China Speakers Bureau: July 2009

How to deal with racial riots - Howard French

Howard French by Fantake via Flickr

Former China correspondent for the New York Times Howard French notes in his former paper the way how the US deal with the racial riots in 1967 Denver, and draws some lines to the racial riots in China's Xinjiang earlier this year. The so-called Kerner Commission went to the bottom of the riot and French believes China should do the same:
China's efforts to assimilate both Tibet and Xinjiang needs closer scrutiny, he believes:

Although this effort lacks in candor and transparency, not to mention the possibility of meaningful input from or consent by the locals, it would be wrong to conclude it is entirely undertaken out of bad faith. The materialists who rule China seem to genuinely believe that economic development is the answer to almost every question, and their favorite statistic relating to Xinjiang is the doubling of the region’s economy between 2002 and 2008.

At best, this statistic is misleading, though. Most of the economic growth in Xinjiang is related to the expansion of the petroleum sector, which is overwhelmingly dominated by Han. Indeed the unrest there seems fueled in part by a sense of among Uighurs that they are losing ground economically to the Han in their own homeland.

It is time China deals with a reality of racial discomfort that has become all too obvious, Howard French argues:

Two years of violence may not yet make a trend, but this myth [of harmony between the races] has just become a lot harder to sustain, even among China’s Han majority, who may yet come to appreciate that respect for differences rather than forced assimilation is the better recipe for harmony.

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Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you want to share his insights, please let us know.

Mild forms of kidnapping - Shaun Rein

Image by Fantake via Flickr

Shaun Rein explains, in the tracks of a recent kidnap case of an American business man by his disgruntled partners, that business in China is not so much different from the US. Although, the lack of a good-working legal systems sometimes makes business partners to turn to illegal tools. You should stay cool, he says:

I have been held a few times myself. It is fairly common and not considered kidnapping. People fight all the time. That is, they wave their arms and maybe do a little shoving to prove their seriousness. Then it peters out. It almost never really escalates.

In Forbes Shaun Rein explains how to avoid this kind of situation.

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Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you want to learn how avoid to be kidnapped while doing business in China? Let us know.

China Spekers Bureau July Newsletter is available

Image by Dharbigt Mærsk via Flickr

Just before we had into August, we finished our China Speakers Bureau Newsletter for July, also available here. Today with a focus on intercultural dilemma's when looking for a speaker and some highlights from our speakers over the past months. Very advisable: Victor Shih predicting the next crisis for China, after the global downturn might be over.
Do register at our home page, so you do not miss our August Newsletter.

Winning Designs in China: Standing Out to Fit In - Tom Doctoroff

Image by Fantake via Flickr

In the Huffington Post marketing guru Tom Doctoroff spells out what a winning design in China needs.

The middle class, those who can afford non-essential items, is torn between two impulses. The first is projection of status which leads to a desire to be noticed (in public contexts), aggressive self-expression and experimentation with new modes of style and design. The second, in vivid contrast to the projection, is protection, a fear of sticking out too obviously or challenging existing hierarchies and social restrictions. The Chinese saying - "the leading goose gets shot down" - is as true today as it was yesterday. People want to "advance," be acknowledged by society as "special" but they can not afford to be too ahead of the crowd. Western-style individualism is like Eve's apple - succulent, enticing, desired. Biting into it, however, risks banishment to the Land of Outcasts.

More in the Huffington Post.

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Tom Doctoroff is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, let us know.

Credit: from crunch to crash - Victor Shih

Zhu Rongji via Wikipedia

China's efforts to stop irresponsible local lending has changed into an 'all out' credit line for local governments, writes Victor Shih, assistant professor in political science, in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal. Even compared to the financial rescue offered at the end of the 1990s when the Asian crisis hit the region, the current package is unprecedented:

In contrast, the current central stimulus package of four trillion yuan ($586 billion) is a side show compared to the 20-plus trillion yuan in investment planned by local governments. For some reason, Beijing has shown little willingness to constrain fantastical local investment plans. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), previously a bastion against uncontrolled local investment, has shown nothing but great enthusiasm for approving local construction projects. The NDRC even has devised ways to allow local governments to borrow more by using long-term loans from policy banks or bond issuance as the 30% required initial capital. Local governments then can borrow the rest from commercial banks, effectively financing some projects entirely with debt.

