Ged Carroll

Category: china | 中國 | 중국 | 中華

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.

  • 911 restomod + more things

    911 restomod

    Perfect Porsche? This British-built 911 restomod comes close : CityAM – the idea of the perfect Porsche is contextual and highly personal. I would prefer a car that looks like an early air-cooled car, with no aerodynamic spoiler or flared arches and Fuchs wheels. There are a number of vendors doing a restomod 911. US company Singer is probably the most famous with its muscular looking restomod 911 models. In the article, there is a particularly interesting bit is about the redistribution of parts and lightweight replacement parts in the 911 restomod by Theon Design.

    China

    EXCLUSIVE China’s Ant explores ways for Jack Ma to exit | Reuters – this looks as if its much more focused on Jack Ma and possibly his links to the Jiang Zemin faction. Ma may not be even keeping the money

    Chinese censors take aim at former premier Wen Jiabao’s essay | Financial Times – really interesting that this appeared in a Macao publication, like it was designed to give it a few days out there. Wen was generally a bit more soft-hearted than Hu when the two were in the politburo. And Hu was moderated by the committee approach of the politburo. Xi had learned from Bo Xijlai that populism and nationalism worked and has a hawkish view that is untempered by the politburo.

    Consumer behaviour

    Siu mai or egg waffles? Hong Kong foodies cut through political divide to share reviews, photos in online ‘concern groups’ | South China Morning Post – it also reflects a deepening sense of localism in the community, but in a harmless way – food speech instead of free speech

    China’s keyboard warriors like to fight . . .  each other | Financial Times – China’s grassroots nationalist bloggers seem less like that unified “main force” than dispersed militias which argue with one another as much as they do with external enemies. “The difference between Chinese nationalist factions is probably bigger than the difference between all of them and an American patriot,” says one Beijing-based blogger who is researching a book on Chinese internet culture. And while the CCP’s professional trolls may generate reposts and likes, “volume is not influence”, he adds – interesting article. I keep thinking about how different red guard groups used to fight against each other during the cultural revolution

    Design

    Trapped on Technology’s Trailing Edge – IEEE Spectrum – Repairing the system entailed either redesigning a few circuit boards and replacing other obsolete integrated circuits for US $21 million, as the B-2 program officers chose to do, or spending $54 million to have the original contractor replace the whole system. The electronics, in essence, were fine—they just couldn’t easily be fixed if even the slightest thing went wrong. – which makes me wonder about the internet of things.

    Luxury

    Why Chow Tai Fook sees opportunity in rural China and lower-tier cities | Marketing | Campaign Asia – Surrey Pau, deputy general manager of Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group, responsible for market expansion, explained how and why the brand intends to seize opportunities in China’s fourth-and-fifth-tier cities, despite a natural bias in the sector towards selling luxury items to tier-one markets. Charts comparing urban (blue) and rural (yellow) growth rates Growth in rural China “Some people believe that in rural areas you don’t have much of an income, that you rely heavily on agriculture and have a very simple economic structure,” Pau said. “However we believe that is just a myth.” Comparing household consumption and spending trends in rural and urban areas, Pau sees the countryside soon catching up with cities, helped by government support to rural areas. And along with higher incomes, the brand is seeing people shift to devoting more disposable spending to lifestyle improvements, including cosmetics and jewellery. The other macrotrend is the massive rise in ecommerce spending. And thanks to recent infrastructure investments in new networks, the digital playing field has been levelled to a great degree in China – I don’t think that there’s the growth in Chinese lower tier cities and rural areas that Chow Tai Fook thinks

    Marketing

    6 Elements Of Digital Brand Dominance | Branding Strategy Insider – The old adage “stick to your knitting,” for example, a colloquial version of “build on your core competence,” tends to narrow a company’s imagination. Yet a bold imagination is a requirement for leaders today. Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, and Google would not be what they are if their CEOs and executive teams had not imagined a future that did not yet exist. – but do these businesses also suffer from a lack of focus and a conglomerate discount at some point?

