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.

  • Facebook cant be removed + more

    Facebook Cant be removed from Certain Android Phones – Search Engine Journal – pre-installs creating bloatware on phones like the PC industry did when profits got tight. Given Facebook’s position as a monopoly Facebook cant be removed from phones has to be an area for action

    ‘I love my Mac!’ – Zoë Smith – “My phone rang, and the video I was watching on the computer paused!” – when we are running computers hundreds of thousands of times the power of the entire NASA Apollo space programme computers, why wouldn’t this happen? This seems like a relatively easy CX related win, yet it seems like magic. This says a lot about the poor user experience in computing. More design related content here.

    Chinese budget smartphone brand Realme has Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe in its sights after sweeping India | South China Morning Post – BBK expands its brand portfolio beyond Oppo, OnePlus, Vivo and Realme. It is the hidden leader while Huawei gets the kudos, BBK owns mid market handset sales. BBK were also responsible for the amazing Oppo Blu-Ray players and high end headphones.

    This online tool can transform your black-and-white photos into color images | Abacus – interesting that it was launched to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Chinese economic reform. It uses machine learning taught with 1,000s of photos. Just don’t rely on it for colour fidelity.

    Selling extremism: Nationalist streetwear and the rise of the far right – interesting given the multi-cultural history of street wear. However clothing has also been a code for subcultures and communities. In the past the far right borrowed the workwear look from the skinhead culture. MA-1 jackets, Fred Perry shirts, Ben Sherman shirts, Levi’s jeans and Dr Marten boots. As the codified items get coopted by other groups they get replaced. Skinhead haircuts are replaced something more high and tight. It was only a matter of time that extremists borrowed from streetwear and football casual style.

  • Chinese space program & things that caught my eye this week

    This week saw a huge leap forward for Chinese space exploration and the Chinese space program. China landed a space ship on the far side of the moon and is currently exploring it. The Chang’e 4 space ship is named after a Chinese goddess who reputedly lives on the moon. It carried the Jade Rabbit 2 rover. Chang’e was kept company on the moon by her pet jade rabbit.

    This is a huge achievement. It has been fifty years this August since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. NASA has plans for its Saturn rockets, but the actual knowledge to build that size of rocket is being relearned through its SLS programme. NASA engineers now marvel how 1960s era welders managed to manually create perfect long welds in the rocket motors with lost craftsmanship.

    Secondly there is the context of the Chang’e project. China builds programmes like the Chinese space program by thinking in terms of decades. It will be doing invaluable research and the space programme may spur Chinese innovation just like what happened in the US during the 1950s and 60s. You couldn’t have had Silicon Valley or many household goods without space programme knowhow. The Chinese would be much more open to harvesting resources from the moon and beyond. In the same way that the Apollo programme was a part of the cold war, Chang’e is part of a wider political context. Premier Xi is focused on China’s rejuvenation that includes

    • Ethnic based national(ist) pride. China’s Han ethnicity makes up over 90 per cent of the population. The Chinese government recognises 50 different ethnicities in the country
    • Pride in Chinese culture and elimination of inferior western culture in China
    • Technological supremacy
    • Social progress
    • Supremacy in hard and soft power

    So it was with a certain amount of irony that the Chinese space program published a post on Weibo quoting Pink Floyd’s Breathe from Dark Side of The Moon album.

    China's space program Weibo account celebrates Chang'e 4 and Jade Rabbit 2 by quoting Pink Floyd

    Pepsi tried to tap into the space age excitement with its early entry into the pantheon of this years adverts celebrating Chinese New Year. This is a seven minute long film that’s part of an integrated marketing campaign around the theme of ‘Bring Happiness Home: Reach for the Stars’

    Talking of Chinese New Year adverts, Singtel is another one who is rolling out their campaign a bit earlier than most other brands this year. It follows on from last years advert that focused on the family reunion dinner. You can see the best of last year’s Chinese New Year adverts here

    This afternoon I have been listening to the this glorious homage to 1980s R&B. Lizzo’s Juice is a great pastiche of TV tropes together with a great song. I discovered it via Matt Muir’s Web Curios. Whilst you’re listening to the song go over and sign up for his weekly newsletter right now. (Don’t worry I’ll here until you come back).

