Results tagged “chinaherald”

A group of 1,800 angry workers demanding overdue pay at a cotton mill in Xinhe, Chongming Island have held seven top managers of the Korean-owned mill hostage since Friday, including the chief executive officer of the factory. The news was reported in the Korean Chosun Ilbo, and as Fons Tuinstra of China Herald notes, the Chinese media has been silent on the story because "Chinese media cannot write about such unharmonious behavior". Our own search...

So both Myspace and Friendster have their own China versions. Now Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy Digital China Watch points us to a report on China Business News (第一财经日报) which cites an “industry insider” who says that Facebook plans to release additional language interfaces and intends to enter the China market as early as December this year. The paper also claims that "Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site like MySpace has done with MySpace.cn, but will instead acquire an existing SNS in China."

Right: GoogleTechTalks presents Professor Teng-Kee Tan, a technology entrepreneurship expert with the Singapore-based Nanyang Technological University who talks about Competing and Collaborating in China with Bi-Cultural Competence. Pretty interesting stuff if you operate on a strategic level at work. And if you have 66 minutes to spare!

One of the great things about living in China is the relatively low cost of courier services which means you can get just about anything delivered at next to nothing at all. China Herald informs us that now, you can even get fresh Yunnan coffee delivered to your house, for FREE (if you live within the French Concession and the Jing'an area, that is, or if you order over 100RMB). Otherwise, you pay just RMB10 if you live in Puxi and RMB15 if you're in Pudong. Very reasonable!

Defying Chinese criticism and pressure, Chancellor Angela Merkel met the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, on Sunday in Berlin, becoming the first German chancellor to do so, despite warnings from Beijing that it could damage economic contacts.

Rumour has it that Shanghai Media Group, the city's largest TV conglomerate which operates 20 television and radio channels, has plans to start a new 24-hour English language news channel. Rejoice all ye who don't have (or can't afford) satellite at home (that includes us)! Well apparently this has been in the works for a year now, and while SMG hasn't jumped pass the final regulatory hurdle, it has already started hiring "hiring English-speaking presenters, editors and reporters, including foreigners, for the new service" (now just where does one send in his CV?).

Some things you were never supposed to hear about ... so keep them to yourselves please! Shhhhh.

Thou shalt not collude on pricing, the regulatory god said unto the Moses of industries in most countries, including China. But the instant noodle cabal either did not hear it or turned a deaf ear. In late July, noodle makers joined forces in raising prices by about 20 percent, and as much as 40 percent for some products.After less than three weeks of regulatory pressure, media assailing and public discontent, the industry backed down, apologized and initiated an across-the-board price cut. Is this a triumph of consumer rights and regulatory protection? Yes ... hmm maybe.

Continue reading "Thou shalt not collude on pricing, says China Daily columnist but fails to hit out at state-owned airlines"

Even a hundred TV-shows cannot hide that something is seriously wrong in the way quality control is done in this country. And yes, there is now a fair amount of China-bashing going on, but that is very well deserved China-bashing. But the question what Mattel, and other companies, have been doing to stop this scandalous export of faulty products is a question that is all too easy ignored. Of course it is awful that millions of American children might be in danger when they bite on their toys, but has anybody already looked after the thousands of Chinese workers who have been painting those toys? They must have been exposed to much higher dangerous levels of lead than any of the children involved... It is shocking to see that Mattel get almost the role of a victim, instead of that of at least a fellow conspirator.

Shanghaiist is somewhat of a frequent flyer to Beijing, and because he isn't employed by some big multinational but rather runs his own little business, he can only afford to put himself on cattle class and often has to scour the internet for the cheapest available deals. We especially love this nifty little function on eLong.com which shows you the cheapest available flight within a week of your selected departure date. That has worked to our advantage in the past because we have relatively flexible schedules, and we have flown to Beijing for as low as RMB530 (that's RMB400 for the ticket and RMB130 for miscellaneous taxes) on Hainan Airlines.

ChinaOnTV.com is a U.S. based online video network, with all content presented in English. The mission of ChinaOnTV is to continually increase the public’s awareness of China’s history as well as contemporary Chinese life and achievements, in order to foster international trade, business ventures, cultural understanding, travel, peace and good will between the peoples of all nations.

It was reported this weekend that the much ballyhooed 25-minutes-from-Shanghai-to-Hangzhou maglev train, which was supposed to be fully operational around 2010, has been delayed. Indefinitely. Which makes us ask, how much longer are we going to have to wait to be ushered into the sci-fi utopia of the 21st century that we spent most of the 20th century dreaming about?

Yesterday afternoon, Shanghaiist noticed on its Twitter stream that some China-based users were having problems accessing the newly redesigned (wonderful in fact) Danwei site. Blocked blogger, The Weifeng Radish, noted it can only be accessed by an anonymising proxy. Prolific Shanghai blogger and journalist Fons Tuinstra over at The China Herald popped out a post musing about their situation.