    Media

    Leaked ByteDance Memo Shows Blockbuster Revenue Projections – Bloomberg – convenient that this happened ahead of Hong Kong listing…

    Myanmar

    Activists have launched a pirate radio station out of secret safehouses in Myanmar – Rest of World – probably radio because of the disruption to the internet – Myanmar’s army is sending the country “back to the ’90s” – Rest of World

    Online

    Son’s SoftBank Vision Fund Profit Nears $30 Billion on Coupang – Bloomberg – of course Softbank needs to be able to cash out to realise the win

    More than half of Instagram influencers ‘engaged in fraud’, with 45 per cent of accounts ‘fake’ | PR Week – Instagram mega-influencers and celebrities – those with more than one million followers – were the worst culprits, with two-thirds (66 per cent) of these accounts engaged in some form of fraudulent activity. 

    Nano-influencers – those with 1,000 to 5,000 followers – had the lowest proportion of fraud, occurring in 42 per cent of accounts. The most common tactics used included buying followers, likes and comments from click farms, buying story views, and engaging with comment pods – where a group of Instagram users get together and systematically engage with each other’s posts

    Security

    Huawei had unlimited access to millions of customer data from Telfort – NOS  – translation of Dutch original, more here – Dutch telecoms firm KPN: no sign Huawei has improperly monitored users, Telecom News, ET Telecom 

    Technology

    China’s Dystopian “New IP” Plan Shows Need for Renewed US Commitment to Internet Governance – Just Security – hinges around real ID and total surveillance

    Arm Battle With China CEO Escalates, Complicating SoftBank Sale – Bloomberg – I wouldn’t be surprised if China was pushing this to wrestle control of the group as part of its ‘war by other means’. I wonder if this news is connected – UK Forces Delay in Nvidia’s ARM Takeover, Citing National Security Concerns – ExtremeTech 

    US and Japan to invest $4.5bn in next-gen 6G race with China – Nikkei Asia 

    Wireless

    Lycamobile names CEO to lead digital push beyond expatriates | Financial Times – they’ve tried to do this previously. Lycamobile was usually the first SIM that EU migrants got to establish themselves in the UK. They then moved on to domestic aimed products. Brexit has made this move a life or death struggle now

    Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile kill their cross-carrier RCS messaging plans | Ars Technica 

  • New Zealand + more news

    New Zealand

    An end to cigarettes? New Zealand aims to create smoke-free generation | New Zealand | The Guardian  – banning tobacco sales to people born after 2004, will drive illegal sales. New Zealand could quite easily have a prohibition type situation on his hands with rampant tobacco smuggling and organised crime. New Zealand has been a leader in tobacco legislation but replication of this in other countries could be challenged in courts on grounds of discrimination 

    Business

    The vanishing billionaire: how Jack Ma fell foul of Xi Jinping | Financial Times – the Yahoo! and Softbank Alipay ownership piece should be read by anyone looking to invest in Chinese stocks. Bilking the western investors was seen as a mark of loyalty by the Chinese government

    China

    Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise – ChinaTalk – Xi Jinping just like two days ago was bragging about all these gangs that he’s been able to crack down on it. But the fact that he’s able to say he cracked down on [3,600 “mafia like groups] means that there were a whole lot more than [3,600 ganges- to crack down on in the first place. In the past few years, a few of the potential faults that you write about if China isn’t able to increase its workforce and find decent jobs for the common folk who haven’t made it to the cities yet is crime and social unrest. What are your thoughts about criminal enterprise in China and how it feeds into the themes that you talk about in your book? In the 1980s in Mexico, there was no crime. It wasn’t the Mexico that we know today. The Mexican government talked about what a safe place it was as they were growing very fast. Of course, everybody had a job. Everybody was employed. And that’s China today. China’s not a dangerous place, but Mexico wasn’t a dangerous place in the 1980s. What happened in Mexico, of course, is China happened, right? Wages in Mexico went up, as everybody got employed and the factories in Mexico decided to move. The maquiladoras moved to China. They moved back to the United States. They moved to elsewhere in the world and suddenly, within a couple years, 10 million people lost their jobs and that was 20% of the Mexican labor force – such a great interview

