Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Internet cafe's: alternative childcare for migrant workers - Tricia Wang

The China Digital Times points at research by sociologist Tricia Wang, in an article about the problems surrounding childcare for migrant workers. By lack of alternatives, internet cafe's have become an unlikely replacement for schools and other childcare. Earlier in TechRice:
Internet cafes are a huge phenomenon across China. They have a somewhat unsavory reputation as a place to play games or watch porn, but internet cafes serve as a second home or cheap child-care for some Chinese. This an older slideshare that I somehow missed, but an amazing look into the lives of many Chinese netizens.
Tricia Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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An energy shortage is more than a shortage - Bill Dodson

Bill Dodson
Author and energy expert Bill Dodson explains for NPR why China's energy shortage mean much more than just a shortage. Why is the government selling power so cheap? NPR:
Bill Dodson is the chief editor of ChinaEnergySector.com and author of the book: "China Inside Out." Dodson says there's more to this energy shortage than, well, a shortage. China's power companies buy coal at market rates. But China's government forces them to sell power to consumers at artificially low prices -- prices that don't cover their costs. So they just turn the power off. Why does China's government insist these companies sell power at bargain basement prices? Dodson says there are three reasons. DODSON: Social stability, social stability, and social stability. So if energy becomes more expensive than consumers are comfortable with paying, they will actually protest. They will come out onto the streets. And that really is one of the last things the central government wants.
More at NPR's marketplace. Bill Dodson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Baidu: not a branch of the Chinese government - Kaiser Kuo

Kaiser HeadshotImage by Fantake via FlickrKaiser Kuo, rock musician and spokesperson for China's largest search engine Baidu sits down with Andy Atkins-Krueger of Search Engine Land to discuss six myths on Baidu, worth to dispel. Here, on Baidu's relationship with the Chinese government. Andy Atkins-Krueger:
Who owns Baidu? The Chinese government perhaps? And does the Chinese government make it so much easier for Baidu to succeed than Google? It would be fair to say that Kaiser Kuo was particularly vexed on behalf of his company that people might genuinely believe the Chinese government was “tilting the field in favor of Baidu!” He explains, “There’s no government shareholding, there are no communist party executives placed in charge of things here, no shadow board – Baidu operates fully at arms length from the Chinese government in just the same way as any typical western company would.” He adds, “There are actually two state-owned search engines which compete with us – so we definitely aren’t getting special favors.”
More in Search Engine Land, on intellectual property rights, censorship and the company's business practises. Kaiser Kuo is also a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

China's rich prefer homes over stocks - Shaun Rein

Poor accounting standards in China make Chinese investors very weary of stocks in any Chinese company, business analyst Shaun Rein discovered in his research. In CNBC he explains why they prefer real estate, even though the government tries to cool down the industry.
As we sat in his enormous living room, Zhou continued to tell me why he preferred to buy homes rather than put money into the stock market, "There are no annual property taxes, so I just buy homes and leave them empty to resell at some point. At the end of the day, if things go wrong, you still have tangible assets if you buy property." Many Chinese investors hold similar views: they deem real estate as the safest investment in a country ravaged by accounting fraud. After all, even famed investors like billionaire John Paulson lost USD 340 million according to Fortune Magazineinvesting in companies hit by accounting scandals like Sino-Forest. Zhou`s investment strategies indicate the Chinese real estate sector is being driven as much by a belief in the sector as a fear of other sectors. Zhou explained why he shies from stocks, "Chinese stocks are political plays as much as business ones. State-owned oil giants Petrochina or Sinopec might do poorly because the government forces them to cap prices. Or Baidu,  Netease or Sina might get hit by Internet regulation campaigns. You need to analyze political winds as well as business ones.  It is simpler to buy homes.
More in CNBC Shaun Rein is a speaker in the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Baidu, Tencent most valuable China brands - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert HoogewerfRupert HoogewerfChina's IT firms like Baidu and Tencent have become some of the most valuable brands in the country, says Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf in "Thoughtful China". Baidu has become as a brand more valuable than a much larger company like the Bank of China. Problem: hardly any China brands are able to gain traction globally.
Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

(Apologies for the initial Chinese propaganda)
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Monday, August 29, 2011

