Car producer Brilliance accused

One guy in a suit at the Shanghai Auto Show is not enough to create a mass incident, as the China Car Times suggests. Unless you can of course add the journalists and security people who jumped on the guy.

The text accuses car marker Brilliance of cheating and expresses the hope the government can do something about it. China Car Times could not really find out what the problem was. The traditional media did not mention the incident yet, so perhaps tomorrow we will have to check additional sources.

Hollywood threathens China with boycot

No love from Hollywood

With Silicon Hutong I could not stop laughing when I learned the movie industry in Hollywood is actually threathening China with a boycot unless something is done about the piracy.

Two days ago, MPAA Chief Dan Glickman (aka, Hollywood's hired gun in DC) told The Hollywood Reporter that if China didn't do something about ending piracy, the industry could choose to boycott China. I don't expect an official response - I think, once again, the government officials with remit over Hollywood's fortunes in China are probably too paralyzed with paroxysms of mirth to compose a response.

Silicon Hutong explains them why this threat is nonsense.

Myspace.cn online

Earlier this morning the Chinese version of the popular US-bases social network Myspace was lauched and the first opinions are everywhere. Danwei is here, summerizing the Wall Street Journal. Billsdue is here, revealing some of the background. The China Web2.0 Review is translating partly an interview with the new CEO Luo Chuan. His company is looking for the silent majority, he says.

I'm not going to do it, I skype, twitter, blog and I do not need yet another online tool to spend my time. I think.

First C&A billboard

Last week the story broke that the European fashion chain C&A would be moving into Shanghai and already China Snippets noted the first billboard in Pudong, although they are only supposed to open in September. Seems they are rather eager to start losing money in an early stage.

Baidu might go into video-sharing

Billsdue notes that China's largest search engine has become a shareholder of video-sharing site KU6.com. It is obvious that they might not only be on board to the money, but are looking at a more strategic cooperation on this tough market.
It would make sense that, after Tencent, also Baidu tries to make most out of the huge traffic they already generate.

Fighting for China's clean air

Orville Schell

China-veteran Orville Schell pleads for action on the world's growing environmental problems in this essay in China Dialogue:

How should we proceed? By forming a coalition of respected scientists, business leaders and policy experts, calling a high-level emergency summit with their counterparts in China and then enlisting the US presidential candidates to pledge to make the coal/climate change issue a priority. The ultimate goal should be to undertake a US$25 billion collaborative effort, with the United States providing capital, technological know-how and entrepreneurial and managerial skills and China providing some resources of its own, research, critical leadership among developing countries, its low-cost manufacturing base and its prodigious market energy.

Vincent Lo's second dream

KIC at Yangpu district

From a distance the first slide of the Knowledge & Innovation Community (KIC) Vincent Lo is creating in Shanghai looks like an image from Second Life. But it is a dream, after he created the succesful Xintiandi in Shanghai, a second dream.
Next to 17 Shanghainese universities a high tech community has 84 ha available for

technological innovation and entrepreneurship similar to that of Silicon Valley in the United States and to provide "live-work" accommodation inspired by the Left Bank in Paris. Placing strong emphasis on education, technology, culture, research and business incubation, KIC will be a multi-function community where people live, study, work and relax.

Vincent Lo admitted today at a private party I just returned from that the area did not yet took off as fast as he had hoped, but I certainly take up his invitation to have a look there very soon.

The Shanghai Nailhouses

The Crash Test Dummy Video Blog went on his bike to investigate the state of two Shanghai-based nail houses after the upheaval about the Chongqing one. The second one was gone.

Today: a Red Herring day

Vincent Lo

Five o'clock this morning rang the phone. A PR-officer of Red Herring on the line who wanted to invite me for their Wireless Conference May 28-30 in Beijing. Very kind of course, but why at five in the morning? Obvious the concept of time zones is still hard to grasp for some people.
Anyway, I just found the invitation in my email box and the meeting looks quite OK to me.

Red Herring Wireless will feature keynote speeches from industry leaders, roundtable discussions led by CEOs of emerging firms and corporate presentations from CEOs of private technology companies. Notable presenters include Hamadoun Toure, General Secretary of ITU; Dr. Zhengmao Li, Vice President of China Unicom; Won Jin Park, Managing Director of Strategic Planning Division at KTF; Frank Meng, President of Qualcomm Greater China; Zeming Yang of China Academy of Telecom Research; Juergen Stark, Corporate Vice President (Mobile Devices) of Motorola and Andy Tian of Strategic Partnership Development at Google, Inc.

So, rest of the day I have to think on what media might be interested in giving me the assignment to go to this event. I have a few lines to Dutch media, but need a bit more. Have to cover my costs too. If you have a good idea, do not hide it for me.
This evening I will attend a private by the Red Herring together with Vincent Lo, Chairman of the Shui On Group, and Alex Viex, CEO and publisher of the Red Herring, who will also open a high-tech section of Xintiandi. More about that possibly this evening.

Top brands and the Nazi symbol

I have seen the Chinese logo for top brands already for years and always wondered when somebody would bring up the parallel with the SS of the Nazi's. Well, I do not have to wait anymore, the China Blog of Time magazine has seen it now too and links to some Chinese sites where it already has been discussed.

