China Business

In China you may be the last to know that your counter-party has become aggressive and competitive. In many cases, competitive behavior is the finale in a combination of tactics that begins with flattery and relationship-building.

Chunyu Tianxia, a Beijing-based medical app developer launched its first vertical B2C healthcare product the “Chunyu Pediatrician”. Aimed at young parents and those inexperienced parents-to-be, the offerings include baby-care medical services and personalized shopping features. This new product focuses on the key word “Doctor”. The first point is “Made by Doctor” which indicates that all the content and diagnostic consulting sources (blogs or videos) will be provided by famous doctors and baby-care experts covering popular topics like vaccines and breast feeding. The second point is “Online Doctors” which guarantees that users’ questions coming from mobile devices will be answered by doctors within a very short time. “Staff that helps” is a customized function, which is able to recommend users personalized weekly collection of baby-care products based on the data of baby’s profiles. This new feature is added at the bottom of the weekly knowledge collection column. After browsing all the healthy tips and articles, users are allowed to choose what kind of products they want and can purchase easily by tapping the pictures. Chunyu Doctor, the first app rolled out by Chunyu Tianxia last year now has over 10m users. The company has not started the monetization yet, according to CEO Zhang Rui, and among all the users, around 40% are with pregnant mothers and also make up a large portion of the daily active users. Related posts: Qihoo, Unsurprisingly,Launches A Separate Medical & Health Search Service [2013 ChinaBang Awards Nominees] The Best Healthcare & Fitness Services Jimdo Launched New Blog Feature

Baidu Wenku, Baidu’s answer to Google Books and who is notorious for offering pirated e-books or copyright materials for free, launched an e-publishing platform yesterday. It is meant to solve the copyright problem once and forever by having copyright-holding agencies or individuals to publish e-books or any other form of writing on the platform. Any individual or organization is allowed to apply. Payments are supported by online banking services. Baidu promises not to interfere in pricing and not to take a revenue cut in three years. Some online content providers and individual authors have got on board, its official site shows. More traditional publishing houses will join in. Baidu claims there have been three million pieces of copyrighted works on the platform. In the past years Baidu Wenku was sued for copyright infringement by Chinese publishing organizations or writers from time to time. Cloudary, the online original literature platform, sued it in 2010, asserting pirated books downloaded through Baidu Wenku caused Cloudary a revenue loss of more than one billion yuan. Other publishers and even the industry association joined in Cloudary to called for shutdown of it. Baidu, failing in getting away with it by citing DMCA safe harbor provisions, offered to share advertising revenues from Wenku with those angry parties, but the latter were unsatisfied with the proposal. In 2011 Baidu Wenku removed all the pirated books by dozens of Chinese writers after being sued by them. The company lost the latest case to Hanhan, one of the most famous young writers in nowadays China, in late 2012. Related posts: Baidu Acquires 40% of Digital Distribution Channel Fanshu.com'>Baidu Acquires 40% of Digital Distribution Channel Fanshu.com Innobook, A New Open Publishing and Sharing Platform Chinese government investigating Baidu for copyright infringement of books

China-based online retailer LightInTheBox sets IPO price range at $8.50 – $10.50 per ADs that will raise up to $87.15 million from this offering, according to the latest file on the SEC. The listing date will be June 6, according to iposcoop.com. The company recorded $73.31 million in net revenue and $3.2 in operation income in Q1 2013. It’s the second quarter, after Q4 2012, it makes positive profit. 64.7%, 19.8% and 7% of the net revenues from Europe, North America and South America, respectively. Starting from outside China, it is establishing a presence in China. As of March 31, 2013, its customers was approximately 1.1 million. Founded in 2007 and operated through a subsidiary in Hong Kong, the company incorporated LightInTheBox Holding Co., Ltd. in the Cayman Islands, as its ultimate holding company, in March 2008. It conduct operations through the Hong Kong subsidiary, Light In The Box Limited, and the PRC subsidiary, Lanting Jishi. Related posts: Online Retailer LightInTheBox Files For An $86 mn IPO on the NYSE LightInTheBox.com will get IPO by year end Tencent Raises Salaries by 10%, Sets Up Housing Fund with interest-free mortgage

It's ominous in China to give someone a timepiece as a gift, but that may soon be happening as a Chinese software company unveils a new smart watch. Nut Shell Electronics, a subsidiary of China's Shanda, announced that the company will launch several new products on June 17, 2013, including two second-generation Shanda smartphones, a [...]

So far China’s new leadership has resisted short-term fixes to the country’s slower growth and held true to the need for deeper structural reforms to rebalance the economy. The latest measure of economic activity — HSBC’s flash purchasing managers’ index … Continue reading →

