China Business

add news feed

post a story

WSJ reports: It’s typically advisable not to accept Chinese economic data at face value –as even the country’s own premier will tell you. Figures on everything from inflation and industrial output to energy consumption and international...
WSJ reports: It’s typically advisable not to accept Chinese economic data at face value –as even the country’s own premier will tell you. Figures on everything from inflation and industrial output to energy consumption and international trade often don’t seem to gel with observation and sometimes struggle to stack up when compared with other indicators. Read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/06/19/a-rare-look-into-how-china-fudges-its-numbers/
33 minutes ago
CHiCHi (left) is a ‘social virtual pet’. It immediately reminds me of QQ Pet, a ‘virtual penguin’ Tencent launched around 2005 and made tons of money through virtual item sales for the company for the next years. ...
CHiCHi (left) is a ‘social virtual pet’. It immediately reminds me of QQ Pet, a ‘virtual penguin’ Tencent launched around 2005 and made tons of money through virtual item sales for the company for the next years. Back then almost every girl I knew of was raising the animated penguin who was living on the PC desktop, interacting with it and buying it everything, ranging from costumes to medicine, with real money. The same with QQ Pet, you need to feed the CHiCHi or take it to do excise, and, you can BUY books, hats or sunglasses for it. Living in the mobile Internet era, CHiCHi is ‘social’ that there is a game, I Love CHiCHi, developed for it. Users can team up with Facebook friends and challenge other teams. The credits won from the game can be used to buy gifts for CHiCHis. Not only is it a game, it’s an app recommender. The Shanghai-based company, DiggerLab, behind CHiCHi designed it for girls. They reckon most girls are not tech-savvy and cannot be expert at exploring mobile apps. CHiCHi will recommend apps girls may like and some apps will be integrated into CHiCHi. Now the little penguin can broadcast weather conditions and help girls with photo shooting. Calender, to-do list manager and address book will be added later. As a new species, CHiCHi isn’t alone. Mengchong 360 is another one developed by another Shanghai-based company. The only difference between them is they are living on different planets: CHiCHi is on iOS while the other on Android. I don’t know how come the two companies came up with the same idea. However, they do have one difference: Mengchong360 is targeting at the local market while CHiCHi currently aims at users outside China. Han Xiaoguang, CEO and co-founder of DiggerLab told us that they’d start from overseas markets is because competitions in the local market is damn fierce, not mature and hard for small teams like their company to survive — there already has been a couple of copies. Before returning to Shanghai in 2011, he had lived in Tokyo for ten years. With some seed fund, he and his team built a social Q&A product in Shanghai, but didn’t see income would come any time soon. So they shifted to CHiCHi at the end of 2012. I Love CHiCHi is sold for $0.99 and all the virtual items created will bring in revenues. Related posts: Rails Girls Beijing Teaches Girls How to Build Web Apps for Free on December 15th Frenzoo – Girls’ Beautiful Life Tencent, Crystal CG and Ogilvy Building Virtual World Expo 2010
about 10 hours ago
Eon Surgical Ltd, a late-stage Israeli startup that has advanced a minimally invasive micro-laparoscopy surgical platform technology, was acquired by Inc (NYSE: TFX), a US-based leading global provider of medical devices for critical car...
Eon Surgical Ltd, a late-stage Israeli startup that has advanced a minimally invasive micro-laparoscopy surgical platform technology, was acquired by Inc (NYSE: TFX), a US-based leading global provider of medical devices for critical care and surgery. This marks the first exit in Israel for Singapore-based global super angel investor, Rutledge Vine Capital (RVC). Eon Surgical’s key investors included RAD BioMed, a success-accelerator for Israeli biomedical startups. Micro-laparoscopy provides surgeons with a mechanism for performing minimally invasive procedures without significant changes in technique. Eon Surgical’s technology is designed to enhance surgeon’s ability to perform scar less surgery without adding to larger incisions and the associated risks. Comments Patrick De Silva, Chief Investment Officer of RVC: “We were convinced to invest because we recognized the benefits in performing scar less surgery with minimal incisions and a faster recovery with less pain.” Besides Eon Surgical, RVC has made investments in 3 other medical technology companies in Israel and actively invests in the IT space. Tawkon, Getonic and Carambola are three Israeli startups in RVC’s IT portfolio that have been gaining good traction and media attention recently. With established networks in Israel, the Indian sub-continent and the rest of South-East Asia, RVC believes it is strategically positioned to enable early to seed stage investments as well as synergise key partnerships between startups looking to expand across Asia and beyond. RVC operates in Asia through its investment arm, GITPx Investments. Related posts: Israel, the New Source of Innovation for Chinese Startups? Israel, the Amazing Startup Nation Israel to Innovate and China to Consume?