    This week has been CES in Las Vegas, which explains why the magazine type stories in news programmes have been about gizmos or robots. I found the show pretty disappointing this year. The biggest news was more of a business story. Apple has managed to get iTunes movie and TV series store on Samsung TVs. In addition several brands signed up to support Apple’s Air Play standard for video and HomeKit standard for your internet of things. Quite what all this means for Apple TV sales is another thing. What I found far more interesting was exploring the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame – IEEE Spectrum. Going through it is instructive. Zojirushi’s Micom Electric Rice Cooker from 1983 brought early artificial intelligence into the home with its use of fuzzy logic to cook rice to perfection. Fuzzy logic then went into image stabilisation and auto focus on cameras and camcorders. Fuzzy logic sold on the benefits and concealed the technology from western consumers. Machine learning techniques are likely to become common in a similar way rather than the current hype. I still lust after the Wadia Digital 170i Transport. 46 years after launching the Technics SL-1200 turntable, they rolled out the SL-1200 Mk VII. This is particularly interesting as they originally stopped production a decade ago and scrapped the tooling. At the time, there wasn’t considered to be enough interest to keep production going in Osaka.

  • Douyin + more things

    Are Douyin and TikTok the Same? | What’s on Weibo – China’s Netcasting Services Association (中国网络视听节目服务协会), an association directly managed by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, issued new regulations that online short video platforms in China should adhere to. One of the new guidelines requires all online video service providers to carefully examine content before it is published. Tech China reports that the new stipulations require that all online video content, from titles to comments and even the use of emoticons, has to be in accordance with regulations, which prohibit any content that is ‘vulgar,’ is offending to the Chinese political system, puts revolutionary leaders in a negative light, or undermines social stability in any way – interesting dive into the differences between TikTok and Douyin which seem to run off separate systems. We also see some crossovers, for instance similar ad formats on both Douyin and TikTok. Another area of connectivity is the similar level of censorship on TikTok that is rolled out on Douyin. This is creepy, but makes both Douyin and TikTok brand safe, which is particularly attractive to mainstream advertisers. The big question for me is whether TikTok provides direct access to its data to the Chinese government like Douyin would be obliged to do. More related content here.

    Snap Business | Apoposphere – how the apps you use impact your daily life and emotions – usual caveat emptor considerations apply. Sample size is 1,005. Research is sponsored by Snap

    Facebook culture described as ‘cult-like’, review process blamed | CNBC – can’t work out if there is a lot of employee adulting required or if the culture is reminiscent of peak Microsoft circa 1995

    Major WeChat trends brands can’t ignore in 2019 | Digital | Campaign Asia – WeChat and global traveller connection particularly important

    Major WeChat trends brands can’t ignore in 2019 | Digital | Campaign Asia – WeChat and global traveller connection particularly important

    The perfect plan for the couch potato | Trendwatching – Bilibili and Ele.me partner to provide hybrid content streaming and free food delivery

    Brands should give up control to reach Gen Z | Creativepool – this says more about how marketing hasn’t changed over the past 15 years than gen-Z. This tells me that brands and agencies haven’t been listening. It also tells me that I can recycle decade old platitudes and essays with a Ctrl+F gen-Y and Ctrl+V gen-Z

    Samsung’s Supreme Copyright Spat | The Daily | Gartner L2 – Chinese consumers weren’t fooled by the “Supreme” partnership, eviscerating Samsung on social media following the launch. Its Greater China digital marketing manager responded to the uproar by posting on his Weibo account that the decision to work with Supreme Italia was made because it had obtained the authorization to use the brand in China. Samsung later backtracked as he deleted the post and Samsung’s official Weibo account announced it was “re-evaluating” the partnership – gosh I can feel the heat from the burn on this from half way around the world…

    Apple’s China Problem : 12 Reasons – Counterpoint Research – covers more of the points that I would have hit

    Move over, millennials and Gen Z – here comes Generation Alpha | Society | The Guardian – is defining generations useful? “You have to be careful about it,” says Karen Rowlingson, professor of social policy at the University of Birmingham. “But we shouldn’t ignore generational divides. Younger people are, on average, facing many more challenges. And, certainly, inequalities within that generation [millennials] are greater.”

