China Speakers Bureau: May 2010

What does the middle class want? - Tom Doctoroff

Tom Doctoroff by Fantake via Flickr

Tom Doctoroff tried to address the almost impossible question in USAtrends for a US audience on what the Chinese middle class want. Impossible to compare, since the American way of looking at the middle class, does not exist in those terms in the perception of the Chinese. Even when you look at the Chinese middle class in financial terms, they are maybe well-off in China, but poor compared to US standard and unable to stimulate their economy in a similar way.
Despite those complications, Tom Doctoroff does a good job in describing them in the Chinese setting:

The middle classes believe in social mobility, their environment can now offer them the chance to change and improve their lives. This is what being middle class is really all about, to transform lives and improve physical wellbeing, it’s a move beyond the already satisfied lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs of survival and physical safety requirements towards a need to satisfy social status requirements. The middle class engages with society to get recognition for their (financial) successes. It’s important to note though that this is not about arrival, it’s about being on the right journey, they see theirs as an arduous, perilous, continuous struggle upwards and there is an acute awareness of the precarious and unpredictable slipperiness of this journey, that all could be lost and taken away in the bat of an eyelid. There is a need to project how high you have climbed, but also to protect that ascent. Insecurity abounds. Insecurity based on cultural, economic and political factors. The Chinese have an understanding with their ruling classes that government must be responsive to people’s needs, the middle classes trust that their government will protect their interests, otherwise the contract they have with them will unravel. People are not protected by civic institutions, there is no political representation, and wealth is not protected institutionally. The middleclasses are wracked with anxiety, it’s a very tough world out there and unless they carry on generating, it is all too easy to slip back to the bottom. What goes up can and often will come down.

More useful information at USAtrends.

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

Why China will keep supporting North Korea - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

The rest of the worlds continues to put pressure on China to severe its relation with North Korea. Shaun Rein explains to CNBC why it will be very unlikely China will do so: China still has to win much by keeping North Korea as an friend, to uphold its imange as a regional peace maker, and to keep access to the cheap labor in North Korea.

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Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference? Do get in touch.

Soccer: corruption at every level - Rowan Simons

Rowan Simons by Fantake via Flickr

Soccer in China is rife with corruption and multiple efforts to clear up the mess by the Chinese Super League (CSL) have not been working out, tells soccer specialist Rowan Simons CNN. While China has already missed the upcoming FIFA World Championship in South Africa, corruption scandals are spreading.
Rowan Simons:

"The CSL was already the third attempt at setting up the league because the other two collapsed due to corruption and fan violence," Rowan Simons, author of Bamboo Goalposts, a recent book about soccer in China, told CNN.

"There's corruption at every single level of the game, from the top to the very bottom. It's an indictment of wider Chinese society and representative of a much bigger problem with corruption and nepotism. It's more visible with football because your results are taken by your performance in international competition. So there is nowhere to hide. They are 85th in FIFA's world rankings with a population of over a billion people."

Much more at CNN.

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Rowan Simons is not only an expert on soccer in China, he is also a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do get in touch.

Discovering Shanghai's secret City - Howard French

Howard French by Fantake via Flickr

Howard French, former China bureau chief for the New York Times, explains in one of the paper's blogs how photography helped him to keep his sanity while studying Chinese in Shanghai.

I spent my first six months immersed in language training; eight hours a day, five days a week. I would emerge deeply exhausted at the end of each day. By week’s end, I would be desperate for relief.

I turned to photography, which had been a serious hobby and occasional freelance pursuit since I was a teenager.

Each weekend I set out alone on long walks from my house in the leafy former French Concession. One Saturday, the magical discovery came. A couple of blocks off of one of the city’s fanciest commercial boulevards, I discovered a raw, textured world like none I had seen before in Shanghai. It was a densely packed place of tumbledown, two-story housing and long internal alleyways. The bustle of street hagglers and of job seekers, just in from the countryside, spoke of earlier times.

This therapy turning into a beautiful historical document of past Shanghai, that has been buldozered away to a large degree to give way to the World expo 2010.
More, especially pictures, in the NYT blog Lens.

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

Most-sought speakers for May 2010

Jasper Becker by Fantake via Flickr

Our monthly overview of the most-sought speakers shows two remarkable trends. First, our number one Kaiser Kuo has left behind the pack. He is not firmly leading on the fist position, leaving behind the rest of the top-10. Second, we see a relative high number of new comers in the top-10, with the eminent journalist Jasper Becker as the fastest-rising star op no.2.
Other newcomers include eminent speakers like William Overholt, Paul French and Rupert Hoogewerf. And although they might sound familiar for those who follow these rankings, they have certainly gather space in the past month.