After an enthusiastic e-mail circulated its way through some expatriate distribution lists last week touting the precision of an ostensibly upgraded Google Translate tool, the verdict from at least one blog is in: meh. According to China Herald:

This, actually, looks pretty cool (in a James - Bond - villain - likely - lives - here kind of way):

In the last quarter of 2006 Google's business in China was quickly spiraling down. But Googlers don't give up so easily, even if they did quit some efforts in the Chinese market already (China Herald summarised it before). This week, Google made its first step back into the market and announced their long rumoured mobile phone search collaboration with China Mobile:

So, it was reported yesterday that Chinese citizens no longer have to fill out entry forms upon returning to China, and that this move eliminates "a major bottleneck at airports and border crossings." And we still can't figure out how this will have any effect on the amount of time people, even Chinese citizens, wait in line at Pudong International Airport. One would assume Chinese citizens still have to present passports upon arrival, and that is what takes up the most time anyway. The forms just get thrown into a pile. And it's not as though the filling out of the forms was causing any sort of delay, since most of them are filled out on the airplane. So we're not sure what help this will be to anyone other than the people who had to do whatever it is they do with these forms after the fact (we always assumed they just got thrown into David Brent's "special filing cabinet"). Maybe we're missing something — could someone please enlighten us?

Lots of juicy news items in yesterday's Morning Post:

Yes, according to London-based market research firm Millward Brown, which recently released their list of the worlds most powerful brands -- excuse us -- "BRANDZ." (To view the press release, go here and then find the headline dated April 3 -- the way their site is designed doesn't allow for direct links.) Here is Millward Brown's spin on why their ranking system is different, thus giving them the right to misspell the word "brands" and trademark it:

We just put our copy of China's first Rolling Stone in a protective bag -- it might be more of a collector's item than we previously imagined. The Independent is reporting that less than one month after it's debut, the popular glossy has been forced to stop publication:

What do you do when you write a book about running a business in China, you get a book deal and then the publisher backs out at the last minute? Well, after shouting several bad words, you get the book published piecemeal until another publisher shows interest. And so Mark Kitto, one of the folks who started the whole That's Shanghai "magazine empire" back in the late 1990s, only to have it "stolen by the state" six years later, tells his tale in the April issue of Prospect:

Tipped by Fons at China Herald, we found this interview with the founder of what Fons calls "China's Gawker." Edwyn Chan runs BlogKu Media, a network of five blogs in China. They are: DianZiRen (gadgets and electronics), Shuanga ("funny stuff"), Starpapa (celebrity gossip), Jiaexp (gaming) and Movblog (film). Another blog, Postshow -- which Chan says is "Boing Boing-like" -- is "affiliated" with BlogKu.

We meant to write about this yesterday, but decided to play with our dog instead. Blame the pre-holiday malaise. Anyway, now many other blogs have made the same points we wanted to make, so we will summarize ... and then go play with our dog again.

Shanghaiist received the same email press release about the new book Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer that Danwei and China Herald did. The book is written by Tom Doctoroff, Greater China CEO of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. And the press release includes a list -- “Twelve Facts About the Confucian Consumer” -- that was "compiled by JWT to coincide with" the release of the book. Are all Chinese consumers Confucian consumers (whatever that means)? Are all Chinese consumers the same? Of course not. But they, obviously, are different than your average Western consumer, and we believe Doctoroff is trying to explain to his (mostly Western) audience just how they are different. We are publishing JWT's list below. As Danwei said, some of the items "ring true." Others can, and should be, contested. We'd love to hear what you have to say about this list, especially our Chinese readers:

Go here to read a gruesome, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking first-hand account of Shanghai-based Guardian reporter Benjamin Joffe-Walt's attempt to report from Taishi, a village in Guangdong, site of what Joffe-Walt calls "perhaps the most significant grassroots social movement China has seen since the Cultural Revolution, a rural revolt against corruption, against deterioration of healthcare, against the illegal sale of farmland, and broadly against urban capitalism that has reaped no benefits for these farmers." (For more on Taishi, visit ESWN.) Joffe-Walt never actually got to Taishi. He was on his way there with democracy activist Lu Banglie, when their car was stopped and Lu was brutally beaten, perhaps to death:

• First Hong Kong. Next Shanghai Disneyland? Not so fast. "In order for us to even consider a park there, we need to be sure we have access to television," Disney president and future CEO Robert Iger said in the IHT. He wants a Chinese Disney Channel on the Mainland. That is not going to be easy. (Via China Herald)
• Anyone who has taught in China knows that Chinese students cheat ... a lot. Many don't try to hide it, and don't think they are doing anything wrong (or they just don't care). Well, now they could go to jail. And if that doesn't work, there is always the "anti-corruption" curriculum.
• In a move that would never happen in the US, the makers of the amazingly popular Super Voice Girls TV program are saying the show will not be aired next year. Have no fear, Super Voice Boys is on its way. (Seriously.)

China's internet thugs are are it again, this time attempting to block popular internet telephony services, namely Shanghaiist favorite Skype: