telecom - Japan's DoCoMo would rather avoid China

The CEO of famous Japanese telecom giant DoCoMo, Masao Nakamura, told the Financial Times his company wants to invest in Asia, but rather not in China and India. DoCoMo's successful push into mobile communication has been a lighting example in much of Asia, including China. NTT DoCoMo launches 70 models of mobile phonese each year to satify the demand in Japan. But China is not on his agenda, he says.

He said a lack of clarity about the state of the Chinese market meant “we haven’t had any concrete talks . . . We’re not really sure which operator runs which technology.”

Well, that is true. The fast moving realities in China might be a little bit too much for a sensitive Japanese soul. But now China is planning to roll out its 3G infrastructure - although many details still have to be decided - it could use an experienced partner like NTT DoCoMo.

Maglev in Shanghai

economy - Germany refuses to pay for Hangzhou line

Now, now. Little Germany is getting tough on China, I read in the Financial Times. The Germans refuse to pay for the honor to get their Maglev-train deployed on the Shanghai-Hangzhou track. The whole project is going to cost about €3.4 billion. Germany also does not want to transfer key technology to China.
It looks like the Iron Lady from Germany, Mrs Merkel might follow a different line from her predecessors. They were all to happy to fund two subway lines in Shanghai and the test track of the Maglev in Pudong. In the last case Germany provided 10 percent of the costs, or US$ 1 billion in support.

economy - Patterns in mainland IPO's

Media worldwide celebrate the rise of the first day of trading of the Bank of China at the Hong Kong stock exchange. The stellar performance brings to mind similar performances of mainland shares during the 1990s as the stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen enjoyed similar growth figures, be on on a much lower level.
Shares of newly listed companies were so popular, they had to be divided in a lottery. A share meant a certain profit, so they were very popular. The popularity was only matched by their performance in the first weeks or months of their trading, allowing the buyers to cash in. Then they went down, down very fast. In the 21th century the winners of the 1990s who did not sell their share on time have only lost.
I just see the same pattern. Maybe I should bet on the return to earth of the shares of the Bank of China by the end of the summer.

internet - Barefoot bankers at Zuoquan county

A microfinance project in Shanxi province using IT and the internet to get information, manage and spread the word. Funded by the EU and tipped off by. Here is part one and here part two. (Thanks to Virtual China).

media - A citizen report from Guangzhou

Danwei points at pictures from riot police running down a Guangzhou street today.
This has always been a tough city with more than average violence. According to the source (with more pictures from the balcony) a restaurant owner from Xinjiang held a police chief hostage after an argument got out of hand.
Citizen reporters are not yet reporting from the whole country, be it starts to work.

media - Amy Gu ponders after breaking the China Mobile story

Standard-reporter Amy Gu reflects about the dilemma's for a business journalist, after she broke last year the story that China Mobile was close to its first and massive foreign acquisition.

politics - Was Sun Tzu a paranoid?

Howard French writes an insightful "Letter from China" where he wonders why the US can only react by increasing their military budget for fight a, perhaps, imaginary enemie.

A paranoid would be tempted to suspect China of baiting the United States into an arms race - of using a classic game theory ploy to feign sweeping modernization in order to get the Americans to overreact in ruinous ways. The problem is we've never needed encouragement to overindulge the needs of the iron triangle.

Well, the famous Chinese strategist Sun Tze might have been such a paranoid. I might be a paranoid then too, but at least I'm in good company.

internet - The mob rules

Howard French summerizes for the International Herald Tribune the nasty side of the freedom at the Chinese internet: mob rule. While the issue is not new, earlier reports on team buying revealed a less-evil side of the mob rule, the nasty side seems to get more often out of hand. Some of the details of French's report are really disturbing.
The comparison with the scenes during the Cultural Revolution is not that far-fetched. It explains partly the worries at government level, not only for their own survival, but also to keep chaos, always very close in China, within limits.
Do expect more measures to scale down this kind of mass incidents...

media - Listening to Chinese voices

Mark Glaser of Mediashift has a nice follow-up on the "We Media" conference I followed virtually. He talks to Marcus Xiang of the mobile platform PDX.cn, who was on the China panel on the second day, and of course the issue of censorship in China came up.
Xiang's contribution that day, well moderated by Rebecca MacKinnon, left some behind in confusion and Glaser does the obvious thing: he talks to the CEO of pdx.cn. He does more, he actually listens, and that could not be said from all of the participants in London.

travel - Climb the Lupu bridge

Compared to Beijing Shanghai has always been suffering from having not enough decent tourist attractions. I do not mind to wander around for weeks in larger cities, but most tourists want to follow directions, pay an entrance fee and buy an applicable t-shirt when they have been at places.
Shanghaiist points at this really amazing new tourist attraction only diligent Shanghainese can think off when trying to make a buck. You can go, I will watch you doing this.

internet - After Shanda, now The9?