How to put a brake on society? - Bill Dodson

China's railway autorities might have symbolically reduced the speed of fast trains after the Wenzhou train crash, but - wonders author Bill Dodson in his weblog - why is it so hard to slow down society when things go into the wrong direction? From his weblog:
Chinese society – or rather, Chinese people – are still impatiently slamming up high rises like there is no tomorrow, driving recklessly through increasingly congested roadways, and flipping properties like a cook making pancakes on a Sunday at a crowded Iowa diner. Conversations in tea houses and coffee houses  and restaurants are about business – or about money. Never have I heard between sips of lattes by women in vertigo-inducing pumps or men toting man-bags a philosophical discussion about the state of the State or a hearty debate about the direction in which the society is going. It’s all about money: where to find it; how to get it; how to show it off. China is still in the fast lane, with little inclination to slow down.
More in Bill Dodson's weblog. Bill Dodson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Making it into Wikipedia and the Lonely Planet - Zhang Lijia

Lijia-india2
Zhang Lijia (left)
Zhang Lijia, the author of the wildly successful ""Socialism Is Great!": A Worker's Memoir of the New China" recently got her long-overdue lemma in the world's online encyclopedia Wikipedia, and she guided the Lonely Planet Magazine through her home-town Beijing. Fergal Keane of the Lonely Planet Magazine was guided through Beijing by Zhang Lijia.
Like so many of the capital’s residents, Lijia is not a native. She was brought up in the old imperial capital Nanjing, in the Yangtze Delta. Her story is typical of modern China’s narrative of change. She was a promising student with a love of English literature, but poverty forced her to leave school at 16 to become a factory worker. Within a decade, though, as China’s economic reforms created opportunities for the young and energetic, she quit the industrial drudgery and moved to Beijing. I met her when she was translating for foreign journalists at the beginning of her own career as a writer; she was a young woman with a hearty laugh and an irreverent sense of humour. Fifteen years later she is the respected author of a best-selling memoir, the ironically titled Socialism is Great, is writing a novel on prostitution and also acts as a guide for travellers who want to experience Beijing’s rich intellectual heritage. ‘If you come here as a tourist, the danger is that you only get the big hotels, the shopping malls and a quick tour of the Forbidden City or the old Summer Palace,’ she says.
More in Lonely Planet Magazine. Here is her lemma in Wikipedia Zhang Lijia recently started a weblog, you can find it here. Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Sunday, August 28, 2011

"Midnight in Beijing" - Paul French

Renowned author Paul French will publish his crime classic "Midnight in Beijing" August 29, about the seedy underbelly of Beijing in the 1930s. After bestsellers like "Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation" and on foreign correspondents in China, now French hits the suspense writing, taking us back to a murder scene in the Beijing of 1937. From the publisher:
In the exclusive Legation Quarter, the foreign residents wait nervously for the axe to fall. Japanese troops have already occupied Manchuria and are poised to advance south. Word has it that Chiang Kai-shek and his shaky government, long since fled to Nanking, are ready to cut a deal with Tokyo and leave Peking to its fate. Each day brings a racheting up of tension for Chinese and foreigners alike inside the ancient city walls. On one of those walls, not far from the nefarious Badlands, is a massive watchtower – haunted, so the locals believe, by fox spirits that prey upon innocent mortals. Then one bitterly cold night, the body of an innocent mortal is dumped there. It belongs to Pamela Werner, the daughter of a former British consul to China, and when the details of her death become known, people find it hard to credit that any human could treat another in such a fashion. Even as the Japanese noose on the city tightens, the killing of Pamela transfixes Peking. Seventy-five years after these events, Paul French finally gives the case the resolution it was denied at the time. Midnight in Peking is the unputdownable true story of a murder that will make you hold your loved ones close, and also a sweepingly evocative account of the end of an era.
Paul French
Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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Friday, August 26, 2011

China has now 960,000 millionaires - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf
Almost a million Chinese now have 10 million Renminbi (1,57 million US dollar) in assets, according to the latest Hurun report. 60,000 have over 100 million Renminbi (15,7 US dollar) The Hurun report is published by Rupert Hoogewerf.    
Beijing had the largest number of these individuals with 170,000, followed by Guangdong with 157,000, Shanghai with 132,000, and Jiangsu province with 68,000. Rich people were defined as individuals with at least ten million yuan in assets, including investable assets, shares of unlisted companies, houses for their personal use and art collections. Among the 960,000 individuals, 400,000 had ten million yuan in cash and stocks, while 560,000 had less than ten million yuan available for investment. This meant the assets of 40% of the rich were investment and liquid assets, while the assets of the other 60% were fixed assets. According to the report, the average age of the rich with assets of more than ten million yuan was 39, and the male-female ratio among them was 7:3. People with assets of more than 100 million yuan (US$15.7 million) were 43 years old on average. The rich spend most of their money on travel, followed by luxury daily goods, their children's education, leisure, gifts and art, the survey found. The United States was the top destination to send their children to be educated. The United Kingdom and Canada were their second and third choices, the report revealed.
More in the Want China Times. Rupert Hoogewerf or Hurun is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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China is getting fat faster - Paul French

