telecom - Three candidates for 3G emerge

While anything might still go in the run toward the 3G licenses, Analysys in Beijing says it believes three parties might be able to actually deliver the expensive networks that might be necessary, according to the South China Morning Post, here in a copy at Asia Media.
Only China Mobile and China Telecom have pockets that are deep enough to roll out the networks when the licenses are issued in the second half of 2006. China Netcom and China Unicom could formate a third provider, if they would merge, said its senior analyst Cui Xiaolong.
China Mobile would have an advantage with its current 250 million mobile customers, but because of its preference to expand its GSM-system rather than roll out the Chinese standard TD-SCDMA it might not be the first to get a 3G licence.

labor - Chinese managers change jobs every 15 month

A dramatic shortage of experienced managers to run a booming economy causes a high overturn in jobs, writes The Australian, based on a study of the EIU and a headhunting company. On average a Chinese manager stays 15 months in a job.
Pay seems a key element in the hunt for qualified managers, the study found. Almost half of the companies says they cannot get enough experienced managers. The number of companies suffering from the jobhopping trend has increased dramatically.

telecom - Content-providers fear revenue drop after China Mobile changes policies

Third parties fear that a change in the revenue distribution by China Mobile will hit their results over 2006, according to Reuters. While details are still lacking, a content provider like Tom.com expects a drop of 10-20 percent in its revenue streams.
China Mobile, followed by China Unicom, the two only telecom companies who have a license to provide mobile phone services, did not prolong last month contracts that were overdue. The one-side approach by the telecom providers has severely pissed of their suppliers, but because of the quasi-monopolistic character of the market, they have very little chances of influencing those policies.

telecom - Lack of testers hinders China's 3G standard

Lack of equpment to test the TD-SCDMA equipment is hindering the introduction of the Chinese standard for the third generation mobile connections, writes EETimes. It proves to be a vicious circle that is hard to break. As long as the Chinese standard is not operational in China, other countries will not adopt the TD-SCDMA. Because the production volume is not high enough, producing testing equipment is not commercially interesting. Chinese operators will have to carry the costs as foreign ones will certainly not take a lead here.
The German mobile phone equipment producer Siemans as, according to Interfax, decided to help selling the TD-SCDMA outside China - as soon as it is working in China.

Update: Another 3G-article from Interfax. Nokia has set up together with China Putian a joint venture in Wuhan to produce TD-SCDMA equipment. Total investment in the JV - where Nokia has a 49% stake - is US$ 112.5 million.

life - Match-making doggie-style

Where else than in Shanghai online dating between dogs has taken off, at least The Shanghai Daily has discovered this latest trend. The entrepreneurial organizers do not limit their activities to a breed-by-breed dating service.

"For single pet owners, this might also lead to a real romance," said Zhou. "We found most people who register are under 35 and working-class singles."

jobs - Are you a CTO, looking for a fun job?

The Chinabiz headhunting service is looking for CTO, who's job is to lead a website/application maintenance/development of a Shanghai-based web firm with huge traffic volume. He or she should be a senior technical director in managing large website, graduated with a degree in computer science. English proficiency will be a plus.
Drop me a line of give me a call if you are interested.

internet - Censorship: a mountain or a molehill?

Rebecca MacKinnon summerizes extensively her contribution to a panel together with media mogul Hung Huang, where they debated the way China deals with the internet, purification, as it is called in China. In that context, Rebecca takes the US-view on things, while Hung Huang takes the - admittedly elitist - Chinese view. In Rebecca's translation Hung takes a hit at her:

But idealistic foreigners never understand China as well as the foreigners who have selfish motives. And most of the people who have been journalists in China, especially for major media organizations, are all idealists. This leads to a bias in the foreign media towards China, and Rebecca is no exception. I am always loathe to talk about issues related to "internet purification" [a Chinese euphemism for censorship]. If this policy is necessary, one shouldn't use such silly terms to implement it. One reason is that the foreign media misunderstands and they are given an excuse to make a mountain out of a molehill, which is really too bad. Second is that this kind of broad, theoretical, and impressionistic thing [policy] is very hard to implement. It would be good if there were an open, legally-grounded approach, then everybody would be clear about what's going on and what's against the law, and that's that, and then it wont be so exasperating. Rebecca spoke for a long time, and I think she spoke almost entirely about "purification", but because I am timid, and I treasure my blog, I won't repeat it. But I still want to bring up this "purification" and this way I don't need to cover it up. Just writing this paragraph of darn words has taken me two hours to write - just this paragraph!