For the whole ranking in May (April in brackets)
1, Kaiser Kuo (1)
2. Jasper Becker (-)
3. Shaun Rein (2)
4. Arthur Kroeber (5)
5. William Overholt (-)
6. Paul French (-)
7. Tom Doctoroff (6)
8. Janet Carmosky (8)
9. Rupert Hoogewerf (-)
10. Zhang Lijia (9)

Apple picked the wrong iPhone partner - Shaun Rein

Image representing iPhone 3G as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

Picking your right partner in China is one of the key choices foreign companies have to make when they enter the Chinese market. While many industries no longer need a foreign entrant to pick a Chinese partner, for telecommunication that is still needed. And Apple made the wrong choice when it picked China Unicom as a partner for its iPhone in China, argues Shaun Rein, managing director of the research firm CMR in Shanghai.
In the WSJ-blog:

But a recent survey of 2,000 mobile users in China between the ages of 22 and 32 by China Market Research Group, or CMR, suggests that the cause of the iPhone’s performance in China may stem from the relative unpopularity of Apple’s partner, China Unicom, among its target users, as well as a lack of desire among those users to sign up for two-year contracts and subscribe to 3G services.

CMR found that while the iPhone was highly desired by users, less than 10% of respondents use China Unicom, and of those respondents, a majority said they were unhappy with the company’s service. In comparison, 95% of respondents said they felt competitor China Mobile was more stable and had better coverage when traveling around the country.

According to the firm’s managing director, Shaun Rein, such considerations by mobile subscribers didn’t matter as much in the U.S. when the iPhone first launched because Apple signed an exclusive deal with AT&T and users had no other choice. But in China, gray-market iPhones are readily available and can be used without 3G service with China Unicom’s competitors and there is less incentive to buy an official China Unicom iPhone.

CMR also found that 80% of respondents used prepaid mobile services rather than monthly subscription-based services, and had no plans to switch within the next three years.

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

Military expert joins China Speakers Bureau

Wendell Minnick by Fantake via Flickr

Wendell Minnick, currently serving as the Asia Bureau Chief / Defense news, has joined the China Speakers Bureau. He is an author, commentator, journalist and speaker who has spent nearly two decades covering military and security issues in Asia.
He joined in 2000 as the Taiwan correspondent of the London-based Jane's Defence Weekly. In 2006 he took up his current position with Defense News.
Conflict scenario's for the Taiwan Strait is one of his China-related topics. Mr. Minnick is currently working on a book on Chinese espionage, that is currently under development.

Since 1989, Minnick has written one book and over 800 articles. He began his writing career researching and writing about Cold War espionage and covert operations for a variety of publications.
In 1992, Minnick published his first book, Spies and Provocateurs: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Persons Conducting Espionage and Covert Action, 1946-1991, (North Carolina: McFarland, 1992).
Minnick is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), Chinapol Listserv, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and Military Reports and Editors (MRE)

You can find his full profile here.

Income gap widening - Zhang Juwei

Zhang Juwei by Fantake via Flickr

The gap between rich and poor in China is widening, say experts in the China Daily. Among them Zhang Juwei, professor and director of the labor and social security research center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.According to Zhang Juwei, the income gap in his country is becoming dramatic, fearing that figures on the so-called Gini coefficient might go past a critical threshold.
The China Daily:

The Gini coefficient - a measure of income inequality commonly used by economists and institutions - reached 0.47 in China in 2005, overtaking the recognized warning level of 0.4, according to the World Bank...."When the Gini coefficient reaches around 0.5, it means the inequality problem is extremely severe and needs immediate action to bring it down," Zhang said.

While no new figures have been released, the article in the China Daily suggests that those figures will be released soon, and it worrying the central leadership.

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

Huang Guangyu, not enough of a politician - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf by Fantake via Flickr

Tycoon Huang Guangyu, founder of the successful electronics chain Gome, got convicted to 14 years of imprisonment for fraudulent activities, the final end of the man who used to be China's richest. For the BBC China's rich list producer Rupert Hoogewerf explains why Huang could not survive in China's competitive landscape. Hoogewerf's Hurun Rich list was the first to name Huang China's richest man.

The BBC:

[Rupert Hoogewerf] says that although the entrepreneur was a brilliant businessmen he wasn't a good enough politician.
"Huang Guangyu was quite strange in so far as he didn't really cultivate his political contacts assiduously," he says.
"You find that at the very top of the Chinese political establishment there are quite a number of different factions. He started cultivating faction A, and faction B got jealous and took him down.".
..Mr Hoogewerf says that confirms what entrepreneurs he's spoken to say - that he had been "sailing too close to the wind".
"They say he shouldn't have been doing so overtly what he was doing," he says. "He was considered to be living what was considered to be quite a high risk business life in that respect."
Huang was accused of organising illegal transactions - converting Chinese yuan into Hong Kong dollars and insider trading in connection with huge purchases of technology stocks.