Earlier this year the once-successful gaming company Shanda came into problems as their one-game operation was not able to diversify into more successful games, and started to fall apart. Now the domestic operator of World of Warcraft The9, claiming 4.3 million paying accounts in China, faces exactly the same problem.
A stream of rumors suggest The9 is at the mercy of the owner of the game, who has not allowed the Chinese company to upgrade its game, because it wants a bigger part of the revenues. The9 dilemma: not a decent alternative.
The China Stock Blog gives the latest conference call of The9 with analysts on its Q1 2006 Earning.

telecom - 3G is delayed, not delayed, delayed

Official newswire Xinhua reports a possible delay in issuing the 3G licenses to the end of 2006 or possibly the beginning of 2007. Also Andrew Lih reports about the issue.
At the background a fierce battle is going on between the larger telecom companies, all trying to get such a license at the best possible conditions. For China getting its home-made Chinese standard for the third generation mobile phones going, the TD-SCDMA, is a matter of huge political prestige.
Also Xinhua, while very official itself, does not quote any official sources on the issue, but even quotes the Shanghai Daily, which is much lower in the media food chain. The suggestion is that the Chinese standard has run into some technical problems during ongoing tests, especially in receiving a signal when moving fast.
The Chinese standard will be introduced first, so even if the European and American standards might be more mature, they will suffer an even longer delay. Because of the political prestige connected to TD-SCDMA is bound to succeed, one way or the other. A timely introduction is needed because the licensees need enough time to build up a user-base before the Olympic Games in 2008 in Beijing. Less than 800 days to go.

favorite Li Na

media - Super Girls have mature celebrity problems

Danwei documents a far growing list of legal and other problems an emerging group of "Super Girls" is having: competition between local players and Warner, contract problems. In one year time the industrie has become really mature.

telecom - China Satcom emerges from the dark

Over the past few year, I heard so little from China Satcom, I almost had forgotten they existed. They were one of the four telecom companies coming out of the first split of the old China Telecom in the second half in the 1990s, when then-premier Zhu Rongji axed the company along functionalities.
China Mobile and China Telecom (for fixed lines) have been the more fertile branches of the old company, while the paging company almost disappeared, together with paging. China Satcom was silent, until now, as they are expanding their broadband offerings, China Tech News writes.
I have not heard anything from the consumers, but now they move into Beijing and Shanghai, they seem to target serious business. They are developing even a TV-station together with a Thai player.

Pepsi picked Dodolook

internet - The launching platform for new celebrities

Sam Flemming points at an interesting development, where the internet is becoming a way for a new kind of stars to shine.

The premise of sites like Toodou and Wangyou is that there is a desire for at least some individuals to use the net as their launching pad to fame. Even more interesting is that we are seeing that such sites are in a position to become the next "star makers." These sites recognize that they are actually new media channels and that their job is not to create stars, but to nurture a community which can create stars. Yes, Super Girl (the Chinese version of American Idol) and the zillion other reality TV shows will likely always take a primary seat for creating super stars, but not all stars have to be "super" to make an impact in particular communities as Tian Xian MM proves.

internet - Making Gmail safer

Did you think your Gmail was safe? I thought it was safer than other, but according to Andrew Lih it works if you use a little-noticed link to a safe server. Better safe than sorry, I would say.

media - The demise of the English-language press in Asia

Vaudine England summerize for the International Herald Tribune - yet again - the demise of Asiaweek and the Far East Economic Review, and the lack of efforts to revive their classic style of reporting about Asia. Getting rid of the old magazines proved to be much easier than starting a viable alternative, both in terms of journalism and revenue streams.
Both media outlets were axed when their new American owners saw a downturn in advertisements. In the past such a temporary dip was never a reason to kill the titles, that would be the main difference in attitude. Efforts to bring together different local publications does not seem to work.

"'A lot of the media nowadays is lousy because no one is prepared to invest in reporting, to let a journalist really investigate something for a month or whatever it takes,' said Mark Decker, director of institutional equities at Siam Commercial Bank Securities in Bangkok.
'It's not worth my while to go through all the papers to find the occasional article about Thailand that's useful,' he said."

Aggregating news from the internet has become the key tool of many webloggers. Not sure whether any of the new publications can compete with those.