    Consumer behaviour

    Covid-19 and the rise in news misinformation – Press Gazette – “Our analysis of traffic to the top 100 global English-language news sites reveals that while news consumption soared overall in 2020, untrustworthy news sites saw bigger surges in readership” – Hat tip to Alan Morrison

    Finance

    How Dublin quietly became dumping ground for some of Europe’s riskiest corporate loans | Irish Times – shadow banking special purpose vehicles moved from Holland to Ireland

    Ideas

    Books that suck you in and books that spin you out – Austin Kleon 

    Systems Thinking in Seven (7) Images 

    Luxury

    Louis Vuitton joins China’s JD.com amid online luxury battle | Vogue Business – interesting move, is Tmall losing its grip?

    How Arnette Is Leading the Movement to Bio-Friendly Eyewear – bioplastics

    Gucci “Aria” Show Reveals Co-branded Balenciaga Pieces – SLN Official – this all looks like the the kind of shanzhai items I would have seen back when I first visited Shenzhen 15 years ago

    Marketing

    Browse our library of ebooks, webinars and videos – handy collection of resources by Meltwater

    Retailing

    What brands should know about Zhihu | Vogue Business – Initially invite-only, Zhihu has grown into an online content community of 75.7 million average monthly active users, who ask and answer questions and have access to in-depth articles, columns, videos and live-streaming sessions, often produced by the platform’s 43.1 million content creators… It makes most of its revenues through online advertising, but also offers a membership programme and online education to users, as well as content-commerce solutions to brands

    How the pandemic helped Walmart battle Amazon Marketplace for sellers | Reuters 

    The a16z Marketplace 100: 2021 

    Security

    Future Trends: Far-Right Terrorism in the UK – A Major Threat? | Global Risk Insights – there are also reasons to think that far-right terrorism may not develop into the major threat. Large ideological schisms exist within the far-right milieu (such as disagreements over anti-Semitism, capitalism, and violent vs democratic action) that keep far-right activity fractured. Far-right groups also tend to disintegrate due to infighting at a higher rate than Islamist groups do. Additionally, law enforcement may find far-right groups easier to infiltrate and monitor, as there would not be any linguistic or cultural barriers to surmount

    The $1 billion Russian cyber company that the US says hacks for Moscow | MIT Technology Review – One area that’s stood out is the firm’s work on SS7, a technology that’s critical to global telephone networks. In a public demonstration for Forbes, Positive showed how it can bypass encryption by exploiting weaknesses in SS7. Privately, the US has concluded that Positive did not just discover and publicize flaws in the system, but also developed offensive hacking capabilities to exploit security holes that were then used by Russian intelligence in cyber campaigns. 

    Much of what Positive does for the Russian government’s hacking operations is similar to what American security contractors do for United States agencies. But there are major differences. One former American intelligence official, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss classified material, described the relationship between companies like Positive and their Russian intelligence counterparts as “complex” and even “abusive.” The pay is relatively low, the demands are one-sided, the power dynamic is skewed, and the implicit threat for non-cooperation can loom large

    US Senator Who Served as Ambassador to Japan Lauds Closer Ties but Issues Warning | Voice of America – English – American concern about technology transfers extends beyond its relationship with Japan. “When the U.S. shares its cutting-edge technology with allies, it runs the risk that some of what is shared ends up in the hands of adversaries,” she said. For his part, Hagerty says that compared with four years ago, when he first took up the post as U.S. ambassador to Japan, the strategic challenge facing America “continues to get more serious, particularly with respect to China.”

