China Herald: 04/01/2011

Friday, April 29, 2011

The booming value of online game firms - Marc van der Chijs

Marc van der Chijs

Online gaming has developed in the past five years from a niche market into a booming industry, writes former Spil Games Asia CEO Marc van der Chijs in his weblog. Valuation for gaming companies like Zynga and Playdom have gone up dramatically and valuations will continue to rise.

Times have changed though, nowadays online games are everywhere. Especially social games like Farmville managed to get a lot of new people to start playing games. In the early days social networks helped the growth as well: if your friends invite you to play a game the chance that you will try out the game is a lot higher...

Companies like Zynga (7bn USD) and Playdom (750ml USD) are exceptions, but others see their value also go up:

But for non-social game companies valuations so far where a bit lower. It seems that may be changing though and that investors are starting to realize the potential of these companies. This week it was announced that Bigpoint raised a USD 350 million round at a USD 600 million valuation. The company is not a social game company but focuses on browser based MMO (=massive multiplayer online) games, that are free to play. Bigpoint earns its money with virtual items as well, just like Zynga and Playdom. The big difference is that Bigpoint owns most of its users and is not dependent on a site like Facebook.
I expect that valuations for many other online game properties will go up in the near future, especially for those companies that get a large part of their revenues from virtual goods and that are not dependent on Facebook for their traffic. It will be interesting to see at which valuation these companies are able to raise rounds – or are snapped up by players like Zynga looking to have their own traffic! Based on what I am hearing in the market the revenues of many of these players are doubling every year because of virtual items (just like Bigpoint) and I won’t be surprised to see a billion dollar IPO for one of them within the next 18 months.

Marc van der Chijs is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Why yelling in China does not work - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

Shaun Rein explains what he has learned about doing business in China, and how US companies like Google could learn from it. Publicly yelling mostly does not work, he argues in Forbes, describing his first approach with a corruption case a decade ago.

Yelling often doesn't accomplish much in Asia. Even if you're right, it's often better to work patiently. Chinese say you should be like water--you can move fast like a river but also slow as a trickle, depending on the situation.
Take Google's ( GOOG - news - people ) battle with China. Google shouldn't have been so strident and public in demanding that the government end censorship. Everyone wants a freer Internet, but you've got to do what actually leads to improvement...
True reform ultimately needs to come from trusted Chinese showing that rules can be revised without negative effect. Change can't come from foreigners, or from Chinese funded by foreigners. Westerners can and should play key roles in reform, but by offering advice, not arrogant threats, and by presenting examples outside of the system. And always remember that reform is not an easy process. For every two steps forward there is usually one step back.

More in Forbes.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Humor as a tool against the authorities - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn by Fantake via Flickr

An active and vibrant internet culture trying to push the limits, describes internet expert Jeremy Goldkorn in this video produced by the Asia Society. Humor as a tool against censorship.
(Jeremy's comments after the cartoon).

Jeremy Goldkorn in a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Baidu removes 2,8 million literary works - Kaiser Kuo

Kaiser Kuo

In an effort to resolve a high-profile spat with Chinese authors on piracy, the country's leading search engine Baidu removed 2,8 million filles, told company spokesman Kaiser Kuo the BBC, hoping this action would create enough good faith.
More than 40 authors and publishers had accused Baidu that its literary platform, Baidu Wenku was greatly infringing on their copyrights by publishing without their permission. Negotiations about a deal fell flat last week.
The BBC:

"By Tuesday afternoon we had removed almost 2.8 million files, mainly from the Literary Works section of the site, which was the primary concern of the writers and publishers," Baidu spokesperson Kaiser Kuo told the BBC..

"Now that we've scrubbed the site, we hope our good faith action will be a good, solid foundation for future co-operation," Mr Kuo said.
"One thing that this whole episode has amply demonstrated is that Baidu Library is very powerful distribution platform that can be put to very good and profitable use by the authors and publishers in cooperation with Baidu, to the benefit of all parties, especially the readers," he added.

