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.

  • Vaping

    What in the world has China ever done for us? Vaping – a China invention designed originally to help smokers reduce risks from tobacco. My exposure to electronic cigarettes (or vapes) was with seasoned smokers looking for a healthier opportunity, or a path to help wean themselves off nicotine all together. I had seen some research that suggested teen trial of vaping was growing – this was from E-Cigarettes: Youth and Trends in Vaping – Journal of Pediatric Health Care, volume 29, issue 6, pages 555 – 557 (November – December 2015)

    Among youth in the United States, e-cigarette use rose from 3.3% in 2011 to 6.8% in 2012 (Grana, Benowitz, & Glantz., 2014). This increase resulted in an estimated 1.78 million middle and high school students having used e-cigarettes (CDC, 2013). The trial and use of e-cigarettes have been higher among youth in Europe and Asia. A recent study on Korean youth found the trial use of e-cigarettes rose from 0.5% in 2008 to 9.4% in 2011 (Lee, Grana, & Glantz., 2014), and among youth 10 to 15 years of age in Poland the rate of those who had ever used e-cigarettes was 62% in 2014 (Hanewinkel & Isensee, 2015).

    Now what I don’t know is how good the research quoted actually was, or the factors in ‘trialling’.

    You also have to remember that there is a big health research grant eco-system that depends on tobacco control which has sprung up over the past 40 years which will affect the framing of the data.

    I am not saying tobacco isn’t harmful, but it is useful to understand the likely factors framing the presentation of information.

    I was surprised by this video from the Shanghai Vap Expo in China. It was more like going to a skateboarding convention back in the day:

    • Lots of independent resellers from around the world for vaping liquid – mirroring the variety of skateboard parts makers. Many of the formulations on sale had no tobacco
    • Vaping tricks and demonstrations
    • Clear tying of vaping to sub-cultures: hip-hop, race-girl type outfits. Pretty much any ancillary activity would expect around a Red Bull event or the X-Games

    Vaping is clearly being positioned as a central part of a youth sub-culture in China. But it hasn’t stopped Chinese courts shutting US provider Jul out of the Chinese market. This is stark contrast to the US where the government views vapes as an ascendant health threat. And in the videos vaping didn’t involve nicotine, again an interesting development. More related posts here.

  • Christina Xu on Chinese UX

    About Christina Xu

    I’ve been a big fan of work by Christina Xu for a while now and this presentation is a great example of her research. She has worked as an ethnographer for a range of clients including Daimler Benz, VF Corporation (the people who who own Timberland, North Face and Supreme) and Spotify. This presentation on Chinese UX in action is well worth bookmarking to watch it if you don’t have time now. Save it and watch it during your lunch break.

    Key takeouts

    • Etiquette about the order of proffering versus scanning a QRcode to exchange (WeChat) contact information
    • Digitisation of red envelopes drove take up in mobile payments
    • Great examples of online to offline (O2O) interaction in processes and services that are continually expanding.  
    • Driven by ubiquity of mobile phones 95.5 phones per 100 people with a number of people using two phones
    • Users across ages and demographics
    • Mobile adoption is coming on top of a rapid industrialisation. People are getting used to a whole much of stuff at once. Interesting points about the lack of social norms or boundaries on the usage of online / mobile service in the real world. I’ve seen people live their online life in the cinema there are NO boundaries as Christina says.
    • Mobile payments came up the same time as credit card payments
    • Population density on the eastern seaboard of China. Density has helped delivery services and high speed public transport
    • DidiChuxing allows for tailored surge benefits for drivers rather than search-and-forget version on Uber
    • WeChat commerce doesn’t facilitate international shipping
    • Westerners build messenger experiences for scale with automation, Chinese look for bespoke customisable ‘squishy’ experiences down to western interpretation of convenience. Chinese convenience is an absence of ‘nuisance experiences’ – real world interactions help prevent friction. Or is it culturally sanctioned ‘nuisance experiences’ that deals with differing experiences

    More related content here.