    Technology

    Designed by Apple in California, Not Assembled in China | Above Avalon – Apple’s brand is less dependent on where its assembled

    Logic Chip Teardown From Early 1990s IBM ES/9000 Mainframe | Hackaday – The 1980s and early 1990s were a bit of an odd time for semiconductor technology, with the various transistor technologies that had been used over the decades slowly making way for CMOS technology. The 1991-vintage IBM ES/9000 mainframe was one of the last systems to be built around bipolar transistor technology, with [Ken Shirriff] tearing into one of the processor modules (TCM) that made up one of these mainframes – I remember when I was at college that bipolar / CMOS hybrid chips were touted to provide a radically faster computer chip

    2102.12627] How to represent part-whole hierarchies in a neural network – This paper does not describe a working system. Instead, it presents a single idea about representation which allows advances made by several different groups to be combined into an imaginary system called GLOM. The advances include transformers, neural fields, contrastive representation learning, distillation and capsules. GLOM answers the question: How can a neural network with a fixed architecture parse an image into a part-whole hierarchy which has a different structure for each image? The idea is simply to use islands of identical vectors to represent the nodes in the parse tree. If GLOM can be made to work, it should significantly improve the interpretability of the representations produced by transformer-like systems when applied to vision or language

  • Japanese insights & things that made my day this week

    Japanese insights

    Creative Culture ran a roundtable that provided with Japanese insights across brands and consumers. Well worth a watch.

    Key outtakes

    Kawaii or cute occurs in areas that you wouldn’t expect it. From Hello Kitty airlines and maternity wards to Miffy being used to sell mortgage services.

    Japanese newsprint
    Miffy selling mortgage service on a Japanese print newspaper advertisement

    Imagine 2060, more than 40% of Japan’s population will be 65 and older. This changes what market segments look like; no point chasing the latest generation. It will change what marketing will look like and what products will be sold. It would be an exciting time for product designers, creatives and strategists working with local clients who are willing to embrace the opportunity.

    Couple
    Couple by Norimutsu Nogami

    Newsprint and television are still popular media in Japan (and more popular than marketers are willing to admit outside Japan). These media still have a strong influence on consumers and are represented more strongly in the media mix by Japanese companies. In terms of Japanese insights for brand marketers this means that brand building should be less of a challenge from a media investment point of view than it would be in in some western markets or China.

    Japanese Television
    Japanese television by buck82

    Consumers shop daily or every other day. This is because they don’t have enough space to keep their groceries. So there are convenience stories in every neighbourhood. Retailers want to keep minimum inventory, so they receive frequent, small deliveries almost daily. Since there is a rapid turnover this in turn allows innovation around product innovation. Special edition Kit-Kats are the example most familiar to consumers. But you can see different products in the convenience store at different times of the day.

    Family Mart Convenience Store, Harajuku Tokyo, Japan
    Family Mart Convenience Store, Harajuku, Tokyo by MD111

    More Japanese insights here.

    China

    Moving from Japanese insights to Chinese strategy, the Center for Strategic & International Studies discusses what is needed for the west to have a better China strategy.

    Technology

    The Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, took the opportunity to interview Mark Markkula. Markkula was an engineer and product marketer involved at Fairchild and Intel during the early days. He put in seed capital into Apple and sat on the board until 1997.

    If you watch nothing else on this post, watch this discussion between Stephen King and Jeremy Bullmore at J Walter Thompson. Bullmore ended up as chairman of J Walter Thompson, eventually retiring in 1987. King established the first account planning department in the advertising industry at J Walter Thompson in 1968.

    May of the problems outlined are similar to problems today.

  • Platforms and information war

    Bill Bishop in his excellent newsletter Sinocism (paywall) asked some interesting questions about platforms and information war as part of an opinion piece covering a wider range of issues. It was a particular question that he posed about platforms and information war that got my attention.

    …if you believe that the PRC is engaged in a coordinated global information war to control the narrative about China and delegitimize the US and the West, should the US and other governments targeted in this campaign pay more attention to the use of social media platforms like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter in those efforts? If so how?