Kaiser Kuo is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

All foreign books to be banned in China? - Bill Dodson

Image by Fantake via Flickr

Bill Dodson

Celebrity author Bill Dodson just discovered by accident that his succesful book China Inside Out has been taken off the shelves of a book store in Suzhou. It might be the start of more, he reports at his weblog. In the end all foreign books might be banned in China.

China Inside Out apparently caught the attention of the Fahrenheit 451 brigade in Suzhou. I’d gone down to the local branch of the Bookworm this past Sunday to kick-off a Royal Asiatic Society author’s talk on Edmund Backhouse’s Decadence Mandchoue, as bawdy an historical narrative as one will ever find. A friend at the shop told me my book had caused a bit of a stir a few days before with the local F451. I thought he was kidding.
The proprietor confirmed after the Decadence talk that, indeed, F451 had been to the shop, saw the nice little display for the book set up at the front bar; and politely asked that the book be removed. In all fairness, it’s not the first time the shop has been targeted. And it won’t be the last time, either. Apparently, F451 will shortly be requiring ALL books written by foreigners be taken down from the shelves.
Regime change has central and local authorities more brittle than at any time in twenty years.
The country just can’t seem to break out of some cycles.

Bill Dodson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him (and his books) at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

China tested its VSTOL fighter - Wendell Minnick

Image via Wikipedia

Military technology of China's air force has taken another step as online rumor suggest a test flight by the J-18 Red Eagle vertical short takeoff and landing (VSTOL) fighter, writes Wendell Minnick in Defense News.

China's defense industry is largely opaque and it is difficult to substantiate Internet chatter. However, Chinese-language military blogs reported the first test flight of the stealthy J-20 Black Eagle fighter in January, much to the surprise of the Western media.

Now there are reports emerging of a test flight of the J-18. Tests were supposedly conducted earlier this month and the fighter is similar to the Sukhoi Su-33 carrier-based fighter.
"In 2005, a Chinese aviation industry source told me the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation was considering a F-35B-like program," said Richard Fisher, vice president of the Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center. "Given the PLA's naval power projection ambitions, it is probable there is VSTOL or STOVL [short takeoff and vertical landing] fighter program."

Health care under the knife - Janet Carmosky

Old people's home in Shanghai

The reform of the health care is one of the core changes China is going through. Janet Carmosky summerizes her insight on the health care system for Forbes, as a preparation for an upcoming conference on the subject in June. Current price tag: USD 173 bn.

Health care reform in China has to reflect a sea change in demographics and social structure. For thousands of years, until the start of the one-child policy in 1979, the glue in China’s health care was a clan system where healthy and strong family members took care of the sick, the young, and the elderly. Increasingly, China’s workforce is made up of people without siblings. They have rising income but the responsibility of taking care of themselves, their aging parents, and a child of their own. The health care implications are numerous...
Why should American business pay attention? In general, it’s a good time for companies with experience in healthcare finance, IT and informatics; drug and device design and marketing; and healthcare facilities design, marketing, and management to look for an opening in China.

More in Forbes.

Janet Carmosky is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Image by Fantake via Flickr

Janet Carmosky

Luxury sales, for the wealthy and not so wealthy - Paul French

Paul French

As the sales of luxury goods to Chinese spike, retail analysts try to figure out who is buying what. The profile of the buyers can vary a lot, tells Paul French The Guardian.

Many of these new consumers are executives and entrepreneurs, keen to show they have made it, or the offspring of wealthy families. Others, however, are the aspirational: "Secretaries who live on instant noodles for six months to pay for their LV handbag ... it's a way of saying, 'I have become part of this world,' " said Paul French of the retail consultancy Access Asia.

More about luxury sales in China in The Guardian.

Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference or meeting? Do get in touch.

Taiwan can catch China's luxury market - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

As growing crowds of mainland Chinese visit Taiwan, curious to see how pre-revolutionary China could have looked like, the island could capture a major share of the luxury good purchases, says Shaun Rein in CNBC. Sixty percent of those goods are bought now in Hong Kong or Europe.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference or meeting? Do get in touch.

Idea hunters go to Beijing - Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer

When you are looking for smart ideas in China, go to Beijing, rather than Shanghai or Guangzhou, writes IMD business professor Bill Fischer of technology management in the Business Times, exploring the strategy for idea hunting.