China's banks, responsible for much of the credit, have plunged into a mode of uncontrolled lending, quitting a tradition of rather prudent spending:

An often overlooked ingredient to China’s success story is that generations of top-level central technocrats like Chen Yun, Yao Yilin and Zhu Rongji time and again used their political influence to constrain local investment bubbles, thus forestalling high inflation and major financial crises. Past retrenchment campaigns were unpopular and controversial, but senior technocrats nonetheless maneuvered to stop uncontrolled local investment. As credit continues to rocket

Victor Shih by Fantake via Flickr
toward the stratosphere, China is in increasing need of such leadership again.

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

China Speakers Bureau start pilot with Parliament Speakers

The China Speakers Bureau will start soon a pilot with Parliament Speakers, on of the more established speaker agencies in the UK. We see the demand for our speakers mostly coming from outside China, not surprisingly considering the attention China is getting worldwide. To support that trend, the China Speakers Bureau is setting up strategic alliances in different countries and regions with speaker' agencies and others.
"We look forward to working with Marek Kriwald and his Parliament Speakers," says Fons Tuinstra, principal at the China Speakers Bureau. "Marek Kriwald is an established name in the very competitive UK landscape." In the pilot, a small selection of the speakers at the CSB will be promoted in the UK, to test the current market.
Thanks to Roy Graff of China Contact who organized the connection.

The way out of piracy - Shaun Rein

Image representing Chris Anderson as depicted ...

Chris Anderson via CrunchBase

Piracy is the theme of one chapter in an upcoming book by Chris "Long Tail" Anderson and not surprisingly, China is at the core of the chapter. One of our celebrity speakers, Shaun Rein of the China Market Research Group (CMR) in Shanghai tells Chris Anderson how pragmatic young women look at pirated goods, since they cannot yet afford the real thing. And it show a way out for the future.
From an excerpt in Wired:

In 2007, the China Market Research Group surveyed consumers, mostly young women, in big Chinese cities and found an essentially pragmatic approach to piracy. They understood the difference between the original and pirated products, and preferred the originals if they could afford them. Sometimes they would buy one original and then complete their outfit with fakes.

One of the researchers, Shaun Rein, reported that some young women making $400 a month said that they were willing to save three months’ salary to buy a $1,000 Gucci handbag or shoes from Bally. One 23-year-old female respondent said, “Right now I can’t afford to buy a lot of real Prada or Coach, so I buy the fake items. I hope that in the future I will be able to afford the real thing, but right now I want to look the part.”

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Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference? Do let us know.

Most-sought speakers for July 2009

Zhang Lijia at Chateau de
Lavigny by Fantake via Flickr

Zhang Lijia, the author of "Socialism Is Great!": A Worker's Memoir of the New China, is the highest runner up in the most-sought list of July 2009, is the biggest mover of the month, although she moved only from the third to the second place. But she has been the first to actually challenge the position of our mostly-unchallenged, media savvy Shaun Rein, who is mostly able to keep the first place.
Although the combination of summer heat, holidays and crisis has slowed down activities over the past few months a bit, Zhang Lijia has been very active with visits to Lausanne (at the beautiful Chateau de Lavigny), Amsterdam and London. In the month to come she is not slowing down, as she will participate in a three-month international writers program at the University of Iowa, sponsored by the State Department. In between she has time for multiple speaking engagements, in China and in Europe, at her Italian translation will be launched in October.
Otherwise, we see in July Marc van der Chijs moving up high and the return of some of the veterans, like Rupert Hoogewerf, Tom Doctoroff and Jeremy Goldkorn, who did not make it into past top-10's.
Here is our July top-10 (with June in brackets).

Marc van der Chijs by Fantake via Flickr

In the 1990s, China had lost its innocence - Zhang Lijia

Image by Fantake via Flickr

Author Zhang Lijia spoke Friday 17 July in Amsterdam on her autobiography "Socialism is Great". Her book plays in the 1980s as she is working in a factory for long-distance missiles in Nanjing and ends with the aftermath of the demonstrations she helped to organize in May 1989, to support the student protests in Beijing in the time. Why did she stop there, was one of the questions, were the 1990s less exciting than the 1980.
"China had lost its innocence in the 1990s," she said. In the decade after the opening up of China, it was an almost romantic period, that abruptly ended in June 1989. Since then, she said, the Chinese government successfully let its citizens focus on making money, partly explaining the title of the book "Socialism is Great", suggested by her publisher.
The title did not go that well down with an American audiences, she discovered on a recent book tour in the US. "Not all Americans like socialism," she grins.