    Bill Bishop, Sinocism – Weekly Open Thread 2021 #10: Gratitude; Narrative control; Xinjiang and social media (April 2, 2021)

    I replied to Bill’s question; in his thread and thought I would publish my thoughts here in an expanded and hopefully better written way.

    In my response I decided to deal with the online / social platforms and information war head on. It is a problem that western countries have been wrestling with for a good while. Whether its:

    • State actors like China, North Korea or Russia
    • Political extremists on the right and the left including populism
    • Conspiracies: anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, QAnon, 5G causes COVID-19
    • Non-state actors: jihadist groups, ‘spontaneous’ Chinese Han nationalists

    On platforms

    The main platforms of concern are:

    • Alphabet (Google search, YouTube)
    • Facebook (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram)
    • Twitter
    • Bytedance (TikTok)

    For sake of convenience I am going to refer to Alphabet / Facebook / Twitter / Bytedance as AFTB for the rest of the article.

    All of the platforms are controlled by algorithms, but what does that really mean? The algorithms are created by technologists to:

    Surface content that the audience will want to engage with and make less visible content that is less interesting. Rather like an editor selecting articles in magazine. Algorithms are also used to select and match advertising with content. The algorithms incorporate feedback loops. Whilst they are created by technologists, they are in turn altered by audience behaviour over time. Descriptors like deep learning, reinforcement learning, machine learning and artificial intelligence are often used to describe the technologies supporting algorithmic selection. Popular media would conjure up images of sentient intelligent computers, but that isn’t really helpful.

    Instead I would like to draw on geography as a metaphor to describe what’s going on. Imagine a fissure in the earth opens up in the side of a lake. The water follows a natural path downhill, over time the water carves out a gulley, that becomes a river. It removes the top soil, taking it down to sea. Stones are tumbled and rubbed together by the flow of the river. They become smooth and lozenge shaped. The landscape directs the flow of the water and is acted upon by the water. The water’s effect becomes more pronounced over time.

    So it is with algorithms. They are created, they interact with the audience. Over time, their behaviour becomes affected by audience behaviour patterns that it experiences over and over again. The reality is that AFTB have power, but are also influenced by audience behaviours.

    Is the audience real?

    Algorithms automate advertising. Online advertising was estimated to be worth 319 billion dollars in 2019 and expected to be 1,089 billion dollars by 2027. To give a frame of reference, in 2019 global advertising spend was roughly equivalent to the GDP of Singapore. By 2027 it will be greater than the GDP of Indonesia, the country with the world’s fourth highest population and largest muslim population. All of that money attracts serious efforts to defraud advertisers and platforms. Statista estimates that advertising fraud will be worth 44 billion dollars by 2022. A lot of that will be created by technology driven ‘fake’ audiences or bots.

    One of the main questions that platforms ask themselves is are their audience members real. A lot of efforts have gone into counteracting fake advertising audiences. Some of these efforts have also taken platforms and information war in the form of fake commenters and automated social accounts.

    This has given rise to mass organised real commenters, from influencers in WhatsApp groups arranging to like and comment on each others posts, to troll farms and self organised groups. State actors like Russia and China are known to have have both troll farms and self organised groups of the politically faithful working for them. A lot of the time, their comments aren’t designed to persuade other people on social media, but distract, drown them out or intimidate others. Their role is also designed to shape the algorithms that surface content.

    YouTuber talks about how his posts are commented on, demonetised and flagged for take down

    Platforms also use algorithms and audience participation as a first line of defence against inappropriate content. Chinese respondents have compiled a great deal of expertise in successfully flagging content for removal or demonetisation. Demonetising a video soon after it has been posted is particularly harmful for video creators as this is when they have their most views and greatest opportunity for ad revenues. Video views over time from posting have a a curve that steeply declines over time. Video channel view distribution roughly follows the long tail model with a a small amount of popular channels having an outsized audience and the bulk of the advertising anyway. This puts demonetised creators in a very precarious situation. It puts aggressors at an advantage in terms of platforms and information war.