Interested in Web 2.0? Go to Silicon Valley. If you go anywhere else, you are reducing the likelihood of finding a good new idea. Why? Because people with Web 2.0 ideas congregate around Silicon Valley; so, there is a higher probability that you will discover a good new idea there, than, for example, Paris, or Milan, or even Shanghai.
Can't leave China, and still interested in Web 2.0? My suggestion is to go to Beijing's Zhongguancun district. There, you will be more likely to 'bump into' someone from Beida, Tsinghua, or the Chinese Academy of Sciences, or even alumni of Founder, Stone or Lenovo who will be interested in your ideas and might have ideas of their own, or know somebody who does.
You are less likely to find that sort of information in Shanghai or Guangzhou, and certainly not in smaller cities. Good idea hunters know this and they, like any 'big-game' hunter, go where the action is in order to enjoy the best chance of 'hitting their targets'.

Read here his full article.

Bill Fischer is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Taiwan arms purchases help US economy - Wendell Minnick

Image via Wikipedia

Ending US weapon sales to Taiwan might also end a very lucrative trade that has helped the US economy greatly, writes Wendell Minnick in Defense News. Taiwan has spent USD 16,5 billion over the past five years, but calls to end the trade become louder.

In January, a roundtable discussion at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs recommended the U.S. “re-examine” continued arms sales to Taiwan in an effort to improve ties with China. Members of the roundtable included Joseph Prueher and Timothy Keating, both retired U.S. Pacific Command commanders, and James Shinn, a national intelligence officer for East Asia at the Central Intelligence Agency. The roundtable report said arms sales to Taiwan had damaged Sino-U.S. ties and had become a “vicious circle.” The report further recommended that Washington re-evaluate the Taiwan Relations Act.

But a report has now detailed the economic benefits:

The CRS report, “Taiwan: Major U.S. Arms Sales Since 1990,” by Shirley Kan, indicates that Taiwan arms sales generate big revenue for U.S. defense companies despite the absence of a defense treaty with Taiwan. In 2007, Taiwan bought $3.7 billion in U.S. arms; in 2008, $6.4 billion; and in 2010, $6.4 billion. No sales to Taiwan were approved in 2009. Among customers of U.S. arms worldwide, Taiwan ranked fourth behind Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia from 2002 to 2009.  

From 2000 to 2010, under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, Taiwan procured Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile defense systems, UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, Harpoon missiles, Osprey-class mine-hunting ships, Kidd-class destroyers, AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, Standard Missile-2 Block IIIA air defense missiles, a surveillance radar program for early warning of Chinese missile launches, AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters and P-3C Orion anti-submarine patrol aircraft.  

Image by Fantake via Flickr

Wendell Minnick

More in Wendell Minnick's article.

Wendell Minnick is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The new American Dream

Image representing The Walt Disney Company as ...

Image via CrunchBase

(This was my first column I have submitted to the Global Times over the weekend. I have not heard anything back, so I guess it could also be the last one. Find the politically incorrect parts. Here the China Media Projects writes on China’s efforts to establish credible international media.)

Who still remembers The American Dream? It was an entertainment park in Shanghai, that opened its doors in 1996 and became a high-profile failure. A special railway connected the park with the main railway station and – for the time – a huge advertisement campaign made sure nobody could miss the opening. Against the expectations of the investors, few Chinese were willing to pay a premium price for the entertainment park.
Since this month Shanghai is building on a new American dream.

More than a decade the US Walt Disney company and a wide range of Chinese government agencies negotiated about setting up a theme park in Shanghai. Over the years the Shanghai municipality already mapped in the park at different sites, displaying its eagerness to show it could do a better job than Hong Kong. Although nothing has been disclosed on who is going to pay what of the close to four billion US dollar in costs, typically eager governments have to cough up a large portion. The Hong Kong Disney park is even in majority owned by the Hong Kong government, who now has to pick up the losses, after covering for a large portion of the initial investments. Ownership deal in Shanghai is more or less the same.
The Hong Kong Disney park, started in 2005, has shown a lackluster performance. The Hong Kong park has been too small and was for that reason not interesting for mainland visitors, argued Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research in Reuters. For the time being, the ground reserved initially for the park is even smaller than its competitor in Hong Kong, a rather bad sign.