Dee Lee What is happening to China's labor force? That will be a recurring theme in the +China Weekly Hangout and on Thursday 23 May we will start discussing the state of China factory floor. Together with +Dee Lee (Inno) of Inno in Guangzhou we will explore the current state of the blue collar workers. This is how the +Asia Society described Dee Lee in 2012 when he was one of their fellows: Dee Lee is Director of the Inno Community Development Organization which focuses on public health, poverty alleviation and emerging issues. The organization currently manages nine ongoing projects that include the workers’ hotline, fair-trade online, HBV advocacy campaign. Together with sixteen colleagues spread across three offices in China, Dee is working with thirteen international foundations and brands to provide assistance to more than two million beneficiaries, most of whom are migrant workers in China. Dee started his Labour NGO career in 2007 with the first systematic workers’ hotline in China. He has a Master’s Degree in marketing communication and five years of work experience at a marketing research and PR firm. Of course you are welcome to join us, you can register here at our event page and join the discussion. A few subjects that might come up in our exchange: has the position of workers changed now there is a relative shortage of factory workers? What is the influence on social media (Inno works mainly through QQ)? How different are today's factory workers from their parents? How are the wages developing, and what are the trade union doing? To mention a few possible subjects. The China Weekly Hangout on labor will take place on Thursday 23 May, 10pm Beijing Time, 4pm CEST (Europe) and 10am EST (US/Canada). You can register here for participation, leave you comments here or at the event page. During the event you can watch also our YouTube video here and at our event page. You can also go directly to our live YouTube channel. During the event you can leave comments and questions at Twitter and Google+ (add the hash tag #CWHCWH). Later this year we will discuss the position of white collar workers, whether we can call them the 'middle class', who is going to save China's economy with their consumption - or not. For next week we are still looking for a subject, but we might selection one from our Australia/New Zealand planning session on Monday. You can register here if you are interested. Last month the +China Weekly Hangout discussed how political reform could take place under Xi Jinping's tenure with +Steve Barru and +Fons Tuinstra. Related articles How to pitch your China book to a publisher - Paul French Australia/New Zealand session - China Weekly Hangout Australia goes easy on China's military rise - Wendell Minnick Chinese brands fighting global heavyweights - Shaun Rein Bird flu: what learned China from SARS? - China Weekly Hangout

This post is an extract from the Danwei Bulletin, a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media before the information appears in English language reporting and sent to premium subscribers of the FT’s China Confidential and Danwei. Please click here for more information. ? The Beijing municipal government has announced initiatives to install charge points for electric cars around the city and to promote electric vehicles for public transport and rental.  The Beijing Science & Technology Commission (BSTC) launched an initiative this week to encourage the private use of electric cars, selecting twelve areas across the city to equip with charge points, parking spots, and rental offices, to grow to 20 major areas by 2015. Beijing will also add 2,000 electric taxis this year to the existing fleet of 750. Xu Xinchao, director of the BSTC’s New Energy and New Materials Department, mentioned Ecar (a leasing company under China Automotive News ???? ?) and China Auto Rental as agencies that would be rental partners in the city’s electric car initiative. Zhan Jingjing, general manager of Ecar, told China Business News ?????? that the first batch of 15 E150 EV electric cars would be provided to customers in the pilot area of Tsinghua Science Park, which has been equipped with ten slow charging stations and one quick-charge point. The vehicles will rent for 49 yuan an hour or 99 yuan a day, Beijing Daily ???? reported. Lin Yi, director of E150 EV manufacturer New Energy Auto (a BAIC subsidiary), told the Legal Mirror ???? that the company will put at least 5,000 electric vehicles on the road this year, including more than 3,000 sales to the private sector. The new charging stations might go some way towards alleviating some of the teething problems facing China’s electric car industry. As the chart above illustrates, the stock price in Hong Kong of one of the companies set to profit from the new charging stations, namely BYD, has been on the up in the last month. Companies and brands affected BYD (????? HKG:1211) Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. Ltd. (BAIC ???? Not listed) New Energy Auto (????? BAIC subsidiary) Ecar (???? Privately held. Note: also spelt as Yika in English media) China Auto Rental (???? Privately held)

In a market where consumers are on edge about what they are eating, there are going to be opportunities for firms with a brand supported by safe to enter the market.  In China, this market has recently been filled by the importation of products that were easily transportable, and an explosion in the organics market, but few Western firms had been able to penetrate into a wider market. Que up Chiquita, with their locally sourced, three times washed, chemical free, salad mixes…. which are sold at a very reasonable 17-22RMB (depending on store). They are hitting the market in a big way, and over the last couple of months I have begun to see their penetration into new stores and product groups expand… and I expect this will only continue as consumers continue to look for safe alternatives. One issue that they may face though.  the Chinese market is not a huge fan of raw and cold salads.  It is a market that has legs, but for me where things for Chiquita (and others) get interesting is when they are able to move into categories of food that are core to the Chinese diet.

News broke yesterday that Ctrip was acquiring Economy Hotel Manager. Huo.Li, the parent company of the hotel app, confirmed they were in investment talks with Ctrip later yesterday. The rumored funding is $6 million at a valuation of more than ten million dollars. Huo.Li first launched a hotel app in November 2011 and later split it into two, Economy Hotel Manager and Lian Hotel — for high-end hotels — for different demographic groups. It is reported that there are a combined more than 30 thousand nights booked monthly daily through the two apps. Wang Jiang, CEO of Huo.Li, has been in the Internet business ever since 2001. His company and another two were formed Huo.Li in 2009. The company raised $5 million Series A and $15 million Series B funding in 2011. Having been developing mobile apps and services, Huo.Li has a variety of apps in its product portfolio that include the well-performing Flights Manager, Maopao — one of the first Foursquare clones in China, and, most recently, HSR manager. Flights Manager announced ten million user milestone in September 2012. No related posts.