    Apple is putting iTunes on Samsung TVs – The Verge – makes you wonder about the future of the Apple TV?

    Should we think of Big Tech as Big Brother? | Financial Times – That also used to be the view of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google’s founders, who presented a paper in 1998 highlighting the perils of advertising. “We expect that advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market,” they wrote.

    When Ad Breaks Get Weird: Branded Content in Chinese TV Dramas Is Ruining It For the Viewers | What’s on Weibo 

    Internet rightists’ strategy of provocation gaining traction in Japan | The Japan Times – Japan starts to see western style internet wars with personal attacks (paywall)

    Chinese coffee startup Luckin: We won’t be the next ofo | HEJ Insight – interesting read that reminded me a lot of the reporting on the original dot com boom in the UK and US

    Amazon says 100m Alexa devices sold – usage figures remain a mystery | The Drum – and in the second part of the headline is the rub

    Masayoshi Son wants Arm’s blueprints to power all tech – Armed with a crystal ball | The Economist – I have a lot of respect for Son-san but this reads like bubble-level BS. There are so many variables such as China 2025 that make this inadvisable. Secondly its not like ARM is the only micro-computer core design that’s low power and available. Thirdly, we’ve hit peak smartphone, other devices won’t offer the same business opportunity

    Opinion | Is This the End of the Age of Apple? – The New York Times – This is a big issue not only for Apple but also for all of tech. There is not a major trend that you can grab onto right now that will carry everyone forward. The last cool set of companies — Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest and, yes, Tinder — were created many years ago, and I cannot think of another group that is even close to as promising

    Understanding the Emerging Era of International Competition: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives | RAND – great read

    Startup founders say age bias is rampant in tech by age 36 – There’s a scourge in tech that apparently runs even deeper than sexism or racism: ageism. In a wide-ranging survey of US startup founders polled by venture-capital firm First Round Capital, 37% said age is the strongest investor bias against founders, while 28% cited gender and 26% cited race.

    The liberating thrill of a slender book | Quartz – Let’s keep this short. We’re busy. We want to read but don’t have time for deep dives, and that applies to books as well as articles

    China says its navy is taking the lead in game-changing electromagnetic railguns – Chinese warships will soon be equipped with electromagnetic railguns that fire projectiles with “incredibly destructive velocity,” and that the underlying technology was based on “fully independent intellectual property,” rather than designs copied from other nations.

    Burberry Zhao Wei and Zhou Dongyu CNY Campaign | HYPEBAE which ended up to be a bit of a mess: Why Burberry’s Chinese New Year campaign doesn’t quite hit the spot | The Drum 

  • iPhone tweet blunder + more

    Chinese phone maker Huawei punishes employees for iPhone tweet blunder | Reuters – I don’t understand why Huawei isn’t using agencies in Hong Kong any more, so that there isn’t these kind of problems. Huawei punishes employees for iPhone tweet blunder also makes the company look petty. We know Huawei employees use Apple products, Madam Meng had an iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air when arrested. Yes it was an iPhone tweet blunder, but they could have been bigger and more mature about it. You don’t get an iPhone tweet blunder if you use use a desktop service like Hootsuite, Buffer or similar social publishing platforms like Percolate that allow for complete corporate control. More related content here.