    Creators dealing with this process will find the process very wearing even if they are one of the lucky few who has a creator account manager. The platforms can’t fix that without spending a large amount of money on real people, which would impact profitability.

    The exception to the rule would be TikTok which has more aggressive algorithms similar to what would be used on Chinese social platforms and actively filter controversial content. TikTok focuses on light entertainment and a good deal about this approach is because of its Chinese ownership. Douyin, the China-only version of TikTok is even stricter. The algorithms are supplemented by an army of a human censors. The other platforms have a wider remit.

    Content that works

    There have been leaps forward in understanding how to make more effective content and what app designs worked. The secret sauce is variable rewards. An example of this would be content associated with the QAnon conspiracy, each instalment is known as a Q drop. Some Q drops were big claims, others relatively small details.

    Nir Eyal’s Hooked is a book that covers this and is one of the more accessible of the of the advertising / marketing / product design-industrial complex works on this area.

    The difficulty changing platforms

    It is really hard to get platforms to do more than what they’re already doing through non-policy related means. A case in point would be studying Facebook’s recent history. The reason why Facebook was able to withstand large brand boycotts in 2020 was because they make their money from small companies around the world. A good deal of the business is small D2C (direct to consumer), gaming and major brands. Many of which are Chinese. Examples would be

    • wish.com
    • shein.com
    • Oasis games
    • Xiaomi
    • Vivo and OPPO (part of BBK)

    This layer of immunity is likely to be less pronounced but similar on Google advertising as well. As I write this, I can see that Air China is running Google advertising campaigns. They are in both English and simplified Chinese against a range of search terms.

    Secondly, social media platform changes wouldn’t be solved by policy alone. You’d need a reorientation of priorities in the boardroom, call it a higher purpose or patriotism in the broadest terms that hasn’t been seen in the US since the Eisenhower administration.

    You would need a mammoth tech revamp inside the platforms; a huge increase in human account management and intervention. For instance, it would mean YouTube having to shake up the pro-China (or Q-Anon) rabbit holes that are instrumental in attitudinal change.

    Deplatforming

    You would need to deplatform domestic advocates who are either paid, or are fellow travellers with groups using platforms for information warfare. I would imagine that you would have a lot of people baulking at that. In order to inoculate local populations of Russians or Chinese against use of their favoured platforms for information warfare, you would need to completely rebuild their native language media within western countries. In the case of Chinese immigrants and students, you would need to start filtering content on WeChat. That would be a major undertaking for any security service. WeChat could make that job a lot harder if they integrated encryption into the app for overseas users.

    You would need to deplatform foreign media organisations such as Russia Today, Global Times and CGTN.

    Finally, there would need to be eye-watering punitive damage done to corporates who acts as apologists for these countries. This would need to be multilateral. So the US should be prepared to blow up Facebook and Goldman Sachs, the UK HSBC and Germany Daimler-Benz or Deutsche Bank. They would need to pick a side.

    Given the heavy involvement of large corporates in setting policy, that’s quite a conundrum. More related posts here.

  • 2021 blogs that inspire me

    I wrote a blog post back in February 2014 that highlighted 40 blogs that inspired me, revisiting this post I decided to write about 2021 blogs that inspire me. But first how did the original list hold up in 2021?