A McDonalds in a Toronto, Ontario, Canada Wal-...Image via WikipediaChinese not only get fat in a different way, compared to the US and Europe, they also get fat much faster, tells retail expert Paul French in a Reuters' feature.
Obesity is most acute in China's biggest urban cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, where people enjoy higher incomes, eat richer foods and lead more sedentary lifestyles. "Urban China got richer. It's just gone out and bought itself more food and bought itself cars and couches to sit on while watching TV," Paul French, co-author 'Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation,' told Reuters... "In America and Europe, they had to go through the whole process of inventing supermarkets and processed food," French, the writer, said. "It took stages in the West. The Chinese didn't have to invent the Mars bar. It was given McDonald's, KFC, Tesco and Wal-Mart.
Paul French
More in the Reuters' article.  


Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting of conference? Do get in touch.
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Thursday, August 25, 2011

Pay back time for the Beijing Olympics - Victor Shih

Victor Shih
Bonds from 15 local government agencies worth US$ 2.5 billions to finance the Beijing Olympics are due, and financial and political analyst Victor Shih tells Bloomberg that is reason enough to keep a close eye on how China is going to pay back its debts. Bloomberg:
“The Olympics was a spectacular event for China, but now Beijing has to deal with the hangover because of high borrowing to finance the event,” said Victor Shih, a professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois who analyzes China’s local government finances. “Bond yields are heading up, so refinancing will be much more costly.” The yield top-rated companies must pay on 10-year bonds has risen 74 basis points, or 0.74 percentage point, this year to 5.88 percent and touched 5.92 percent on Aug. 4, according to Chinabond data. Borrowing costs for similarly ranked U.S. companies have dropped 84 basis points to 3.12 percent in the same period, Bloomberg data show... “Beijing runs perennial budget deficits like most other cities in China, which means any sizable bond redemption would put a severe strain on the city’s budget,” Shih said by e-mail. Authorities will “need to be very inventive in repaying the coming waves of redemptions.”... Investors “should pay close attention” to what strategy Beijing takes as it tackles its debt burden, according to Northwestern University’s Shih. It may involve “stripping cash-generating assets from the city’s other state-owned enterprises to help restructure the debt,” he said. “But when this is done, people continue to borrow and the pool of illiquid loans gets larger and more unknown.”
More at Bloomberg Victor Shih is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Shut up and shop, patriotism in China - Paul French

Paul French
Being a patriot in China has become much easier, now the government focuses on increasing domestic consumption, writes retail analyst Paul French in The Telegraph. "All they have to do now is shop, shut up and then go shop some more." Paul French looks at the 240 million Chinese that constitute the 'middle class':
Now £5,000 to £10,000 [euro 6,000-12,000] wouldn't make a family-of-three very middle class in the UK but of course life is a bit cheaper in China – for instance, the average Shanghai subway fare is about 35p and the last time a ticket on the London Underground cost that much British Leyland was at full production and the idea that a bunch of guys from Nanjing would buy Rover would have seen you committed as clearly delusional. Similarly, food and petrol prices are subsidised – the best-selling packet of cigarettes in Shanghai costs 45p for 20 – and there's cheaper if you want them. I gave up smoking a year ago and have saved the princely sum of £150.[euro 170] Urban white-collar wages have risen fast – the average office worker in Shanghai who received the average annual pay rise every year for the past seven years has doubled their wealth. A not uncommon phenomenon. In the same time the local taxi fare has gone up 10p – imagine earning exactly twice what you earned in 2005 but cab fares had only risen by 10p – you would, literally, be quids in and could go on a shopping binge. Which is exactly what urban white-collar middle-class Chinese punters have done, by the tens of millions. All this, of course, has been to the benefit of many, too many to name really – Tesco, Ikea, H&M, Zara, Burberry, Apple and on and on. It is not a guaranteed pot of gold at the eastern end of the rainbow, though – China is competitive both in terms of price and winning the customer. Marketing costs are higher than most brands expect and mall rental prices, department store commission rates and shop staff wages are all rising. And you need to have the right product for the Chinese shopper. Despite what some retailers apparently think the Chinese won't buy just anything. Don't believe me? Ask M&S what they're going to do with all those unsold 42in waist Blue Harbour slacks or those 38DD cup bras. They've not been flying of the shelves, to be frank. And, looking ahead, there's no reason to think the end is anywhere close to nigh for Western brands and retailers in China who have got the right product. So far Chinese manufacturers and brands have unanimously opted for the cheap-and-cheerful route to market rather than the investment in the quality and design necessary to build stronger high-end brands with longevity and the ability to compete with the European and American names. This has so far been as true of the market for trainers as for luxury handbags. In a go-go economy, with everyone chasing the fast buck, longer-term commitment to the skills, technical as well as design, required to seriously move up the fashion creativity curve to become desirable brands just doesn't seem important to many local players. Chinese middle-class aspiration will, for the foreseeable future, equal buying desirable foreign brands.
More in The Telegraph Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Party secretary puts squeeze on Sina Weibo - Jeremy Goldkorn