Even though I grew up in Europe and not in the US, Walt Disney still had a huge influence on my media mix in my childhood. Every week the latest issue of the weekly Donald Duck threatened the stability of our family life, as the five children literally fought to get their hands on the Donald Duck first. The Cinderella movies were part of our upbringing. Before Disney opened its first entertainment park in Europe, its was already established as a huge media company.
My parents came under huge pressure when the Disney park in France opened. When you want to sell a dream, it helps when your audience shares that dream.

That mix was part of its success, also in revenue streams. Children in China do not have a similar Disney-induced legacy. Walt Disney tried in its decade of negotiations to get concessions from China’s media authorities, so it could also set up a media leg in China. Not surprisingly, the US firm never got those concessions, despite its stubbornness and Shanghai’s eagerness to get into business. Now, Disney has accepted to start the park as a stand-alone venture, but that could also be its weak point: without a supporting media operation, it might not be that appealing for a domestic audience. Whether foreign visitors can make up for that, also remains doubtful.

Pricing is another touchy issue: even though income levels of China’s citizens have gone up since the failure of The American Dream, when they have to choose between the mostly expensive Disney parks and cheaper domestic entertainment parks, the price might still make a difference. Maybe more Chinese can afford to pay the price, it does not mean they will. Domestic competition is already huge. Without a media leg to convince children they have to blackmail their parents into going to the Disney park, life might be tough.
Mattel’s Barbie recently closed the doors of its first flagship store in Shanghai, because the doll did not appeal to a domestic audience. That in itself can be shocking for is American managers, who also cannot image children can grow up without Barbie. So, they overestimated the China market and are certainly not the only one. Then, closing down a store is easier than closing down a USD 4 billion entertainment park.
Perhaps, with local support, Shanghai Disney is too big to fail. But I do not see an easy life.

Fons Tuinstra

(Earlier published at Fons Tuinstra's home)
Related articles

Why Nouriel Roubini is wrong on China - Shaun Rein

Nouriel Roubini via Wikipedia

The famous economist Nouriel Roubini predicted the American financial crisis, and now says China is in trouble in 2013, writes Shaun Rein in CNBC. But he is dead wrong on basic trends on income, demographics and investment trends.
Shaun Rein on the wages:

Roubini also underestimates wage growth. Minimum wages in Sichuan rose 44 percent last year, mirroring double-digit increases elsewhere. Beijing’s municipal authorities even announced multinationals should have minimum wages 1.5 times that of local firms. Wage inflation is so serious that Foxconn, the maker of products from Amazon.com to Intel and Apple, is mulling a $12 billion investment into Brazil as China no longer has a cheap labor pool.
ntrepreneurs often park profits in their companies rather than taking them out as dividends or salaries as corporate taxes are lower. They also charge housing, vehicle and even gym membership fees as business expenses. This is why income is often understated by economists who don’t dig deep enough.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Are China's consumers going for green?

The Earth Flag via Wikipedia

Reuters came earlier today with an interesting dispatch, based on a report by Ogilvy&Mather, called Get Going with Green: Closing the Sustainability Gap. It says that China's consumers are willing to pay extra - although not more than ten percent - when a product is produced sustainable. The Reuters' story:

Convenience is the main factor driving shopping decisions for more than half of the 1,300 Chinese consumers across China surveyed by global advertising and marketing firm Ogilvy & Mather, but 71 percent said they would pay up to 10 percent more or higher for some "green" products.

"Within about a 15 percent price band, if two items have comparable brand image, people will go for the sustainable option," Kunal Sinha, the lead author of the study and head of the company's sustainability practice in China, told Reuters.

I was not yet able to get the full report, (here are more details, but also no link) but the message they picked for the press release was both positive and surprising. When Chinese consumers really were going to spend money on a cause that was not directly beneficial for them, I was losing touch with the Chinese consumers. The survey already said it was no mainstream feature and at the very end, one other expert disagree with the report:

Joel Backaler, a director at the consulting firm Frontier Strategy Group who blogs on Chinese consumption trends, says mainstream Chinese consumers are focused on aspirational purchases in the short to medium-term and will not begin focusing on green and sustainable consumption for years.