    Original list in 2021

    Name / CategoryDescription
    Analysis 
    Wall Street Journal Corporate Intelligence blogNo longer exists, the link defaults to the Wall Street Journal front page.
    Edge Perspectives with John Hagel– No longer exists
    Monocle MonocolumnMonocle has kept the archive online, but the Monocolumn is no longer updated. It has been abandoned in favour of the Monocle Minute
    Organizations and MarketsOrganizations and Markets have their archive online but wrote their last post in 2016, ten years to the day when they first started writing posts
    Asia 
    AnalectsThe Analects last post was in November 2014
    Asia blogThe Asia Society have a blog which alternates between amazing photography from the region and analysis pieces with an academic / think tank type feel. It is still maintained
    Asian Security BlogStill sporadically posted to by Robert Kelly a Korean-based professor of international relations, it has some interesting posts analyzing the complex relationships across APAC. In 2017, became better known when his children gatecrashed a television interview he was doing via Skype with the BBC
    Bytes of ChinaNo longer available
    China Real TimeThe blog has disappeared and now diverts to the WSJ’s Asian news section.
    ChinaTechNewsChinaTechNews seems to have stopped at the end of 2020
    Hong Kong HustleStopped in 2017, but the archived posts are still available
    Jing DailyAll things luxury sector related in China.
    Jottings from the Granite StudioNow diverts to Jeremiah Jenne’s personal site
    May DailyMay Daily no longer exists
    Scene AsiaNo longer exists, instead it diverts to the WSJ home page
    Business 
    Andy KesslerBlog of the business author and former Wall Street analyst, mostly just posts the copy from his Wall Street Journal articles there now.
    Bronte CapitalAustralian authored blog with some interesting analysis on some of the business stories of the day with a very strong focus on US companies
    Strategyprofs.netThe archive is still available. The last post was written in 2016
    Union Square VenturesA mix of curated content and original analysis by staff from a New York-based venture capital firm
    Design 
    Cool ToolsKevin Kelly’s website which is a spiritual successor to the Whole Earth Catalog.
    designboomGreat new product site which cover product design to architecture products, handy to look through for inspiration
    DezeenSimilar to designboom but more focused on architecture
    IDSA Materials and Processes SectionNo longer active
    Thinking and SharingHasn’t been updated since November 2020
    Ideas 
    BBH LabsRandom assortment of posts from the innovation team at BBH, always something to think about
    ExcapiteIdeas of exploration in the network economy
    PARC blogBlog no longer active
    Insights 
    CEB Iconoculture Consumer Insights BlogMerged into GartnerGroup’s other blog posts
    Creative Culture InternationalNuggets of consumer behaviour insights from around the world
    GfK Insights BlogGlobal market research agency posts based on some of the research they carry out, has a mixed bag of content
    The comScore Data MineNo longer active
    WPP Reading RoomNo longer active
    Online 
    China Internet WatchThink Techcrunch for China
    China Social Media blogNo longer active
    Facebook Developer BlogLess of a pleasure, more of a professional necessity to try and keep with up with the latest developments on the Great Satan of social
    Technology 
    FluxxNo longer running a blog
    Infinite LoopArs Technica’s Apple-focused channel, quality analysis
    Michael GeistCanadian expert on intellectual property and online privacy. Blogs analysis with a North American focus
    Tech-On!Blog no longer published in English
    The WirecutterA ‘best of ‘ website that looks at different technology categories

    What surprised me about the 2012 list is how many blogs covering different aspects of China in terms of the technology scene, culture and online life have disappeared or stopped being updated. Despite the fact that now, more than ever, they are needed.

    Major media outlets have walked back from building blogs based on interest areas or personalities ( like a traditional newspaper columnist).

    By comparison, I have a compiled an exemplar list of inspirational 2021 blogs. I look at more but that would be ludicrously long to compile.