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Zhang Lijia is represented by the China Speakers Bureau. When you need her at your event or conference, do get in touch.

The soul of the Chinese internet - Sam Flemming

Image by Fantake via Flickr

The internet in China works differently from the internet elsewhere, Sam Flemming tries to explain in a commentary at CNN. That difference is important to know when companies want to try the internet for commercial reasons.
At CNN:

"The Chinese internet is more developed from a social perspective than in the West. There are more people who are participating in these kinds of conversations, and they are more active.

"You have that foundation where people are already communicating with each other and sharing information and eventually that impacts commerce."

Several companies have tried to start group buying sites in America and Europe yet most of them failed due to a sheer lack of interest from consumers.

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Sam Flemming is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do get in touch.

Consumer confidence up - Shaun Rein

Image via Wikipedia

Consumer confidence in China has gone up, after a small dip in April, says Shaun Rein, commenting on the rather weak figures from Yum, the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, were presented, in a comment for Reuters.
The future looks bright, despite the reported slowdown over the few months:

"Confidence has gone up in the last month or so," said Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group. "April in many ways was the worst time for anything that's consumer-oriented," he said.

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Shaun Rein is also a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you are interested in having him at your conference, do get in touch.

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

Featuring disappearing Shanghai - Howard French

Howard French by Fantake via Flickr

Former Shanghai bureau chief Howard French not only has a distuighisted career as a foreign correspondent in China, Japan and Africa for the New York Times, he is also an accomplished photographer. He documented the old Shanghai, the Shanghai that is now disappearing fast as demolishing works for Worldexpo 2010 moves on. The BBC has put up a slideshow here.

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Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do let us know.

Apple's iPhone faces tough times - Shaun Rein

Image via Wikipedia

For China Unicom, currently China's second-largest mobile phone provider, an expected deal to distribute Apple's iPhone in the world's mist connected nation might be a hit, Shaun Rein does expect major bears on the way for iPod, he tells Brand Republic Asia. Apple will have to make a huge effort to cash in on the high expectations.

Shaun Rein, managing director of China Media Research (CMR), noted that alignment with China Unicom could be a “game changer” for China Unicom, which he said suffers from low consumer satisfaction rates compared to its bigger rival.

“The only reason to use [China Unicom] would be because of Apple,” Rein said, stating that there was a large, enthusiastic market for the iPhone in China. “It’s clear that Chinese consumers love the iPhone and are willing to pay a premium for it.”

Nonetheless, Rein pointed to reluctance among many potential consumers to sign up to the required monthly contract. The majority of Chinese mobile users favour a monthly prepaid system, he said. “Unicom will have to make the [subscription] process much easier.”

But he added that with around two million iPhones already in unofficial use across the country, a bigger challenge faced by Apple was that of premature saturation. “Apple will have to make sure they are selling the newest and best product,” he observed.

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

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Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you want him at your conference, do let us know.

China's commercial state secrets - Arthur Kroeber

Arthur Kroeber by Fantake via Flickr

Many of the larger Chinese companies are state-owned, says analyst Arthur Kroeber in a comment to Australian media, making passing on their information an infringement of state secrets. Four employees of the Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto got arrested by Shanghai State Security and one of their executives, Stern Hu, got charged for violating state secrets, just after a major deal with state-owned Chinalco fell through. Arthur Kroeber:

"It certainly raises an issue for foreign investors, which is the definition of state secrets in China includes a lot of commercial information in state enterprises," Dragonomics managing director Arthur Kroeber said.

"If you take information out of a state enterprise and give it to any kind of foreign party, you can under Chinese law be accused of violating the state secrets law."

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Arthur Kroeber is also a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do let us know if you need him at your conference.

Why the rich Chinese tourists stay away - Roy Graff

Entry visa valid in Schengen treaty countries.

