed by censuses. But the report disagreed, saying such serious underreporting was unlikely. It said data showed that the 150m-strong migrant population has a fertility rate of only 1.14 (similar to that of registered urban residents). This belies the common image of migrants as big producers of unauthorised offspring. Zhang Juwei of CASS believes the overall fertility rate is no higher than 1.6.
China cannot avoid its looming ageing problem, but these lower fertility estimates suggest its impact could be greater than officials have bargained for. The CASS study calls for a “prompt” change of policy to get the fertility rate up to around the “replacement level” of 2.1. The problem could be in persuading Chinese to have more children. In cities and wealthier rural areas, surveys found that the number of babies women said they actually wanted would produce a fertility rate well below 1.47.Commercial
Labels: aging, CASS, China, China Speakers Bureau, fertility, labor, One-child policy, Zhang Juwei
Former foreign correspondent and new media expert, with a strong orientation on China.
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