    Qualcomm kicks off crucial fight with U.S. antitrust regulator | Reuters

    Release Devanagari support · IBM/plex · GitHub – IBM’s font Plex is available for download

    China says its navy is taking the lead in game-changing electromagnetic railguns – Chinese warships will soon be equipped with electromagnetic railguns that fire projectiles with “incredibly destructive velocity,” and that the underlying technology was based on “fully independent intellectual property,” rather than designs copied from other nations. – Interesting as the US Navy shut down their rail gun programme, you can see footage on YouTube that gives you an idea of how devastating it would be.

    https://youtu.be/8UKk84wjBw0

    The liberating thrill of a slender book | Quartz – Let’s keep this short. We’re busy. We want to read but don’t have time for deep dives, and that applies to books as well as articles

    Startup founders say age bias is rampant in tech by age 36 – There’s a scourge in tech that apparently runs even deeper than sexism or racism: ageism. In a wide-ranging survey of US startup founders polled by venture-capital firm First Round Capital, 37% said age is the strongest investor bias against founders, while 28% cited gender and 26% cited race.

    Underclocking the ESP8266 Leads To WiFi Weirdness | Hackaday – you could have your own local area radio network on the down low

    Understanding the Emerging Era of International Competition: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives | RAND – great background on the rivalry between China, the US and European Union

    Opinion | Is This the End of the Age of Apple? – The New York Times – This is a big issue not only for Apple but also for all of tech. There is not a major trend that you can grab onto right now that will carry everyone forward. The last cool set of companies — Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest and, yes, Tinder — were created many years ago, and I cannot think of another group that is even close to as promising (paywall)

    Masayoshi Son wants Arm’s blueprints to power all tech – Armed with a crystal ball | The Economist – I have a lot of respect for Son-san but this reads like bubble-level BS. There are so many variables such as China 2025 that make this inadvisable. Secondly its not like ARM is the only micro-computer core design that’s low power and available. Thirdly, we’ve hit peak smartphone, other devices won’t offer the same business opportunity

    Amazon says 100m Alexa devices sold – usage figures remain a mystery | The Drum – and in the second part of the headline is the rub

    Chinese coffee startup Luckin: We won’t be the next ofo | HEJ Insight – interesting read that reminded me a lot of the reporting on the original dot com boom in the UK and US

    Internet rightists’ strategy of provocation gaining traction in Japan | The Japan Times – Japan starts to see western style internet wars with personal attacks (paywall)

    When Ad Breaks Get Weird: Branded Content in Chinese TV Dramas Is Ruining It For the Viewers | What’s on Weibo – this is pretty tripped out

  • Zodiac signs perils

    We’re less than a month away from the year of the pig on February 5, 2018. Marketers need to be cautious using Chinese zodiac signs.

    Chinese new year is a time of gifting. It may be red envelopes with cash, Christmas style gifts (like a new iPhone), or zodiac animal themed gifts. Shops often gift if you buy above a certain amount. I bought a sweatshirt in Decathalon and was given a Mickey Mouse towel free to celebrate the year of the rat.

    If you have a premium bank account you might be given a zodiac ornament of some type. Coffee shops like Pacific Coffee and Starbucks get in on the act with zodiac animal themed merchandise and gift cards. Zodiac signs are big business.

    Of all the zodiac signs, the pig presents some unique challenges for marketers.

    On one hand it can be seen as a kawaii or cute looking creature, like the Hong Kong cartoon character McDull. A pig is also seen as gluttonous and fat. Chinese and other east Asian cultures are not shy about saying if someone is fat. This means that consumers can more be sensitive about their body image.

    Year of the pig

    Starbucks Hong Kong seems to have upset a small but significant number people who have shared their dislike on Facebook.

    Starbucks Hong Kong year of the pig (2019) merchandise

    They didn’t want a pig faced coffee tumbler because of what it implied about them whilst they used it.

    Starbucks Hong Kong year of the pig (2019) merchandise

    Hong Kong clothing brand Giordano have played with the concept of the pig in their promotions. Again the association between this design on clothing and the wearer could be an interesting one. The idea of a fat year, meaning a prosperous year maybe lost in translation for some Hong Kongers.

    Giordano Chinese year of the pig 2019

    The key takeout for brands should be to practice critical thinking. They need to go beyond the cute design and repetition of last years gift with a different animal design. Think about the context and interaction of the end user with the product. What does the symbolism say about them? More related content here.