Public debate has gone wild on China's internet fora, especially on the twitter-clone Sina Weibo. The party establishment try trying to regain control and the Beijing party secretary paid a visit to the Sina headquarters. Internet observer Jeremy Goldkorn comments in the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal:
"This kind of thing–these visits–have been going on a long time, but if it's the Party secretary of Beijing, that does seem to be sending a fairly clear signal," Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei, a website that tracks Chinese media, said Tuesday... Exactly what signal Mr. Liu intended to send over Weibo remains unclear, though Mr. Goldkorn said he thought a complete shutdown was "unlikely." The political costs of taking away such a popular service, he said, would be too great, "but they could squeeze it to the point where it becomes far less interesting." The government has several tools at its disposal for exercising more control over what gets said on Weibo without pulling the plug entirely. For example, it could require that Sina step up in-house censorship by banning more searches for sensitive keywords and hiring more human censors to take down sensitive posts.
More in the Wall Street  Journal   Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Why Tudou is on the wrong track - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein
China's second largest video sharing firm Tudou launched last week successfully at Nasdaq, and business analyst Shaun Rein discovered they want "buy things". Wrong, he argues in CNBC: Tudou should focus on its sustainability and become profitable. Shaun Rein:
I expected after the IPO, Tudou’s investors and management would talk about how Tudou would use its war chest to develop profits. Instead David Orfao, a Tudou board member and managing director of venture capital firm General Catalyst, focused on what Tudou would buy in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. He said Tudou “ need(s) to continue to buy quality video content. They need to scale their infrastructure. Delivering these videos in a quality manner with minimal delay is key." The founder of Tudou, Gary Wang, told the blogger Gang Lu after the IPO that the proceeds raised would be used mainly for content, bandwidth and platform upgrades. Orfao and Wang barely touched upon how Tudou would actually start to generate more revenues and profits, but on how they would buy stuff. That is deeply concerning for a company losing tens of millions a year. If Tudou can figure out a way to develop a sustainable business model and lower bandwidth and other costs investors might want to take a look especially if the price drops further as they might become a takeover target for well capitalized firms like Baidu.
More in Shaun Rein's column at CNBC. Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Who are China's luxury shoppers? - Helen Wang

China's middle class looks definitely different from the American middle class. Author Helen Wang discusses with the editor of Chengdu Today the profile of China's luxury shoppers and analyzes their profiles on her weblog.
In 2010, Chengdu’s retails sales reached $5.8 billion. Much of it went to luxury brands such as Hermes, Burberry and Prada. Louis Vuitton alone registered record sales of $138 million. Cartier generated more revenue in Chengdu than in any other city in China. When I left China 20 years ago, I was considered too “bourgeois” because I liked to put on pretty clothes while others still wore Mao suits. Those days are long gone. Today, not being “bourgeois” is a subject of public ridicule. As the cover story describes, Chinese consumers consider buying luxury goods a symbol of “paying attention to details and pursuing quality of life.” You cannot argue with that. I had an interesting conversation with the magazine’s editor Eureka Wang. Knowing that I have written a book about the Chinese middle class, she asked me if middle class Americans are also fanatically buying luxury goods. I said “very rare.” She was surprised. “Who is buying luxury goods in America then?” she asked. “The very rich,” I said. This is the difference in luxury consumption between China and the United States.
More on Helen Wang's weblog (including profiles) Helen Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Friday, August 19, 2011

