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.

  • Spy craft disruption + more

    The Spy craft Revolution – Foreign Policy – really interesting to read from a privacy perspective, spy craft affected as much as general public. Intelligence agencies are apparently just like the rest of us and spy craft reflects this. More security related posts here.

    Algocurios – this is what happens when you plug Matt Muir into a machine learning algorithm. I’m just thankful SkyNet didn’t evolve. It doesn’t capture the desperation, profane language and ennui prevalent in Matt’s real posts

    Vodafone Found Hidden Backdoors in Huawei Equipment – Bloomberg – lots of reasons why this might be mostly dilute to poor software engineering practices but it doesn’t help Huawei reputation

    Opinion | Is China the World’s Loan Shark? – The New York Times – academics who have studied China’s practices in detail have found scant evidence of a pattern indicating that Chinese banks, acting at the government’s behest, are deliberately over-lending or funding loss-making projects to secure strategic advantages for China.

    A Conversation With Christopher Wray | Council on Foreign Relations – China poses multi-level threat to US (and the rest of the world if we’re honest about it)

    KaiOS takes on the Apple-Android mobile duopoly – Wizard of OS – given Google’s investment in KaiOS it could still be considered a duopoly of wireless OS’ – also shows what Nokia left on the table

    Brit spy chief: We need trust or we won’t have a ‘licence to operate in cyberspace’ • The Register – “must have the legal, ethical and regulatory regimes to foster public trust, without which we just don’t have a licence to operate in cyberspace”.

    Ralph Lauren Unveils The Super Woke Polo Shirt | Luxury Insider – a debut line of polo shirts made from recycled plastic bottles and dyed using a waterless production process. Besides being environmentally woke, the initiative has the noble aim of eradicating 170 million plastic bottles from landfills and oceans by 2025

    How the Kleiner Perkins Empire Fell | Fortune – just wow

    INTERVIEW: China seeking win with information warfare: professor – Taipei Times – interesting if depressing interview

    UK High Court confirms the way GSM gateways were banned was illegal • The Register – interesting reading

    Spotify Premium Adds 3 Million US Members | Consumer Intelligence Research Partners – keeping churn stable and improving conversion from free to paid (PDF)

    Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah closes London office: Report – probably a mix of 1MDB and Brexit

    A Specter Is Haunting Xi’s China: ‘Mr. Democracy’ | The New York Review of Books – interesting if very optimistic reading for the papers quoted

    Baidu is reportedly incubating a music app to defend itself against ByteDance – KrASIA – Tencent already has a number of music apps in China

  • RESIST + more things

    RESIST – counter disinformation tool – published by UK government. There needs to be more done beyond this document however. Secondly, much of the disinformation in the UK is from within the country supporting anti-vaccination, Islamic fundementalism, Islamophobia, the far left and the far right. RESIST feels like a start rather than a solution. This brings up a whole range of issues from security to wider societal ethics. (PDF)

    15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook | WIRED – interesting read on the cultural issues and business decisions inside Facebook as it faced criticism externally. The world has changed, Facebook’s culture hasn’t. The comparison between Facebook and Microsoft under Gates and Ballmer is a valid one. This time the stakes are much higher (paywall). More on Facebook here.

    I was gobsmacked when Leica dropped The Hunt. Chinese netizens are notoriously nationalistic, taking offence at any perceived slight. Chinese consumers are a big market for Leica and this was way beyond what even Dolce & Gabbana did in China. Like the NBA, Leica will still have diehard fans amongst the camera community in China. It also screws their partner Huawei who make a big deal of their top-of-the-range smartphones using ‘Leica’ cameras. But that maybe the idea given how toxic the Huawei brand is becoming.

    More on The Hunt reaction in China from the South China Morning Post.