Image via Wikipedia

The UK and other European countries are lacking smart marketing strategies and visa policies that would make their tourism sector more attractive for the richer Chinese visitors, writes tourism expert Roy Graff. While there is no shortage of buses full of Chinese tourists, participating in cheap European trips, the more lucrative sector, the more wealthy Chinese, are not feeling welcome.

Even when countries sign the ADS agreement, it only applies to group package tours. Anyone who knows a bit about modern China knows that wealthy people in the big cities now do not want to travel like cattle in mass market tour groups.

It was already 2.5 years ago that experts at the ChinaContact forum on China's tourism industry at World Travel Market concluded that Europe (and North America) should focus its attention and marketing budget on the luxury travel segment from China.

Some Asian countries like South Korea, Singapore, Japan and Thailand are successfully tapping into that segment of tourists, Europe is still on the wrong track.

The UK government has announced a review of visa policies and are considering whether joining or partnering with the Schengen Visa agreement will work...

I am not confident that the Schengen Visa approach is the right one since currently only the UK among European countries is demanding biometric data at origin. The complicated visa procedure (with forms only available in English) requires the applicant to visit the visa processing centre in person. This can be an additional inter-city trip, the cost of which (and the visa application fee) is non-refundable if application is ultimately unsuccessful.
We should remember that visa policies and the behaviour of consular services in China are part of the image of the country and how Chinese first judge us. If we want Chinese to visit us by

Roy Graff by Fantake via Flickr
choice (as opposed to a delegation or business visit) then we need to roll out the welcome mat, not roll up the barricades.

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Roy Graff is also a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you are interested in having him as a speaker, do let us know.

Google's growth not dented by porn row - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

Google's growth in China is not likely to be hurt by the recent porn brawl it had with China's internet authorities, says analyst Shaun Rein in PC World. The US search engine got itself into hot water as it was accused of facilitating searches for porn on the internet. But advertisers might not be impressed by the row, Rein argues.

The official criticism of Google will not have a major impact on advertising sales, said Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai.

Advertisers might avoid Google if they become worried that the search engine could be shut down, but that is unlikely to happen, said Rein. Advertisers have not given signs of those concerns so far, he said....
Google's share of the Chinese user search market is likely to continue slowly rising, though probably at the cost of its smaller rivals rather than Baidu, Rein said.

Google has a mostly white-collar, urban user base in China. Users often go to Google for English searches but stick to Baidu for searches in Chinese, said Rein.

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Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you want to share his insights, do let us know.

'Socialism is great' in Amsterdam - Zhang Lijia

Lijia Zhang photograph by Philip McMaster_0232

Zhang Lijia by \!/_PeacePlusOne via Flickr

Zhang Lijia, the author of the autobiography "Socialism Is Great!", will be speaking at a meeting in Amsterdam on Friday 17 July at the meeting room of On File, at the Singel 46 in Amsterda, very close to the Central Station. The meeting starts at 3PM and is organized by On File, an organization for writers and journalists in exile, and Press Now, an organization for press freedom.
You can find the full press release here.

Shanghai, striving to become a show case for the world - Rupert Hoogewerf

CHONGQING, CHINA - JUNE 16: Rupert Hoogewerf ...

Rupert Hoogewerf by Getty Images via Daylife

Shanghai is trying to move up in the world's view, as the World Expo 2010 comes nearer, says Rupert Hoogewerf in a comment to AP

"The barrier is just being pushed higher and higher," said Rupert Hoogewerf, a Shanghai-based researcher of wealthy Chinese. "Previously (the hotels) may have sought to be the best in the city. Now they're aiming to be the best in the country, or the world."

Shanghai needs to set a high target, as it wants to attract a global audience for its World Expo that is now under construction.

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Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. if you want him at your conference, do let us know.

Xinjiang riots have no big impact - Arthur Kroeber

Arthur Kroeber by Fantake via Flickr

The dramatic scenes from Xinjiang are unlikely to have a big impacts on China as a whole, says Arthur Kroeber in media comments, days after the riots started in China's remote Uighur region.

“In terms of China’s domestic economy, it is in a remote place and it does not have a big impact on things generally unless there is some evidence, of which there is none, that the government is in some meaningful way losing control,” said Arthur Kroeber, managing director of Dragonomics, a research and advisory firm in Beijing.