about 12 hours ago
Almost all music streaming services out there have been making improvements in algorithms in order to recommend songs to your tastes. Their approaches are more or less different. Pandora solely believes in human powers having music analy...
Almost all music streaming services out there have been making improvements in algorithms in order to recommend songs to your tastes. Their approaches are more or less different. Pandora solely believes in human powers having music analysts assign hundreds of attributes to a song while some like Mufin’s totally counts on machine. Others fall in between. Chinese music recommendation services, such as Douban FM, Xiami’s and so on also took a hybrid approach. After all, they recommend songs based on a user’s listening history, but don’t care when and where he/she is or what a mood he/she is in. Jing.fm tries to differentiates itself from all other online music streaming services with a ”music search engine”. Just like every search engine you know about, it returns results — starts streaming music — to any query, text or voice input. As Jing.fm currently is targeting at Chinese users, its founder believes that matching music to queries in Chinese is even more difficult than dealing with English. What songs should be surfaced is decided by Shi Kaiwen, the 24-year-old founder and CEO of Jing.fm. Kaiwen started his music training in early childhood. When he became a junior at China’s Central Conservatory of Music, he had taught himself coding and built Koocu, a music recommender. Two years later, in 2010, his second product Saylikes, a social music sharing service, was launched. Both of the products were self-funded as Kaiwen found fund raising for a music service was very hard in China back then. Now the environment is pretty much different. Jing.fm is funded by A8 Music, a Hong Kong-listed music company. A8 covers royalty fees and provides working space for Jing.fm. The concept of a music search may sound interesting to everyone, but you, like me, may be curious about the relevance. Unlike Google search results which you judge by whether the content returned is useful, liking one song or another is totally subjective. It’s really hard to define the relevance for music. It may works better to your need when the queries indicates you are at a wedding or about to go to sleep. As some users may have no idea on how to describe what music they’d like to listen to at the moment, Jing.fm now offers several examples for them to choose from. This feature of Jing.fm’s doesn’t have competitors in China so far. I don’t know whether there are other people developing similar ones or still figuring how to do, or they just don’t think it makes sense at all. Jing.fm also offers services everyone else does, personalized recommendations, social sharing and the like. When it comes to recommendation alone, Kaiwen claims their approach is superior to its Chinese peers’ — more musically relevant. As Kaiwen is highly educated in music, it applies acoustic analysis to algorithms while most of Chinese algorithms engineers are not knowledgeable with it and are not able to take advantage of it. A new iOS version or Jing.fm with expanded music inventory and improved algorithms was released by the end of last month. An Android version was also launched then. Now it has 500 thousand iOS users and 200 thousand using the Web version. A big change is happening in China this year that a majority of legitimate music services have rolled out paid subscriptions. Kaiwen believes the subscription-based premium offerings when it comes to monetizing a music service. For the search service, it seems too early to discuss about monetization since it’s hard to say whether it would get traction. If a music search became ubiquitous, selling key words to musicians who’d promote their songs or to businesses who’d want consumers to listen to their commercials songs would be feasible, right? Related posts: Jing.fm: Talk To Your Personal DJ Qihoo Added Music Search 360 Search Now No.2 Largest Web Search Engine in China, Here Is Why
about 15 hours ago
Regardless of whether or not you believe NYU’s side of the story, one of the most interesting debates that has come of the entire Chen debacle has been the influence of China within foreign academic systems.  It is something that h...