    YouTube flags Notre-Dame Cathedral fire as 9/11 conspiracy | AdAge – machine learning isn’t the be all and end all yet (paywall)

    Gen Z doesn’t want to buy your brand, they want to join it | AdAge – This group isn’t waiting for brands to lead on issues. Instead, they’re leading. Since movements rarely come with a business case or cost-benefit analysis, marketers must consider how they can partner with Gen Z to become more involved and deliver on the promise of purpose (paywall)

    Mediatel: Newsline: Audi/BBH limbo; P&G puts down a(nother) marker – interesting points on P&G media platform pronouncements

    Apple App Store downloads went into decline, Morgan Stanley says – Business Insider – which indicates a ceiling to services

  • Easter & things from last week

    Easter Week has mean’t that I’ve been exceptionally busy closing things before taking the long weekend break. Easter isn’t a huge holiday in the Carroll household, but its the first break that we get since the Christmas holiday, so always welcome. For many students in Europe Easter signals a hard push on revision in advance of exams. If you are studying or relaxing Happy Easter and Passover.

    Kerri Chandler went through one of his Dad’s record boxes, that he hadn’t previously opened. His Dad had been a DJ and inspired Chandler to get behind the turntables himself.

    Chandler Senior’s box is an eclectic collection of songs but also had impeccable taste.

    1. Cerrone – Love in C Minor (1976)
    2. Kerri Chandler – Get It Off (1990)
    3. Kerri Chandler – Super Lover (1990)
    4. Kerri Chandler – Drink On Me (1990)
    5. Ronnie Laws – Always There (1975)
    6. The John Coltrane Quartet – Greensleeves (1961)
    7. Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes – Summer Nights (1975)
    8. The Impressions – People Get Ready (1965)
    9. The Delfonics ‎- Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time) (1969)
    10. Crown Heights Affair – Dreaming a Dream (Goes Dancin) (1976)
    11. Crown Heights Affair – Dancin (Special Disco Mix) (1976)
    12. The Dells – Always Together (1968)
    13. The Dells – I Want My Momma (1968)
    14. The Dells – Agatha Van Thurgood (1968)
    15. Bob James – One Mint Julep (1976)
    16. Bob James – Westchester Lady (1976)
    17. Roy Ayers – Searching (1976)
    18. Teena Marie – Portuguese Love (1981)
    19. Jakki – Sun…Sun…Sun.. (1976)
    20. Donald Byrd – Lansana’s Priestess (1973)
    21. Roy Ayers – Running Away (1977) 
    22. Kerri Chandler – Atmosphere E.P. – Track 1 (1993) 
    23. Martin Circus – ‘Disco Circus (Disco Version) (1979)
    24. Quincy Jones – Killer Joe (1969)
    25. Michael Franks – Tell Me All About It (1983)

    You can here it here via Mixmag

    More related posts here.

    Beats in Space put together yet another amazing mix

    Amazon leaving China. Amazon bought into an e-commerce business which at the time had just over 10% of the country’s e-commerce market. At the time I had colleagues in Hong Kong who worked on promoting the newly acquired business. A number of years ago I spent an inordinate amount of time creating a three-page document pitch for the Amazon China business. At that time Amazon’s market share was between 1.5 and 2% of the Chinese e-commerce market place. Five years later and its down to 0.6%.

    1904 - Amazon China

    What’s going on? Like most things there are a wealth of factors impacting foreign competitors in China. But one big one that people probably don’t want to admit is that Silicon Valley isn’t insurmountable. For decades the US technology has managed to concentrate wealth and talent in a small place and then benefited from market scale. Europe has been unable to replicate this success. It’s home market is an aggregation of markets that aren’t as integrated or coalesce as well as the US. And US companies exploit the European single market treating as divisible international components illegally.

    When US companies like Google, Uber and Amazon hit China they come up against:

    • Smart people – Chinese universities churn out huge amounts of developers, engineers, designers and business managers
    • Huge home market scale
    • Equally well motivated entrepreneurs who know their home market better than the foreigners. They are also willing to work very hard with a 996 culture
    • Local market conditions that are divergent from their own. For instance, Google failed to predict how fast it needed to grow its search indexing to match the Chinese web. Baidu kept throwing in the boxes needed. Google had lost when it suddenly changed its mind on censorship
    • Government regulation (but that isn’t as important as they’d have you believe in most cases)

    Amazon thinks that its cross border business where Chinese consumers buy abroad from online will grow. Consumers do this to get products that they can trust. Domestic platforms have made big gains in this market sector too though.