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Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference? Do get in touch.

Watching China's foreign investments - Janet Carmosky

Janet Carmosky by Fantake via Flickr

In Forbes Janet Carmosky tries to make sense out of the massive flow of Chinese investments entering the global economy. It looks much like an iceberg, she says:

In two ways, watching China’s money move is a bit like looking at an iceberg. First, because the money does tend to group itself into giant piles, which break off and float away--to Africa, Southeast Asia, Brazil, the gas-rich, geostrategic '-stans--and, very occasionally, to the northern hemisphere. Second, because everything that really happens is more or less invisible...

China as a civil society - Tom Doctoroff

Tom Doctoroff by Fantake via Flickr

In a serious effort to upset his readership at the Huffington Post, Tom Doctoroff explains what is going well in China and why the country is becoming civil, may it not be according to the rigid US standards. From transparent leadership changes to cleaner toilets:
He warns though:

In conclusion, Chinese civil society - i.e., existence of institutions to protect individual interests -- has made strides from the ruthlessness of previous eras. However, gains have been incremental rather than qualitative. Until central leadership fully embraces advancement individual interests as tantamount to efficiency, gains will not be fundamental

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Tom Doctoroff is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference? Do get in touch.

Image building and education lagging - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

China's economy might be steaming ahead again, but that does not mean all is well. Shaun Rein identifies in Business Week two key problems the country has to deal with: its image abroad and its education.

Being a superpower is no longer about the ability to drop enough bombs to obliterate the entire earth. Economic power and the ability to launch chaos via cyber and financial warfare should define superpower status....

While it is clear from the Pew Center's data that 86% of Chinese people support the government, it is equally clear that China does not do as good a job with the rest of the world. The recent misguided attacks on it by people like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) about currency policy, Beijing's disagreement with Google (GOOG), and the criticisms over the arrest of Rio Tinto's (RTP) former China head Stern Hu show that China needs to get better at soft power...

And: Despite the commonly held belief that China continues to graduate top-notch engineers, the fact is that the education system is not adequately preparing its students for a global business world. Most of the top students go to the U.S. to continue their graduate studies at universities like Harvard and Stanford because it is difficult to get the training they need at home.

More in Business Week.

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Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference? Do get in touch.

The rocket girl in Italy - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia by Fantake via Flickr

During her last visit by Zhang Lijia to Italy the director Davide Sacchetti made a trailer about the famous Chinese author, hoping to turn it later into a documentary. We think the trailer is a very good start: A Chinese rocket girl in Rome. While working in Nanjing, Zhang Lijia wondered what it is like in the outside world. Now, she got her fair share.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need her at your conference, do get in touch.

On economic and cultural issues - Maria Korolov

Maria Korolov by Fantake via Flickr

Maria Korolov tells in our recently released book A Changing China about her experiences with Americans in Shanghai. One of many lessons learned shared by our speakers at the China Speakers Bureau.

It can sometimes be difficult for people who come to China to set aside their preconceptions and treat their Chinese colleagues as people who are, deep down, exactly the same as they are. I've had a couple of older American colleagues who insisted on explaining to my Chinese staff why the Chinese were different—and, by inference, not as good.

One writer who worked for me briefly insisted that my Chinese staff lacked critical thinking. “It's a product of the educational system,” he explained. He, as an American, had critical thinking skills. He attempted to teach these skills to my staff, and I had to fire him. There's no lack of critical thinking skills in China. At least, not that I've ever seen. What there is—at least in my office—is a lack of experience. This is a basic economic issue, not a cultural one.

More about her experiences in A Changing China.

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Maria Korolov is COO at the China Speakers Bureau, and of course also a talented speakers. If you need her at your conference, do get in touch.

China's consumers keep on spending - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

Shaun Rein explains CNBC why in today's volatile markets, there will still be winners. The Chinese consumer will keep on spending, especially the female consumers. Based on research in 50 Chinese cities, his company discovered that those consumers will spend the coming six months more than the past six month, underlining a strong consumer confidence in China.

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Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference? Do get in touch.

Apple's lack of a China strategy - Paul Denlinger

Paul Denlinger by Fantake via Flickr

Many companies spend much energy and resources in developing a China strategy before they enter the world's most promising market. Apple had not, explains internet consultant Paul Denlinger in Forbes' China blog, and that might have saved their day.

For more than two years, China's two leading mobile operators, China Mobile and China Unicom, jockeyed for negotiating position with Apple to become the official iPhone distributor in China. This was unusual: China Mobile is the largest mobile telecom operator in the world (more than 522 million subscribers as of March 2010), and it was not used to NOT having its way in business negotiations with any company.

Except for Apple. With Steve Jobs, they met their match.