In crisis, Chinese companies simply shut up – The WTO-column

(Later also at Chinabiz)
China Mobile saw its US$ 5.3 billion bid to take over an international telecom provider in Luxembourg end in a disaster earlier this week. Millicom International Cellular, with customers in Asia, Africa and Latin America, said on Monday the talks, started in May, had been called off. It concluded “that this purchaser will not be in a position within an acceptable timeframe to make a binding offer that is suitably attractive, given the current strong performance of the business, or sufficiently certain of closing.”
One can only assume the depth of frustration and the clash of cultures that lay behind this statement. It would have been the largest acquisition abroad by any Chinese company if it had succeeded.
It was the first large scale effort to purchase a part of the international telecom market by China Mobile and the company failed miserable. This is what I would qualify as a decent corporate crisis.
China Mobile, one of the world’s largest telecom conglomerates, reacted like any Chinese state-owned company confronted with a crisis: it did nothing. In other countries crisis managers would have been called in, statements would have been made to control international image damage. But all what the world got was a statement from the listed China Mobile daughter in Hong Kong, who said it has never been aware of any talks, so could not comment on those talks being terminated.

Some Western managers might prefer to deal in similar way with corporate crises, when their companies have to deal with it, but in general it is not done. In most cases you cannot manage a crisis by simply ignoring it.
Listed Chinese companies like China Mobile are still majority owned by the state, so even the drop of the shares at the Hong Kong stock exchange after the announcement by Millicom would not really punish the company for its behavior. And let’s be honest: shareholders tend to be rather irrational in their behavior too, so it would be hard to see a fully floating company as a panacea for a lack of management skills.

The other days I discovered that a Chinese journalist I know had swapped her job at a disintegrating daily paper in Shanghai for that of one of the leading economic publications in China. In the past we had exchanged many thoughts on how to get decent sources for her stories. That was obvious not easy in a country like China and partly explains why journalists faking interviews – like happened massively during the World Championships Soccer in Germany – is the easiest way to get enough output even if you have no sources.
“It must be easier to get sources now you are working for a prestigious paper,” I assumed. She started to laugh. “I thought you knew this country a bit,” she bit back. “Of course official do not want to talk to me, whatever paper you are with.”

Fons Tuinstra

telecom - China Mobile's failed take-over

It was the talk of the town, well, the telecom town, when China Mobile was supposedly taking over Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular for US$4 billion according to The Standard of Hong Kong. But today the Luxembourg company announced they stopped the take-over talks, just another sign that Chinese companies have a hard time in really becoming multinational.
According to The Standard Millicom has cancelled the talks.

"Since May 2006, the company has been in prolonged discussions and due diligence with one potential purchaser, but has now concluded that this purchaser will not be in a position within an acceptable timeframe to make a binding offer that is suitably attractive, given the current strong performance of the business, or sufficiently certain of closing," said Millicom, which has about 10 million customers throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Another piece of news. The reporter Amy Gu, who broke the initial story on China Mobile, has left The Standard and joined the South China Morning Post. As many before her.

media - Proposed fines might also hit foreign media

Joseph Kahn of the New York Times warns that the draft law that wants to introduce stiff fines for media who report incidents without explicit approval might also hit foreign offices. The proposal has caused major unrest among the Chinese media, as it would mean a drastic reversal of the current practise where media can be forced afterwards to stop reporting about certain incidents.
It took also the authors of the draft law by surprise, as the clause has been included two weekends ago without their knowledge.
The draft law seems rather impractical, as China's censors do not have the appraratur to screen hundreds of thousands of incidents before they should be reported. Whenever any law like this is going to be executed, it will sign the death warrant for many traditional media, since the internet will continue to report.
Traditionally China has ignored most of the reports about China in foreign media.

internet - Record companies sue Yahoo China

Of course, the dinosaurs of the 20th century might get a better press when they go after companies like Yahoo China, in stead of American teenagers, but the effect might be similar. Bloomberg reports here about the intentions of the US record companies.
They describe Yahoo China - wrongly I think - as the second largest search engine in the country. First, I was a bit confused on what country they ment. The report is writting in Tokyo, Yahoo is a US company, but I still guess they mean China. In China Baidu is in numbers of visitors the largest search engine, followed by Google. Then there is nothing for a long, long time and then you might find Yahoo China.
According to the report seven record companies sued last year Baidu, got an out-of-court deal on Friday and obvious did not want to see their retained lawyers underemployed. Nobody knows what the deal with Baidu might entail, but it seems very unlikely to be effective: in China where more than 90 percent of the downloads is illegal, it might be easier to agree on stopping the floodings.
More later.

media - Kunming paper price war turns world upside down

Daily papers in China have always been surprisingly cheap, but a price war between papers in Kunming has turned their business model definately upside down. ESWN describes how local papers forced each other to charge subscribers 20 Rmb per year, bringing the daily price down to 0.06 Rmb.
Ads have always been the more attractive way for papers to make money, but now in Kunming the price of old paper is even higher than that of the new paper.

Thus, each subscriber will receive about 100 RMB per year just by selling back the old issues. So it is profitable to subscribe to newspapers in Kunming today, to the point where one should get as many subscriptions as possible without having to read them.

At least circulation in Kunming will be booming, that is for sure.