    I wouldn’t buy a Range Rover Evogue, even if I was richer than Bill Gates. But I did love this advert.

    And this old video of Jim Carroll talking about ideas as they relate to account planning.


  • Is Brexit bad for Europe + more

    Judy Asks: Is Brexit Bad for Europe? – Carnegie Europe – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – interesting take on Brexit from a US perspective. Is Brexit bad for Europe focuses on the EUs role on the world stage including regional and global security. According to my reading of Is Brexit bad for Europe there looks to be opportunities to grow in defence research and development and upgrade the economic performance of the EUs smaller nations.

    5G Deployment State of Play in Europe, USA and Asia | European Parliament ITRE Committee – interesting snapshot on 5G adoption across the EU (PDF)

    Microsoft worked with Chinese military university on artificial intelligence | Financial Times – US worried about dual use of the technology (paywall)

    Toyota will put Tundra, Tacoma trucks on a single platform, report says – Roadshow – interesting that Toyota is embracing the Volkswagen Group approach to vehicle engineering. I didn’t realise that Toyota no longer sells the Hilux in the US, apparently its because it isn’t big enough

    Panda TV’s demise makes way for gaming giant Tencent to dominate live streaming too | SCMP – China’s Twitch goes under, leaving Tencent to dominate live streaming too. This reinforces the oligarchy running China’s online sector from financial services and e-tailing to gaming and media

    DJ Craze: “Sync is your friend… embrace technology” – News – Mixmag – wow, controversial. This is the reformation of the DJ world. The problem with these things is that once people know the button is there new DJs will skip the valuable learning process of beat mixing

    Facebook ‘morally bankrupt pathological liars’, says NZ privacy commissioner – AdNews – 5 I’s pattern starting to emerge on Facebook. You take this stance with the UK’s proposal to treat social networks as publishers and Australia’s daft views on crypto. There are lots of reasons to criticise Facebook, but this isn’t one of them. Instead its cynical pandering to the populist political peanut gallery. More related content here.

  • Chinese typing + more things

    The complexity of Chinese typing. Chinese typing relies extensively on predictive text technology. It is even more problematic that Chinese people are forgetting what some characters look like. The idea of memory trade-off is interesting. It is also worthwhile considering when one thinks about Chinese internet behaviour and the popularity of gaming (because chat can be a pain)

    Meet Liam. He has 5000 Instagram followers, but no pulse. | Campaign Asia – Nikuro is Japan’s first male virtual influencer. A 3D computer-sculpted head mapped onto to a live-action body, he seeks work “in the fields of music, fashion, and entertainment, where he will be involved in the production of a wide range of content as a multimedia producer”, according to the company, which also mentions using AI to create innovative content – digital influencers won’t misbehave, have a me too moment or be arrested for a criminal offence.

    An amazing looking Mac-based desktop phone. This was an Apple prototype from 1993. Eventually things went the other way and phones were integrated into computers. This was from back when people were starting to think about VoIP services and Novell Networks integrated telephony solutions. And that’s before we even get to smartphones.

    The quaint industrial case design is classic early 1990s Silicon Valley chic. You can also see aspects of the thinking of General Magic’s connected devices in this computer. More design related posts here.

    Kantar Media has done some qualitative research on consumer attitudes to marketing, media and advertising. You’ve got three reports that are free to download: Dimension 2019 | Kantar 

    Finally: TODAYonline | LVMH shares hit record high as China demand boosts luxury group – luxury is still on a bit of a screamer in China. And this is despite economic growth halving year on year since Premier Xi took power, a clampdown on corruption and gift-giving.