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Arthur Kroeber is also a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do let us know.

Renminbi no competitor for US dollar any time soon - Arthur Kroeber

Image via Wikipedia

China's currency the Renminbi or Yuan has been popping up as a potential competitor for the US dollar as a reserve currency. But in a comment to Reuters; Alan Wheatley, Arthur Kroeber kills that story effectivelym together with many other economists.

"For it to replace the dollar as the main global reserve currency would require many decades and a combination of improbable events," wrote Arthur Kroeber in the China Economic Quarterly, a journal he edits.

Kroeber rightly draws a distinction between facilitating the use of the yuan as an international currency for current account purposes such as trade and tourism and enabling its use on the capital account for portfolio investment and reserve holdings.

For that, China would have to scrap capital controls: central banks and other foreigners would have to be able to invest freely in onshore yuan financial assets such as stocks, bonds and bank deposits and to freely repatriate their capital.

For foreigners to hold yuan on a large scale, Kroeber writes, they would also have to be convinced China's markets are trustworthy and fairly free of rigging by the government.

"Technical difficulties aside, this will require a significant retreat from the current state-dominated model of credit allocation. This cannot happen quickly," he concludes.

Arthur Kroeber by Fantake via Flickr

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Arthur Kroeber is also a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do let us know.

Green Dam, the Party capitulates - Tom Doctoroff

Tom Doctoroff by Fantake via Flickr

Tom Doctoroff, North Asia Area Director of JWT advertising firm, describes in The Huffington Post the decision to at least delay the compulsory censorship software Green Dam on PC's shipped in China as an unique capitulation of the Communist Party. De decision was published at the official newswire Xinhua just hours before midnight, when the regulation would have been in force.
The central government had crossed a line by upsetting its closest supporters, Tom Doctoroff argues:

I have often argued that China, a Confucian society that cherishes order and stability as the prerequisite for individual and national advancement, does not crave bottom-up representative democracy. Furthermore, most Chinese have confidence in the ability of the central government - as opposed to local and provincial organs - to advance the interests of the majority. As the financial crisis sweeps across the globe, citizens are impressed with their leaders' far-sightedness. From aggressive stimulative policy to announced welfare reforms, most Chinese believe their country will emerge stronger than ever on the global stage once the tsunami recedes. In marked contrast to the Japanese, the Chinese people have faith in the wisdom of their rulers.

But that faith is not blind.

But it is also not the beginning of the end of the Party, Doctoroff says further.

China will become more "democratic" but not in an electoral sense, at least not within the next couple decades.

Societies do evolve. And China continues on its own journey to become a modern nation, with a government accountable for its behavior. But the contours of the Middle Kingdom's political structure will always assume the shape of its distinct worldview.

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Tom Doctoroff is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you want him at your conference? Do let us know.

Friday, July 31, 2009

How to deal with racial riots - Howard French

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Mild forms of kidnapping - Shaun Rein

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

China Spekers Bureau July Newsletter is available

Monday, July 27, 2009

Winning Designs in China: Standing Out to Fit In - Tom Doctoroff

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Credit: from crunch to crash - Victor Shih

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

China Speakers Bureau start pilot with Parliament Speakers

The way out of piracy - Shaun Rein

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Most-sought speakers for July 2009

Saturday, July 18, 2009

In the 1990s, China had lost its innocence - Zhang Lijia

Thursday, July 16, 2009

The soul of the Chinese internet - Sam Flemming

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Consumer confidence up - Shaun Rein

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Featuring disappearing Shanghai - Howard French

Monday, July 13, 2009

Apple's iPhone faces tough times - Shaun Rein

Sunday, July 12, 2009

China's commercial state secrets - Arthur Kroeber

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Why the rich Chinese tourists stay away - Roy Graff

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Google's growth not dented by porn row - Shaun Rein

'Socialism is great' in Amsterdam - Zhang Lijia

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Shanghai, striving to become a show case for the world - Rupert Hoogewerf

Xinjiang riots have no big impact - Arthur Kroeber

Monday, July 6, 2009

Renminbi no competitor for US dollar any time soon - Arthur Kroeber

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Green Dam, the Party capitulates - Tom Doctoroff

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