8 minutes estimated reading time
‘Chinese diplomatic failure’ as Australia’s dovish voices fall silent – Inkstone – it will be interesting to see if this Chinese diplomatic failure forces the Chinese government to alter its approach
China’s Trillion-Dollar Campaign Fuels a Tech Race With the U.S. – WSJ – to develop next-generation technologies as it seeks to catapult the communist nation ahead of the U.S. in critical areas. Since the start of the year, municipal governments in Beijing, Shanghai and more than a dozen other localities have pledged 6.61 trillion yuan ($935 billion) to the cause, according to a Wall Street Journal tally. Chinese companies, urged on by authorities, are also putting up money.
The mystery document holding up China’s sale of Anbang hotels | Financial Times – this reads like a Robert Ludlum novel. More China related content here.
Coronavirus: ad shift from TV to digital will speed up says Goldman – move away from brand building to activation
China Millionaire Livestreamer Viya Shows Online Shopping Future – “E-commerce livestreaming,” as it’s lovingly called by analysts, will already feel familiar to many in America and elsewhere; the latest stage in an evolution from infomercial pioneer Ron “But wait, there’s more” Popeil, the Home Shopping Network, Oprah’s Book Club, and Kim Kardashian. Amazon’s been experimenting with the concept for more than a year, most recently teaming up with “Project Runway” stars Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn for a spin-off and retail tie-in that will make the show’s winning designs immediately available to buy. Facebook has been trying to get users to shop on its platform for years; in May, it announced a partnership with Shopify to help integrate buying there and on Instagram
‘Don’t waste the crisis’: EU business group presses China to open markets | South China Morning Post – European chamber’s annual survey finds companies grappling with a more politicised, state-dominated environment. Forced technology transfers also a big concern for foreign players in the country
UK businesses in China say opening measures have little impact | Financial Times – it will be interesting how much of a car crash it will be with Chinese retaliatory measures
Daring Fireball: Zoom, Still Shitting the Bed – headline nails it
Memorandum on Protecting United States Investors from Significant Risks from Chinese Companies | The White House – this has been a long time coming
AUS antitrust probes zeroing in on Google Search, rival says – CNET – questions focused on ways of requiring Google to provide alternatives to its search engine on Android and in its Chrome web browser, Weinberg told Bloomberg
A Come Back Story or a Mirage – Story of China’s Street Vendors | LinkedIn – my bro Calvin on the rise of small businesses in China
Sequoia Capital China’s Neil Shen and Softbank Vision Fund partner quit board roles at Qihoo 360 | South China Morning Post – probably something to do with Qihoo 360 being sanctioned by the US representing a wider Chinese diplomatic failure
Briefing with Senior State Department Officials on Limiting the CCP’s Ability to Steal U.S. Technologies and Intellectual Property – United States Department of State – interesting read
Nomura/Hong Kong: beyond our Ken | Financial Times – interesting how Hong Kong’s national security law could encompass a brokers ‘sell’ note on Chinese equities. This is likely to be another Chinese diplomatic failure
Huawei – Nowhere to run pt. XVI. – Radio Free Mobile – rather assumes China won’t use grey market techniques to get parts for Huawei
Huawei builds up 2-year reserve of ‘most important’ US chips – Nikkei Asian Review – not terribly surprising. I also suspect that its set up a web of front companies to buy on the grey market as well
Beijing Threatens Hong Kong’s Companies and Workers – The New York Times – China and its allies are using threats and pressure to get business to back Beijing’s increasingly hard-line stance toward Hong Kong, leading companies to muzzle or intimidate workers who speak out in protest.Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong’s former top leader, on Friday called for a boycott of HSBC, the London bank, because it had not publicly backed Beijing’s push to enact a new national security law covering the territory
Hong Kong Filmmakers Discuss the Dire State of the HK Film Industry | JayneStars.com – this breaks my heart, having grown up on Hong Kong cinema