The true difference is of course that the logo does not show up at uniforms but rather at bottles of wine. Nevertheless, it looks there will be a bit of work for a designing company.

Chinese oilfield attacked in Ethiopia

First stories are coming on about an attack on a Chinese-run oil field in Ethiopia that has costs 69 lives, including nine Chinese. Another seven Chinese are reportedly being abducted, says the Washington Post.

Checking my RSS-feeds

I got some complaints about my RSS-feeds in Google Reader and have been checking them. I have two running, one RSS-feed and one Atom-feed. For me both feeds work well in Google Reader, but do let me know if you have problems.

Rule of law moving ahead

China Law Blog points at this story in Asia Times that illustrates the way how the Chinese government is pushing ahead the "rule of law".

In December 2003, farmers in Changting village in Fenghua city of Zhejiang province were told that all of the village's 180 hectares of land would be requisitioned for construction, and they should approach the village committee for compensation as soon as possible.

One villager Zhang Zhaoling decides to push the issue ahead, and with success. Massive media interest indicates that the central government is supporting the case. A typical Chinese way of pushing ahead with changes.

Trying to regulate online magazines

Xu Jinglei's online magazine

China's print regulator, the China Administration of press and publication, is trying to expand its censorship online, China in Transition reports, based on the China Business News.

Online magazine has gained fast popularity in China in recent years, and it is estimated that there are a few hundred such digital magazines, run by companies or individuals, with viewers of nearly 40 million. A noticeable latest release of online magazine was that of popular movie star Ms. Xu Jinglei. The first issue of the bi-weekly online magazine, expected to make millions in advertisement income, was published earlier this month. Ms. Xu recruited a group of star writers to write for the magazine.

The online magazines are basically delivered as pfd-files to save printing costs. While elsewhere existing magazines have turned to this format, in China the extra attraction of a more lenient censorship increased also the number of new magazines.
At the end of last year also the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV(SARFT) tried to expand its jurisdiction to online activities, up to now without little result. The Chinese internet is regulated by up to 17 departments who mostly only agree on one point: the other departments should not get too much influence.

China Mobile: barrier or enabler?

Mobile browsing the internet was on the agenda of the Shanghai Mobile Monday meeting tonight in a rather packed Kathleen's 5. Obvious still 90 percent of the mobile phone users has never done it, so the digital vanguard was eager to convince this rather easy audience.
Ding Gang from Widsets, Jack Wong, representing OpenWave and Pierre-Andre Divisia who was representing Opera, painted this rosy picture of happy consumers finding everything they wanted on their mobile phone in open networks. More than once the name of China Mobile was mentioned, the world's largest telecom operator, by the audience as a possible barrier to mobile happiness for the consumer. In the past this quasi-monopolist had effectively been squeezing out both service and content providers and is not seen as the most friendly giant in the industry.
Remarkably enough, one of their representatives was present and moderator Bruno Bensaid was able to get him in the discussion. Not that he could actually said that much, but it improved the sense of accountability that is often lacking in China. The representatives of Microsoft were much more silent than this state-owned Moloch and that is telling.
The nice words of the panelists for China Mobile could easily be mistaken for professional politeness for a major force they are dependent on. But also more independent participants said that China Mobile is changing and it might be much more an enabler of internet browsing than a barrier, who wants to push only its own services.

Have China news portals a perspective

the old China Online logo

The China Law Blog pointed at yet another English China-news portal: China Online:

The site boasts of having "well over 6,000 China related articles and over 40,000 content pages and 600,000 unique visitors a month." Of those readers, 19% come from the United States, 18% come from China, 12% from Germany, 11% from France, and 8% from Great Britain.

That was the second new China portal in one week, after I talked last week with the people of Jongonews. I always boast that I can find anything online, but guess I just have not been looking in the right direction.
According to Alexa, one online traffic authority, China Online ranks 28,577 and that is pretty good compared to Jongnews (1,192,476) and they beat even this weblog (354,913). The number of other sites linking to China Online is pretty low (53), Jongonews has none and this weblog 216. Since linking is the way to get noticed on the internet, their lack of links might explain they are not part of the online chatter.

Is the model financial viable? The first wave of China news portals in the second half of the 1990s has learned the hard way you cannot make money with China news in English. The old China Online was then the leader of the pack, although its amazing success of getting round after round of VC-money was not matched by its revenue.
My own Chinabiz is one of the few that survived the first bubble, mainly because we were too late for the big money. We moved from news to opinion and stalled our ambition of getting filthy rich in the process. Witch 25,000 subscribers it is now is a nice marketing tool that brings in secondary business that is profitable.
The Chinese portals have become profitable on advertisements over the past few years, after things looked grim for a while after their main source of revenue, SMS-messages, was all but killed by China Mobile. Of course, there is more ad money for online ventures. But it looks very unsure whether that would also work out for the English-language portals that deal in news.
News has become a free commodity and unlike the end in the 1990s in China dealing with the information overflow and making sense out of that has become more important than getting the actual information.
From that perspective, the mission of China portals behind a financial firewalls, like Inside China Today or The China Perspective (never heard of before) seems even more crazy, but they still exist. My take is that they cater for the large amount of more conservative news-seekers, who are still at lost when they have to Google. When they have an audience now, that could work out fine a bit longer. But I would not start it as a new business.

Update: one of my online contacts at Twitter suggests that China Online is stealing the content from other sources. Addition: Have a look at the comments. The suggestions is wrong.

Waiting in line at H&M in Shanghai

For a while I thought in Shanghai people were only queuing in front of ATM-machines, unlike more than ten years ago when queuing was a kind of local game, because of the ongoing shortages. But Shanghaiist links to this amazing queue in Huai Hai Lu in front of H&M, who just opened their stores.
Shanghai is a place with so many markets next to each other, my doubts about yet another fashion chain in China might be misplaced.

The professional speakers' business

Yes, yes, we might have a deal before the May holiday and even if that does not work out, the lift-off of our Speakers' Bureau is near. A speakers' bureau organizes professional speakers against a percentage of their speakers' fee. That is a pretty simple business model, and so we thought it was necessary to link up with an solid international network that cannot be copied that easy.
Many people have already called me (or got in touch through digitally more advanced methods) and asked me how they can get into this business as a speaker. Since I will be in charge of the speakers' side of the new company I'm happy to explain the procedure a bit. In principle we are looking for professional speakers, so we follow the principle "Don't call us, we call you". If we have not noticed you speaking, there is something wrong.
That could be us. In Shanghai, our network is pretty ok, but we might still miss good speakers in Beijing and other parts of China. If you think we have missed you wrongly (or if you want to speak up for somebody else), do invite us for your speeches. Drop me an email, and I or one of my colleagues will come, since we love to see good speakers in action. We have to recommend speakers to our future clients, so when we have seen you, that works better. In the end, you do not have to convince us, but we have to convince our clients. Also, when you have more questions, let me know.
Becoming a member of the Professional Speakers Association (PSA) is an excellent idea and we will be teaming up with the China chapter of the PSA soon. They are now in an accreditation procedure for the international organization, so we a both in the same boat.
Being a professional speaker is not enough though, you also need the background and expertise that might be wanted by our future customers. In short: it helps if you have something to say and are an authority in that field. We cannot be all Alan Greenspan, but people do have to be desperate in need of your presence. Very soon, we will publish the list of people we have been signing up already.
This in short, more will follow very soon.

Chinese men as horny as panda's

headache

Raymond Zhou has located the scientific proof (but unfortunately does not link to it): Chinese men as not as horny as the massive sex industry in China would suggest. He explains the panda-syndrome, a species that is know for its (lack of) sex problems.

Chinese men are invariably discouraged from premarital sex, but as they get older and richer they catch the panda vibe, so to speak. Too much pressure from office. Too much hassle. Too busy acting like a panda, potbelly and all.
Therefore, I propose to change our national mascot from panda to rabbit. Let kids learn to be adorable. "Real men" should be quick and strong. As Mae West put it, "A hard man is good to find."

So, what are these Chinese men then doing in those karaoke bars? According to my brother-in-law, who helps to run factories in Guangdong, very little. In his previous company, after lavish meals, the female managers of the plant would leave and then the karaoke girls would move in.
My brother-in-law said he would then leave too and wait in the lobby, drinking tea. (I never checked this but believe him on his word). So, I suggested, he had to drink loads of tea. He denied. "It never takes longer than five minutes, then they were all down again."

Naked on cam no porn

Shanghaiist has always a keen eye for issues concerning free speech, so we followed their lead to a wise decision by a Beijing district prosecutor to drop charges against a 36-year old woman. She had undressed in one of the nude chat rooms.
According to the court those virtual gathering places were not defined in China's pornography laws. The case even did not make it to the court, as the prosecutor already thought he had no case.

Enemy of the State

family picture of Zha Jianguo when thirteen

Zha Jianying, sister of the idealist Zha Jianguo, who serves a prison sentence in Beijing, writes in The New Yorker. (h/t Billsdue).

When your people keep on running away - part II

Welcome at school

Last week I shared with you the trouble of a foreign manager who saw his staff leave, regularly and in relative large numbers. That story triggered off quite some reactions, but none of those made it to this weblog. Some I want to share with you:

A Chinese manager now working for an international company in Europe thought it was funny, since she knows both sides of the coin. "Here in Europe people never leave their company. They hang on five, ten, fifteen years. I do not think that is healthy for both the company and their staff."
A colleague recalled a conversation she had with a manager of McDonald's. "Some people think we are a food company," he said. "Others think we are in real estate. Both are wrong. What we essentially are is a school. We get people who just come from school or have very little experience. We teach them to come on time, working in a team, dress neatly, get familiar with all the business processes. And when they know all this, after three, four months, they leave again for another company where they can use these skills. And we start training a new group of people."
A Shanghai-based lawyer thought the story lacked any sense of reality. "When people leave, it is always about money," he says. "You listen too much to those HR-people doing exit-interviews. Of course people lie then, they never say they leave because of the money, but that is always the reason."