  • Vic Gundotra + more things

    Vic Gundotra – The end of the DSLR for most people has already… – ex Googler Vic Gundotra endorses the iPhone as a camera phone for structural reasons in the Android community, of course you could always use a third party camera software instead. What’s more interesting is the implications around system-level innovation and hardware support

    Summer of Samsung: A Corruption Scandal, a Political Firestorm—and a Record Profit – Bloomberg – interesting profile of Samsung. Interesting that they don’t realise Huawei is the big bad wolf yet

    The myths of the digital native and the multitasker – ScienceDirect – fits in with what I’ve seen in terms of empirical evidence, millennials are just as bad at technology as the rest of us (paywall)

    Russia Bans’Uncensored’ VPNs, Proxies and TOR | Torrent Freak – interesting implications for China. I wonder how they would achieve all this?

    Announcing Ghost 1.0 – possible WordPress replacement or niche player?

    The ‘real’ reasons manufacturing returning to US – Yahoo! Finance – it depends how you measure costs. Automation requires more capital, upfront costs and benefits big production runs in certain industries. Automation more limited in batch contract manufacturing. Still barriers: ecosystems of suppliers, expertise, skills and access to critical raw materials (rare earth metals, cobalt and coltran). A crisis in shipping (such as the collapse of Hanjin Shipping) will hit both international long supply chains and Chinese finished products equally hard

    Chinese Fintechs Use Big Data To Give Credit Scores To The ‘Unscorable’ – I wonder how this intersects with the PRC govt social scores?

    Turn Off, Drop Out: Why Young Chinese Are Abandoning Ambition – interesting for the subtle differences between this and gen-x style slackers

    Google Adds Autoplay Video to Search Results Page | The SEM Post – this will be terribly annoying

    eBay Powers Searching and Shopping with Images on Mobile Devices – eBay Inc – interesting move turning every shop into a potential showroom for the eBay marketplace

    P&G cuts more than $100 million in largely ineffective digital advertising | WSJ – (paywall)

    Trending posts — Steemit – paid social network. Apparently digital payments of some sort are given per post. They are held in a blockchain database. I won’t lie, I’m sceptical to say the least

    Hong Kong’s Lee Kum Kee Group to buy London’s ‘Walkie Talkie’ building in historic £1.3b deal | South China Morning Post – interesting that Hong Kong investors think that central London office property is cheap enough to make big deals like this. I think they might be disappointed at least from the short to medium term. It could be a play to gain a UK foothold well in advance of Hong Kong’s final assimilation by the motherland

    Inside LeEco’s spectacular fall from grace | Engadget – I was reminded of an old client Enron, when I started reading about LeEco. Like Enron, LeEco started off in one business (video streaming) and then exploded into several other sectors at once before collapsing under the weight of its ambition. Like Enron, I was left feeling that LeEco just didn’t make sense, except in the mind of a megalomaniac with wicked Excel skills

  • Audrey Li + more things

    My friend and former colleague Audrey Li wrote a great rambling essay. Audrey’s family live in a small town / village in Sichuan province. Sichuan is in the west of China. The essay covers WeChat, payments, crime and the party’s fight against pollution. WeChat scams are surprisingly common for an authoritarian regime that surveils everything. Although Audrey’s Mum seems to have a similar level of technology literacy to my Mum and Dad, I am surprised she uses mobile payments. The battle against pollution has hard costs, which Audrey Li goes into – Smart Phone, No-cash Society, and Jobless — A Short Conversation with My Mother

    Line loses users in 3 of its most important countries – interesting changes in Taiwan, Indonesia and Thailand. I wonder what has eaten into LINE’s market share outside Japan? Maybe LINE has to provide a more fully featured experience like LINE Japan