"The vast majority of China's middle class are for the first time learning how to spend and join the consumption phenomenon that their counterparts in the U.S. and Western Europe have long enjoyed," he told Reuters in an email

Also CMR-director Shaun Rein was up in arms and responded to my tweet:

CMR's research contrary to Ogilvy's findings Study says sustainable consumption on the fringe in China.

It is halftime, and I'm not yet convinced by the Ogilvy survey, but will come back on the issue when I get more material.

Related articles

Can China deliver on its five-year plan? - Helen Wang (chinaherald.net)
85,000 Chinese millionaires more - Rupert Hoogewerf (chinaherald.net)
Inflation undermines consumer confidence - Arthur Kroeber (chinaherald.net)
Ogilvy & Mather Launches New York-Based China Practice (mediabistro.com)

Friday, April 15, 2011

Inflation undermines consumer confidence - Arthur Kroeber

Arthur Kroeber by Fantake via Flickr

China's government is placing its bets on increasing domestic spending by consumers, tells Arther Kroeber in The Guardian. But the inflation seems to be undermining the confidence among those consumers.

The 11.7% rise in food costs reflected growing demand, a shrinking pool of young workers – pushing up agricultural wages – and supply chain problems, said Arthur Kroeber of economic consultancy GaveKal-Dragonomics.
"In public, the officials like to talk about commodity prices, because it is always easier to blame problems on something outside," he said. "But if you look at what they are actually doing, I think it is pretty clearly understood that the sources of inflation are domestic."
That required tighter monetary policy and market reforms to improve efficiency, he said...

Kroeber said: "There's a consumption component that's very strong, but the retail sales number is going down. If you look at auto sales, they've slowed down a lot. Consumer confidence surveys show it has progressively weakened over the last six months.... The headline number is implausibly strong."
He said the data did not allow analysts to judge what was happening to consumer spending.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Doing Business in Chongqing: A Wild Ride - Bill Dodson

Bill Dodson

Western companies are flocking into Central China, running into new unchartered territory, writes Bill Dodson in the China Business Services, an excerpt from his book. Local government are just one of the unpredictable dangers, like in Chongqing.

Great hidden costs lay in store for potential investors like: government corruption; changeable policies; inflated costs of production inputs; a lack of skilled labor and experienced management; and affordable salary levels high enough to attract Chinese nationals from the east coast.

John, a friend with whom I’d worked on a project in Kunshan, near Shanghai, spent two years building an export factory in Chongqing for a mid-sized American company. John explained to me, “The township where the factory is located ran out of its allotment of natural gas half-way into the year. Cheap supplies of natural gas was the ONLY reason the company had put the operation there. It’s even in the contract that the company will receive supplies of natural gas without interruption. So when the local government told me, ‘So sorry, no more gas for you,’ I was angry. One of the Vice Mayors of the township offered that if my company gave him 2 million RMB the local government would look the other way while I hooked up to the gas supplies in the next town over.”

More stories in the China Business Services or in his book China Inside Out: 10 Irreversible Trends Reshaping China and its Relationship with the World.

Bill Dodson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

85,000 Chinese millionaires more - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf

The number of Chinese millionaires has increased in one year time by almost 10 percent, to 960,000. The number of super rich, those have over US§15 million in assets, went up 9 percent to 60,000, according to the latest Hurun Report, produced by Rupert Hoogewerf.
From eFinancialNews:

Where does the wealth come from? According to the report, more than half of China’s millionaires (55%) have acquired their wealth through private businesses; 20% are property developers; 15% are stock market speculators; while the remaining 10% are company executives.
The profile of the Chinese millionaire also varies to their Western counterpart. With an average age of 39 years, they are 15 years younger than Western millionaires. And one-third are women.

Meanwhile, the super-rich, whose average age is slightly higher at 43 years, are the owners of three properties, five luxury watches and four cars.
As for their choice of residence, the majority of China’s millionaires (170,000) reside in the capital Beijing, followed by Guangdong, the country’s most populous province, and then Shanghai.