HKU Legal Scholarship Blog: Johannes Chan Comments on the National Security Law (RTHK English News) – what constitutes ‘national security’ has never been defined. “In China they never really define what exactly is ‘national security’. So the law could change according to political expediency or political necessity,” he said. “We don’t know if it will be more clearly defined in the coming law but in accordance with their tradition and the current scope, it could be exceedingly wide,” Chan said, adding it is naive to think the law will only apply to only a small group of people. The legal scholar also said he doubts if the central government will accept unfavourable rulings by Hong Kong courts linked to the new security law
Presentation Design by 24Slides | 24Slides – interesting side service by Sheraton Hotels
GOOPiMADE – really cool Taiwanese streetwear brand
The Quietus | Missing The Jackpot: William Gibson’s Slow-Cooked Apocalypse – “One thing I was curious about with Dominic Cummings,” Gibson continues, “is I wondered if he had noticed that Bigend’s mother was a Situationist – or someone who hung with the Situationists –and I wondered if he knew who they were and what their schtick was, because I somehow doubt he’d get that.” But I guess he sees himself as some sort of disruptor, shaking things up – albeit perhaps in more of a Silicon Valley kind of way, than in a Situationist vein. “But disruption is not hot anymore!” Gibson exclaims. “That’s an old meme.”
Legendary fashion bibles STREET and FRUiTS are finally online | Dazed Digital – huge online asset
How Did I Not Hate the new Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045 CGI Anime? – J-List Blog – one observation J-List’s anime figure buyer made is that Netflix-funded anime rarely result in figures or other products for J-List or other anime shops to sell, and in general don’t have a “long tail” that allows anime fans to enjoy the work over many years, compared with more organically-created anime series. Sometimes this “Netflix short tail” problem is caused by the business model of streaming, which prefers to dump a whole series online at once so fans can binge it and get more addicted to the platform. One such anime was Relife, about a company that lets people return to high school and re-live a year of their lives over again, which totally failed to make a splash because it came out all at once on Netflix, rather than one episode per week
The Wizards of Buzz – WSJ Online – The next time you visit a buzzy Web site, see a funny video clip online or read an unusual take on the news, chances are you owe it to someone like Mr. Worthington. A new generation of hidden influencers is taking root online, fueled by a growing love affair among Web sites with letting users vote on their favorite submissions. These sites are the next wave in the social-networking craze — popularized by MySpace and Facebook. Digg is one of the most prominent of these sites, which are variously labeled social bookmarking or social news. Others include Reddit.com (recently purchased by Condé Nast), Del.icio.us (bought by Yahoo), Newsvine.com and StumbleUpon.com. Netscape relaunched last June with a similar format. The opinions of these key users have implications for advertisers shelling out money for Internet ads, trend watchers trying to understand what’s cool among young people, and companies whose products or services get plucked for notice. It’s even sparking a new form of payola, as marketers try to buy votes – from back when influencers weren’t such a malign dystopian concept of shallowness
The Infinite Heartbreak of Loving Hong Kong | The Nation – The same brutal policing tactics and authoritarian legal frameworks developed by the British to suppress leftist dissent are being recycled by Chinese authorities against pro-democracy Hong Kongers. The CCP constantly casts itself as the answer to Western imperialism. But Chinese state media now argues Hong Kong’s new national security law would improve upon the “frail” British security framework—in other words, that it wants to bolster, not dismantle, the colonial machinery of repression – interesting diacotomy in narrative. All of this compounds Chinese diplomatic failure in Australia and other western countries
Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization – TL;DR – no clear correlation between political polarisation and social networks
WARC | Global Ad Trends: COVID-19 & Ad Investment – advertising investment is set to fall 8.1% – $49.6bn – worldwide this year. This year’s downturn will be softer than in 2009, when the ad market fell by 12.7% ($60.5bn). Traditional media will fare far worse than online. Almost all product sectors will record a decline this year, with the most severe falls seen among travel & tourism (-31.2%), leisure & entertainment (-28.7%), financial services (-18.2%) and retail (-15.2%).