Ni hao – this category features any blog posts that relate to the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese communist party, Chinese citizens, consumer behaviour, business, and Chinese business abroad.
It is likely the post will also in other categories too. For example a post about Tong Ren Tang might end up in the business section as well. Inevitably everything is inherently political in nature. At the moment, I don’t take suggestions for subject areas or comments on content for this category, it just isn’t worth the hassle.
Why have posts on China? I have been involved in projects there and had Chinese clients. China has some interesting things happening in art, advertising, architecture, design and manufacturing. I have managed to experience some great and not so great aspects of the country and its businesses.
Opinions have been managed by the omnipresent party and this has affected consumer behaviour. Lotte was boycotted and harassed out of the country. Toyota and Honda cars occasionally go through damage by consumer action during particularly high tensions with Japan.
I put stuff here to allow readers to make up their own minds about the PRC. The size of the place makes things complicated and the only constants are change, death, taxes and the party. Things get even more complicated on the global stage.
The unique nature of the Chinese internet and sheltered business sectors means that interesting Galapagos syndrome type things happen.
I have separate sections for Taiwan and Hong Kong, for posts that are specific to them.
In The South China Sea; Hayton sets an ambitious goal for himself to try and unpick the claims and counter claims on territory in the area. It is a massive convoluted story that encompasses colonial powers, oil companies and a plethora of Asian countries.
In the end no one comes out of it with glowing colours. China is easy to paint as a villain and it has played to type. But other countries and major powers have made constant mis-steps and it has become an intractable problem. The more hawkish may see the inevitability of war with China.
On the Chinese side, it makes sense for them to escalate a fight with one of their neighbours; as a Chinese idiom puts it ‘kill a chicken to scare the monkey’ and distract from the pain of change at home. The history is wrapped up with rising nationalism and aspirations of China and its neighbours.
From the American perspective, it makes sense to have the war with China further away from the Homeland, so the South China sea rather than the Pacific ocean.
Hayton doesn’t take a standpoint one way or the other leaving the reader to decide.
From a reading perspective, the tangled nature of the claims makes the book more difficult to read in small bursts. I tried reading it as a commuting book and it took a while to get it done.
Montblanc launches connected pen and paper | Luxury Daily – interesting move by Montblanc. The technology for connected pens similar to what Montblanc is doing has been around for a while. However it is interesting seeing a luxury brand like Montblanc enter the field. Montblanc has also done interesting things in wearables as well.
A great documentary on the (little known in the UK) early 1990s US rave scene that blossomed on the west coast and gave us the likes of Hawke, The God Within aka Scott Hardkiss, Onionz and the like.
Design
The last day of hot metal press printing at the New York Times
Now for a more disturbing piece of technology, that my colleague Matt shared with me: OfferMoments looks like a privacy nightmare a la Minority Report. I found this a disturbing 90 seconds of viewing as marketing walks all over privacy in an unprompted very intrusive manner.
JTB, Panasonic, Yamato eye paperless luggage transport service for tourists | Japan Times – this looks awesome. Yamato Express is a logistics company that will do everything from parcel delivery to helping you to move house. The Yamato Express business philosophy is embodied by our symbol of a mother cat carrying her kitten. Yamato Express look to deliver the same level of care to every customer relationship – and believe in our responsibility to contribute to their customers’ wellbeing and prosperity. I have experienced their service in both Hong Kong and Japan and Yamato Express is a level above UPS, Fedex etc.
Yamato Express logo showing a cat carry its kitten. The implication is that they take the same care
Japan’s message to the UK and EU – Japanese ministry of foreign affairs – interesting technical document that highlights how fucked the UK could be, this outlines the red lines that drive Japanese companies out of the country to another EU country instead. Unfortunately it will be too subtle for UK politicians (PDF) More Japan related posts here.
Media
Yes, the News Can Survive the Newspaper – The New York Times – One day many decades hence, when your grandchildren ask you, “Grandma, what was a newspaper?” you can direct them back to Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016. Because it may well go down as the day the American newspaper as we’ve known it moved out of intensive care and into the palliative wing on its way to the Great Beyond
The Twilight of Fox News – The Atlantic – interesting demographic cliff challenge, I would imagine that newspapers face a similar if less extreme challenge?
Will Amazon Kill FedEx? | Bloomberg – reminds me of Alibaba in China. The key difference is Amazon’s belief that they will always have the cheapest capital
Details Emerge On China’s 64-Core ARM Chip | NextPlatform – ARM as RISC server processor. ARM is more optimised as a client processor, whilst the power reduction focus is good, this isn’t necessarily the slam dunk that it appears on paper
Alcatel’s standalone VR headset is a tough sell | Engadget – really smart product design in terms of weight distribution. I suspect a good deal of the issue is access to compelling content and that consumers have been educated to do everything on/with their smartphone
Wireless
Total Recall | CCS Insight – Samsung’s Note 7 battery issue will be forgotten (like Dell and Sony’s laptop battery issues in the past). They will take a bit of a hit on their quarterly results, but business insurance will probably cover it
The New Yorker has been producing some fantastic surreal content
The Suicide Squad movie was disjointed to say the least, but one good thing that came out of it was a collaboration between Action Bronson and Mark Ronson
Korean cosmetic brand Innisfree tapped into the aspirations of Korean and Chinese consumers with this fantasy VR bike ride to Jeju Island. The execution was canny, from a technical perspective it deals well with the motion / balance issues that VR projects sometimes have. Jeju Island is a famous for its pleasant weather and more relaxed lifestyle. Chinese investors have recently been driving up property prices there. More Korea related content here.
Press – Silicon Valley – Nieman Reports – interesting, smart read. I thought that coverage in the press – Silicon Valley has been sycophantic for decades. There were some noticeable exceptions like InfoWorld’s Notes from the Field in the early 1990s. More on Silicon Valley here.
This Is How The Majority Of The World Will Get Online, Google Hopes – BuzzFeed News – “My relationship to Google is like I’m forced to be married to someone,” said Rudiantara, who noted that his government eventually spoke to Google, who created the technology behind the maps and accounts that make the insanely popular game possible and had made sure the game was being played away from sensitive military sites. “We can’t say go to hell to Google or to technology. But we also cannot allow them to do everything they want to do.”
Why Japan has more music stores than the rest of the world — Quartz – It’s not uncommon for a CD to be released in five different versions, featuring different covers, B-sides, or bonus DVDs.This speaks to a love of physical objects that’s characteristic of Japanese and also German culture, says Mulligan. These two countries have a shared preference for cash over credit cards, and also the strongest sales of physical music in the world. – It reminds me of the UK before chart regulations redefined what length a single could be way before digital formats
0.13.0 Binary Safety Warning | Bitcoin.org – this is their equivalent of a warrant canary. Shit is about to sideways in cryptocurrency and all those fintech startups looking at blockchain will also be tainted by concerns. For the US cracking bitcoin allows them to attack the deep web and tax evasion. It also allows economic warfare against China which currently dominates bitcoin. From China’s perspective cracking bitcoin could help on tigers-and-flies investigations and capital flight