Regardless of whether or not you believe NYU’s side of the story, one of the most interesting debates that has come of the entire Chen debacle has been the influence of China within foreign academic systems.  It is something that has certainly been seen on other global stages, and I am certainly not surprised that NYU would come under pressure to keep a lid on its left wing, but I have to admit that I am a bit taken back by the size of the problem as it is being presented in some circles. Inside Higher Ed’s   Does China have too much influence over academe in the West? lays out the conspiracy: Chen wrote: “The work of the Chinese Communists within academic circles in the United States is far greater than what people imagine, and some scholars have no option but to hold themselves back. Academic independence and academic freedom in the United States are being greatly threatened “I think that’s basically right,” said Perry Link, a professor at the University of California at Riverside who is among the China scholars who have been blacklisted from obtaining visas to conduct research in China. “It happens when scholars are induced, whether for fear of not getting visas or because of the lure of getting money, to censor themselves and not raise questions that they otherwise would raise and to speak using words that they know would be acceptable in Beijing rather than words they would view as being more accurate,” said Link and “Chen is absolutely right when he says that the Chinese government has influenced intellectual freedom in the West,” said Maochun Yu, a professor of history at the United States Naval Academy. “On the other hand, this is not NYU’s problem. It’s a larger problem.” “A lot of American universities want to have broader contact with China in terms of academic exchange, in terms of getting more Chinese students to pay full tuition to American campuses. They want to keep the Chinese government in good graces. They don’t want to offend the Chinese government,” Yu said “Universities are really concerned to give their students an international education and China is regarded, perhaps erroneously and perhaps prematurely, as a country we really need to get to know a lot better because of the way its economy is growing and because of the influence it has on the environment. So you don’t want to be shut off from China and you want your students to have these experiences with Chinese students and of learning the Chinese language and if you see that jeopardized by something you don’t have to do anyway The WSJ’s article NYU Case Spotlights Risk of China Tie-Ups also had a couple interesting passages worth pulling out Other U.S. schools with a presence in China include Harvard, Columbia, Duke and George Washington University. Some have limited programs in conjunction with Chinese schools, mostly for the study of Chinese or a year abroad. But others, like NYU, are pushing for a larger footprint. […[ In several cases, Western scholars have lobbied against such tie-ups, expressing concern that the Chinese would use them to pressure academics into toning down criticism of Chinese policies in sensitive areas. Looking at the passages above, I think it goes without saying that IF there is any “influence” coming from Beijing on academics, it is in the areas of sensitive topics.  Prof Link is a specialist on a certain topic, which recently celebrated an anniversary, and is not necessarily on Beijing’s side of history.  so, it should come as no surprise that he would find it difficult to get a visa so that he could conduct more research. Taking a step back here, what I find funny about this entire debate is the fact that you have some of the world’s most prestigious schools “bending” to china’s demands because they are worried about losing support for their Chinese programs.  Programs that no doubt make a lot of money, but these are schools t
about 21 hours ago
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM): Current price $205.21 On Tuesday, IBM unveiled an extensive number of cloud solutions created for the C-uite, to assist executives stepping up innovation surrounding customer exper...
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM): Current price $205.21 On Tuesday, IBM unveiled an extensive number of cloud solutions created for the C-uite, to assist executives stepping up innovation surrounding customer experience to satisfy their business objectives in tandem with their company’s IT strategy. Among the most recent cloud business offerings is a Big Data and social analytics solution that chief marketing officers can employ to obtain an emotional reading as to how customers perceive their brand. Global Leader Smarter Commerce, IBM Global Business Services, Paul Papas explained that “The cloud opportunity is helping C-suite leaders reshape customer experience. As part of IBM’s digital front office strategy, we see these 100 cloud applications as a way for business leaders to improve customer experience, reach new customers, generate new revenue streams and become more competitive in their industry.” NEW! Discover a new stock idea each week for less than the cost of 1 trade. CLICK HERE for your Weekly Stock Cheat Sheets NOW! The Travelers Companies (NYSE:TRV): Current price $84.17 Travelers, as the Official Insurance Provider of the PGA Tour, announces the start of the 2013 Travelers Championship, which commences Tuesday with opening ceremonies at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut. Several of the planet’s top PGA TOUR professionals are ready to tee off and compete for the purse of over $6 million, including Hunter Mahan, Justin Rose, Lee Westwood, Bubba Watson, Keegan Bradley, Webb Simpson, and many more. NEW! Discover a new stock idea each week for less than the cost of 1 trade. CLICK HERE for your Weekly Stock Cheat Sheets NOW! Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ): Current price $25.48 HP announced Tuesday that the chief of its biggest division, printing and personal computers, Executive Vice President Todd Bradley, will be responsible for a new job, that of improving HP’s China business and extending channel partner relationships on a global basis. Bradley is stepping aside from the printing and personal systems business, which also includes tablet computers, and will report directly to Chief Executive Meg Whitman in his new position as vice president for strategic growth initiatives. NEW! Discover a new stock idea each week for less than the cost of 1 trade. CLICK HERE for your Weekly Stock Cheat Sheets NOW! Don’t Miss: Should You Add Amazon To Your Portfolio? Read the original article from Wall St. Cheat Sheet
1 day ago
American taxi service application Uber reportedly is seeking to fill several new job positions in Asia Pacific cities such as Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Bangalore, representing the company's intention to vigorously ...