    Dissecting the Jimmy Choo Michael Kors Deal | News & Analysis | BoF – The Jimmy Choo deal was part of a wider Michael Kors strategy. Michael Kors appears to be focusing on creating a collection of ‘affordable luxury’ brands, a strategy that mirrors Coach’s approach. This differs from companies like LVMH and Kering, which concentrate on high-end luxury brands. Additionally, LVMH and Kering are more established, possessing numerous brands and centralized systems to leverage their combined strengths. I find it interesting that Jimmy Choo is now ‘accessible luxury’. The comparison with Coach is very interesting, it does make one wonder two things:

    • Do American luxury brands have ‘brand permission’ to do high end luxury?
    • Given that accessible luxury and the ‘high-end luxury’ of Kering, LVMH etc. both actually rely on middle class customers for the bulk of their sales – who will win out in a downturn?

    More luxury orientated content here.

    Is Beijing getting serious about selling off state firms? | SCMP – Tencent and Alibaba buying into Unicom could be an interesting dynamic. The big would be around the extra power these groups would get. I could see China going the other way greater state enterprises rather than market liberalisation

    Kaspersky’s stellar antivirus finally goes free | PCWorld – feature limited but powerful

  • China Inc. + other news

    Xi’s Sign-Off Deals Blow to China Inc.’s Global Spending Spree – WSJ – China Inc. a mix of brands from those that aren’t known in the property development space to the owners of House of Fraser or Weetabix. I was speaking to a technology start-up who talked about raising their funds and getting them in just in time from investors representing a large China Inc. name, right before ‘the door shut’ (paywall)

    Consumer behaviour

    One Family, Many Revolutions: From Black Panthers, to Silicon Valley, to Trump – NYTimes.com – interesting reading (paywall)

    Design

    The Dark Side Of “Friendly” Design | Fast Co. Design

    Economics

    In China, Herd of ‘Gray Rhinos’ Threatens Economy – NYTimes.com – Chinese conglomerates who have grown based on cheap bank loans. It hasn’t been said yet, but there must be similar implications for Chinese businesses who have benefited from state bank supported vendor financing to win customers abroad (paywall). More related content here.

    Gadget

    Apple’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Are More Popular Than Older Models | Fortune.com

    Hong Kong

    Twenty years,20 visualisations | SCMP – great step back to pre-internet living

    Japan

    In conversation with Japan’s 82-year-old porn star | This Week In Asia | South China Morning Post  – What motivates you to continue this work? Tokuda: It’s very simple; I feel very grateful when I get a request to work on a particular film and when a director requests me to be the male lead. I take pride in my work and whenever I have an offer for a part I try my best to make sure I am available and to give a good performance. It is very nice to feel wanted for my skills and I will continue to work for as long as I am wanted

    Korea

    Korean Broadcasters Launch U.S. Streaming Service, Taking on Warner Bros.’ DramaFever | Variety – and Netflix is running great K-drama like Secret Forest aka Stranger

    Legal

    The government should fight ‘corporate villainy’ in tech, Senator Cory Booker says | Recode – this isn’t the Silicon Valley that I grew up with and supported through the early part of my career

    Media

    Why Vinyl’s Boom Is Over – WSJ – not exactly but it does go into the foibles of mastering vinyl and overcompression of mastering for Spotify et al

    Retailing

    Three Reasons Abercrombie Has (Finally) Jumped on E-Commerce in China | AdAge – paywall

    Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture – The Agency Review – interesting and disturbing read

    Software

    Inside Andy Rubin’s Quest to Create an OS for Everything | Wired  – wasn’t that a historical Windows vision, there is a tension between general purpose and specialist

    A Privacy Choice | Rands In Repose – on browsers

    Marcel Is Just a Baby Compared to JWT’s Pangaea | Agency News – AdAge – narrow usage case versus Marcel’s ambitious general purpose platform. It also provides an idea of the steep ramp that Publicis will have to climb from the development perspective, let alone the degree of culture change required