For large state-owned enterprises like China Mobile and China Unicom, it is normal for them to ask for special changes and amendments because "China is different from other markets." With any other company, they would get the changes they wanted. China Mobile wanted control over the App Store; Apple said no. And it went on and on.

Read more about Paul Denlinger's analysis.
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Paul Denlinger is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do get in touch.

China's rich give more to charity - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf by Fantake via Flickr

Giving to charity is maturing fast in China, says Rupert Hoogewerf, composer of the Hurun rich list and similar rankings on charity in China to Asia Times. He is noting differences in how much and why the wealthy in the US, Europe and China are giving to charity:
In Asia Times:

"Except for Yu [Panglin, the hotelier]and Huang [Rulun, property tycoon], the mean contribution was about 3%, and this is quite a lot, which is almost the same as in Western countries," Hoogewerf said. "They are the top people in China in terms of financial status. I think they do well if they donate 1% of their property every year.''

Hoogewerf identified several incentives and disincentives for Chinese business people to back charities.

"In the US and Britain, the tax systems give a lot of encouragement to people who are being successful in their business life to give money away before they die. However, there is no such tax allowance in China, but the Chinese entrepreneurs are willing to help charities. We should treasure that… Besides, a better social security net gives much less incentive for people to donate money to charity. That's why, in most of the western Europe, people do not tend to be active in donating compared with their US and Chinese counterparts," he said.

"Furthermore, Chinese entrepreneurs who have had first-hand experience of hardship, such as during the Cultural Revolution, are more likely to give away their fortune to charity when compared with people coming from big families in the US and Europe," he said.

Hoogewerf's view on Chinese entrepreneurs has changed over the years.

"They have more self-confidence and confidence in China's economic growth, so they have longer-term business plans. Ten or 12 years ago, my impression was that most business people had a one- or two-year business plan, with the idea of making money and taking it out of the country as quickly as they could."

About 25 years ago, there were no charity works in China, as everything was government owned. "Given that charity takes a lot of time [to develop], the priority now should be introducing social responsibility in corporations as this could encourage more people to make charitable donations," he said.

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

A sinocentric schizophrenic - Janet Carmosky

Janet Carmosky by Fantake via Flickr

In the recently started Forbes blog on China, Janet Carmosky explains why she is so often a schizophrenic, when it concerns China:

The hugger in me is reading a review copy of Clyde Prestowitz's "The Betrayal of American Prosperity" --a brutal blow-by-blow of why American economic viability is over.

My slayer is reading Jim Chanos, wondering if China's collapse will in fact come quickly and once again create much-needed space for mutual benefit.

More in the Forbes blog.

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Janet Carmosky is also a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need her at your conference, do get in touch.
Carmosky also contributed to our recently released book A Changing China. You can order the book here:

Economy is turning back to normal - Arfthur Kroeber

Artur Kroeber by Fantake via Flickr

After more than a year of financial upheaval, China's economy is turning back to normal, and the government is ready to deal with long-term issues, says economic analyst Arthur Kroeber. The Australian SMH investigated whether the climate for foreign companies is deteriorating, but Kroeber thinks the worst is over.

Some veteran analysts say the economic and political cycle is turning in China. Arthur Kroeber, a principal at the Beijing consultancy Dragonomics, says the ''liberal technocrats'' who were forced to retreat after the global financial crisis were now back in demand. And he says the ''China hates foreigners story'' was overdone in the first place...

''The global and the domestic economy have now stabilised and the government is freer to pay more attention to long-run structural issues,'' says Kroeber of Dragonomics.

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

Travelling in a changing China - Marc van der Chijs

Marc van der Chijs by Fantake via Flickr

In our book A Changing China, a large group of the speakers of the China Speakers Bureau recall the changes they have seen in China. Marc van der Chijs, co-founder of the video hosting service Tudou, and now CEO of the gaming company Spil group Asia, recalls how China looked like, when he arrived.

If you drive the 1200 kilometers from Shanghai to Beijing, you have 6-to-8-lane expressways the entire way. All these roads have tolls and are therefore less crowded than most other roads in China. A few years ago no one in his right mind would consider driving this distance by car, but now you can do it within ten hours.
There are recreation areas with basic restaurants and gas stations about every 100 kilometers along the whole stretch, and so there is no need to exit the highway while driving.
Not just Beijing and Shanghai are connected like this. China has been actively building out its highway network, and the total length is currently about 55,000
kilometers. All major cities are now connected by highways and expressways, and you can find some of the best stretches of asphalt in the most remote parts of China.

Read his full story in A Changing China

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Marc van der Chijs is speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do get in touch.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

What does the middle class want? - Tom Doctoroff

Friday, May 28, 2010

Why China will keep supporting North Korea - Shaun Rein

Monday, May 24, 2010

Soccer: corruption at every level - Rowan Simons

Discovering Shanghai's secret City - Howard French