Corruption stifles genuine entrepreneurship - Victor Shih

victor shihVictor Shih
Political scientist Victor Shih looks in The Financial Times into the trial of government officials after the Shanghai fire, costing 58 lives last November. “A disturbing pattern of corruption, which is endangering the lives of millions around China.”
According to details released by the Chinese media, the Jing’an government invited bids for a project to insulate a teachers’ dormitory. Not surprisingly, a company wholly owned by the Jing’an District Government, the Jing’an Construction Company, “won” the bid, but then gave the Rmb30m project to its wholly owned subsidiary Jiayi Company, which had little experience in this kind of project.
After paying government officials bribes to obtain this contract, Jiayi proceeded to farm out various aspects of this project to sub-contractors who paid Jiayi management the highest bribes.
In some cases, the work was further sub-contracted to foremen, who also had to pay sub-contractors bribes. At every level, guanxi and the amount of bribes determined who received the contract, not quality, safety or track record. In the end, a welder, hired precisely because he was inexperienced and therefore cheap, accidentally dropped his torch, which set off the fire.
 His conclusions:
At minimum, two major reform needs to be carried out to reverse the corruption. First, the state economy continues to be sprawling and continues to enjoy soft-budget loans from the banks. This creates ample opportunities for connected insiders to set up dummy companies to take advantage of government contracts. Because senior managers of SOEs are not remunerated according to profit (and profit not tied to capability), they are only weakly incentivised to maximise profit but strongly incentivised to take advantage of rent-seeking opportunities, which allow them to privatise state wealth.
If large SOEs, including state banks, were genuinely privatised, owners of firms would be more interested in generating profit and even building the reputation for their own firms, instead of taking advantage of rent-seeking opportunities.
Of course, China’s weak regulatory environment is also to be blamed. With more transparent public oversight, a free media, and accountable officials, the tragedy in Shanghai could also have been avoided.
Victor Shih is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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David Cameron and more on internet censorship - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn
Beijing-based internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn discusses on Australian TV the latest move by British prime minister David Cameron to censor social media to prevent social unrest. China's state media ended up gloating as Cameron took to the Chinese view on censorship. China's internet censorship has been rather effective, Goldkorn argues, although it has not stop social media from allowing people to take to the street like last week in Dalian and challenge the government after the train crash in Wenzhou. Social media, although heavily censored, still force both traditional media and the government to change. Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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Thursday, August 18, 2011

China What? The made-in-China show - Janet Carmosky

Janet Carmosky
 Have American jobs been moving to China? In her 'China What' show Janet Carmosky shows that only a fraction of the US consumption is actually made in China. Most goes to services, and 80 percent of the rest, is made in the US. Here are the details.

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

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'Nairobi to Shenzhen' hits China market - Mark Obama Ndesandjo


Mark Obama Ndesandjo, the half brother of US president Obama, was in Shanghai this week to sign copies of the Chinese edition of his autobiographical novel 'Nairobi To Shenzhen: A Novel of Love in the East', writes the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The half-brother of U.S. President Barack Obama attended a book fair in Shanghai Wednesday to promote his semi-autobiographical novel "Nairobi to Shenzhen" and to autograph its Chinese edition for the readers. Mark Obama Ndesandjo's novel, written in diary form, is based on his own experiences: born in Kenya, working in the United States and moving to Asia after his American dream was smashed by 9/11.
Ndesandjo moved to Shenzhen, a boomtown in south China's Guangdong Province just across the border from Hong Kong, in 2001. He has taught English and been heavily involved in charity work, including giving free piano lessons to orphans.
The Chinese edition of his "Nairobi to Shenzhen" features photos of his life in China: spending time with orphans, discussing traditional culture with ethnic Naxi people in Lijiang, a scenic town in the southwestern Yunnan Province, and practising Chinese calligraphy at home. Ndesandjo said he loves China and its traditional culture.
He has passed advanced Chinese tests and published three
Cover of Cover via Amazonalbums of his piano performances.
More at Xinhua and the Washington Post. Mark Obama Ndesandjo is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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