And it is only a faction of the real wealth:

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and researcher of the Hurun Report, said: “There is still a great deal of hidden wealth in the Chinese economy. We estimate there to be 4,000 renminbi billionaires in China with only a third making the Hurun Rich List.”

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

What about your contingency plan? - Bill Dodson

Bill Dodson

Is your company ready when China explodes, falls into piece, or does both, Bill Dodson wonders on his weblog. What happens in your company when the natives get restless?

Interestingly, most of the rejection has been of Asian companies; expressly, Taiwanese (Foxconn) and Japanese (most recently the car plants in the south whose workers went on strike while Foxconn staff was suicidal; and the rampant protests in Chinese cities against the Japanese in 2005). Mostly, Western companies, which in general tend to pay their workers more than their Asian FDI counterparts and – again, generally – tend to treat their staff with a bit more respect than Asian investors – have gotten off with little more than job-hopping youngsters who will quit and join another company for a 50 RMB raise in salary.
Still, that’s not to say that Western companies should be complacent about social upheaval in China that could affect their operations. Recall the boycotts of French brands and retailers in 2008, when the French government made gestures that drew the ire of Chinese hardliners: Carrefour and Auchan had a tough time of it while thousands of Chinese protesters all but ransacked the hypermarkets. American businesses must remember the ritual stoning of the American embassy in 1999 (oops, we bombed which embassy?) and then again in 2001 (spy planes like us).

Bill Dodson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Three reasons why China's banking system is fragile - Victor Shih

Victor Shih by Fantake via Flickr

Despite three trillion US dollar in foreign reserves, China's banking system is more fragile than you would think when you look at that figure only, tells Victor Shih at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Much of China's wealth is concentrated with very few. (h/t Creditwritedowns.com)

Victor Shih is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Property remains a major wealth creator - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf

Despite government measures to curb housing speculation, property kept on creating wealth for China's millionaires, says Rupert Hoogewerf or Hurun in the Shanghai Daily, as he publishes his latest report on the country's rich. One in 1,400 Chinese owns over 10 million RMB (1.5 million US dollars) in assets.

"There was speculation on the growth enterprise market but generally the stock markets in both Shanghai and Hong Kong closed almost unchanged at the end of 2010 from a year earlier," he said.
China's gross domestic product rose 10.3 percent in 2010 and new home prices in 70 cities were up 13.7 percent on average from a year earlier, according to official figures. A report by Knight Frank, a London-based property service company, said high-end property prices rose 21 percent in China last year.

"Owning two or three apartments in Shanghai would qualify an individual to be listed," Hoogewerf said.China's measures to curb property speculation may affect wealth, he said, but a small portion of the millionaires still predicted prices to rise 50 percent in the next three years.

Millionaires are more interested in investing in art works and old, traditional villas than the stock market.

More in the Shanghai Daily.

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Most-sought speakers in April 2011

Kaiser Kuo

"No comment." Few of our speakers have been quoted so often by the mainstream media saying nothing. Kaiser Kuo easily made it into the top-position of most-sought speakers for April as he was - and still is - unable to say anything about a possible cooperation between his company Baidu and Facebook. It has not reduced his popularity in our top-10.
He even passed Shaun Rein, who had a top-month in doing the opposite: saying things that matter. Shanghai Disney, inflation, IKEA, Fukushima, Google and the luxury goods market: almost no day passed without mainstream media quoting Shaun Rein.
Most popular newcomer is certainly Bill Dodson, whose book, China Inside Out: 10 Irreversible Trends Reshaping China and its Relationship with the World, is making big waves.
Our top-10 of most-sought speakers for April (March in brackets)

Image by Fantake via Flickr

Bill Dodson

Kaiser Kuo (2)
Shaun Rein (1)
Victor Shih (10)
Paul French (3)
William Overholt (7)
Tom Doctoroff (5)
Arthur Kroeber (4)
Bill Dodson (-)
Helen Wang (8)
Wendell Minnick (6)

(We have an early release of our top-10 as we are preparing to move our China Speakers Bureau website, and counting system, into Wordpress. You might notice some disturbances on the line, as we move on.)