    2021 blogs that inspire me

    Name / CategoryDescription
    Analysis 
    Marginal RevolutionEconomics blog of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, both of whom teach at George Mason University
    Naked CapitalismNaked Capitalism is an educated critique of post Reagan / Thatcher Chicago School of economics
    Global Risk InsightsA mix of current affairs and economics from an international team of policy wonks and economists
    LawfareCurrent affairs analysis in association with the Brookings Institute
    ProMarket A curated newsfeed of articles on the intersection of technology, policy and economics
    VoxEUEU focused policy blog under the auspices of the Centre for Economic Policy Research
    Asia
    Asian SentinelAsian Sentinel is edited by a couple of veteran Asia based journalists. The content comes from a number of experts in the region in specialisms such as finance, economics and policy.
    Chosun IlboEnglish language Korean newspaper
    Hong Kong Free PressThe Hong Kong Free Press is an English language online-only new site focusing on Hong Kong
    MetropolisEnglish language online magazine focused on life in Japan – culture rather than policy and news
    Jayne StarsEnglish language blog that collates Hong Kong celebrity news from Cantonese language media. It is was important for me to keep an eye on this when working in Hong Kong. It is also a good way to track the slow death of the Hong Kong domestic media industry.
    Nippon.comOnline magazine ran by the Nippon Communications Foundation
    PingWestChina-based English language site that specialises local technology sector news
    SoraNews24English language version of a Japanese news site that focuses on ‘fun, weird, and intriguing news from Asia, particularly Japan’. It has some great Japanese consumer insight content including retail experiences
    South China Morning PostThe South China Morning Post historically was the paper of record for Hong Kong. It’s medium-to-long term usefulness looks in question with the National Security Act and the Chinese government pressure for Jack Ma to divest media ownership
    Tech in AsiaEnglish language site that is focused on the South East Asian and East Asian technology sector 
    What’s On WeiboEnglish language site that provides insight into the top stories and memes trending on Chinese social media
    The Wire ChinaSubscription-based online Chinese news magazine covering business, policy and economic issues
    HKU Legal Scholarship BlogHong Kong University faculty of law blog on local developments
    Design
    Cool Hunting A mix of the unusual and cool from around the web
    Cool ToolsKevin Kelly’s website which is a spiritual successor to the Whole Earth Catalog.
    designboomGreat new product site which cover product design to architecture products, handy to look through for inspiration
    DezeenSimilar to designboom but more focused on architecture
    Core77Curated design and architecture
    Retro To GoProducts with a retro design and sensibility
    1Granary A magazine focused on profiling designers and artists
    ColossalColossal in their own words – “an international platform for contemporary art and visual expression that explores a vast range of creative disciplines.” 
    Design milkAn online magazine and e-commerce site focused on modern design
    DexignerOne of the OG design blogs started back in 2001
    Retro To Go Retro To Go curates vintage and new products that are retro influenced product designs
    Ideas
    Ad AgedGeorge Tannenbaum is a 40 year creative veteran in the advertising industry. His blog is a mix of smart thinking and ranting about ageism and other isms in the ad industry (there’s a lot of them to rant about)
    AeonAeon is a smart digital magazine run along the same principles as PBS or NPR in the US
    BaekdalManagement consultancy type content on the media industry, primarily aimed at publishers, but useful for ad people like yours truly
    Clot MagazineAn online magazine about art that uses ‘science’ as its media – full of interesting curios
    Creative Culture A mix of academics and consultants covering a wide range of cultural issues. I am never sure what I’ll find here, but it’s seldom dull.
    FuturismCuration of interesting stuff
    Hello FutureFrance Telecom has a blog about the bleeding edge of technology. Alongside the usual 5G flag waving you’d expect from a major mobile network operator there’s some thoughtful content
    Kellogg InsightArticles from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Many of which are well written
    KnowledgeArticles written by INSEAD teaching staff and alumni 
    Union Square VenturesVenture capital fund who write about some of the thinking that underpins their investment themes
    Yale University Press BlogA blog that covers the central ideas in the books that they publish. The articles go from current affairs to art, history and science.
    Technology
    Radio Free MobileDespite the name, covers technology and does some interesting business analysis. I really like the way everything is delivered in succinct bullet points
    Semiconductor DigestSemiconductors are the most overlooked, yet important part of technology today. Well worth keeping up with the latest developments here
    Chilling CompetitionAnalysis of the intersection between legal and technology, with a particular focus on anti-trust and competition law
    Tech.euEurope based technology and innovation news