American taxi service application Uber reportedly is seeking to fill several new job positions in Asia Pacific cities such as Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Bangalore, representing the company's intention to vigorously expand into international markets. According to reports in Chinese local media, recruitment information shows that Uber is currently hiring operations and [...]
1 day ago
Tencent said earlier last week that they wanted the official accounts platform at WeChat to become more than just a marketing tool but a channel to help more companies to better reveal their values (in Chinese). What does that mean? Here...
Tencent said earlier last week that they wanted the official accounts platform at WeChat to become more than just a marketing tool but a channel to help more companies to better reveal their values (in Chinese). What does that mean? Here’s one of the case studies the company showed on its platform page we thought you might be interested in. Back in late 2012 China Merchants Bank (CMB)  started the talk with Wechat team on deeper integration. “The partnership was quite in depth, we even transfer our data through DNN, not just via Internet, ” said the CMB credit cards staff. Since this partnership involves financial services, WeChat even had some customized APIs made. The service “CMB Credit Cards Center” was finally launched in March this year, in which each card holder’s information binds to his or her WeChat account. The menus at the bottom of the account interface allow users to check their bills, credits, limits or transaction records. This new service, obviously,  has replaced the functions of SMSs to inform card holders of different payment records or information related. Before most banks including CMB would send SMSs to card holders as a reminder after each payment, and now all these things can be realized over the official accounts, which saves the bank lots of money. Surely this is not the point but “to provide more service to card holders” is the ultimate goal according to CMB. Currently two more features have been in trial, one is the voice-text service, which recognizes users’ voice and automatically executed the task like checking the credits, etc. The other one accordingly is an LBS-focused service which helps users better access the real-time discount information of the merchants closest to them. Related posts: WeChat Lead Says They’d Monetize the Official Accounts Platform First Weixin Got Updated: Named WeChat, Added Facebook Connect, 7 Languages and Path-like Feature China Mobile to Revamp Fetion to Fight Back against WeChat
1 day ago
Ping An, one of the biggest Chinese insurers and who is actively experimenting with e-insurance, introduced a new policy for the loss of virtual property in online games. Currently it serves players of X-Game, an MMORPG developed by Tenc...
Ping An, one of the biggest Chinese insurers and who is actively experimenting with e-insurance, introduced a new policy for the loss of virtual property in online games. Currently it serves players of X-Game, an MMORPG developed by Tencent. It is reported that one female player in Shenzhen had purchased such a policy from Ping An earlier this month (in Chinese). X-Game, with more than 500 thousand peak concurrent users, makes money from virtual good sales. The virtual items range from weapons, costumes to ‘magic power’. It is said that the most expensive set of virtual items costs more than one million yuan. Not only are there people that spend tons of money buying those items but also people that hire professional players to win items not for sale. It’s not the first time we heard about virtual property insurance in China. Back in 2011, Sunshine Insurance Group rolled out one but was targeting at online game providers so that they could compensate players when losses of virtual items happen. Related posts: Alibaba, Tencent and Ping An to Form An Online Insurance Company Chinese MIIT Clears Policy on Mobile Virtual Network Operator Chinese Online Retailers Ready to Take off – StarWatch Report Nov Edition Released
1 day ago
China’s economic speed-bump may give you a rare chance to catch up with mainland competitors in their own neighborhood.
China’s economic speed-bump may give you a rare chance to catch up with mainland competitors in their own neighborhood.
1 day ago