The State Council has announced it will extend the lunar festival holidays till February 2, while more extensions are not excluded as more information on the Wuhan virus emerges. The activities of the China Speakers Bureau in China itself are limited, but we will also take the extension into account. Shanghai has announced an extension till February 9, according to a Facebook post by Rich Brubaker.
We are setting up our WeChat work account, and up to now pleasantly surprised. Service looks solid and – while the basic setup is in Chinese – translation service works excellent, so also for non-Chinese speakers the instructions are very doable. Customer service is also very active, although outside the regular office hours in China, you might have to bear a chat robot.
If you want to join our journey at this upcoming global social platform, you can download the software best here. The link below you can use to join our account. Officially WeChat work has started as a service for larger companies to communicate with their employees, but it looks like we can also sign up our larger network at this stage.
Tencent’s WeChat Work has been rolling out new features that might – or might not – offer also new opportunities to the China Speakers Bureau. Because of our focus on organizing established China experts for a global market, we used those social media platforms that focused on a global audience: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. But when WeChat is joining those global forces: we should not ignore that development.
In Europe and the US, business is winding down as Christmas and New Year are coming, while next month China will join with its Spring Festival.
2019 is ending and we have some interesting trends to observe. In the China-related speakers’ business, we saw an encouraging expansion beyond the usual suspects: the US, Western Europe and developed parts of Asia. This year we dealt more than ever with Latin America, South Africa, Eastern Europe and last night Ian Johnson returned from a successful trip to Abu Dhabi, where he spoke for the Emirates Center For Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR).
2019 is nearing its end, and some of our speakers look back. Arnold Ma, CEO of Qumin, got some raving reviews of speeches he gave this year, and he would like to share. We gladly support him in sharing those client views with you.
Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok has been chosen by the Holmes Report as one of the top 25 Asia innovators for 2019. “Innovation starts with asking questions.”
The website of the China Speakers Bureau is under (re-)construction. We noticed too many loose ends and decided to change its front structure and clean up the back office. We do this bit-by-bit and not in one blow, as the key functions still work well.
Unfortunately, some things do not go as planned. The worst incident was a breakdown of our email system for a few days, but that has been repaired. Other incidents did fortunately not cause that much disruption. But as we go on – improving the website is an ongoing job – we apologize for any major disruptions.
Arnold Ma, CEO of the London-based marketing agency Qumin, has decided to join the China Speakers Bureau.
His focus is on China’s opening up to global markets, with a specialty on the country’s millenniums and subcultures that are becoming key for global companies trying to finetune their China operations.
Now a massive row of Chinese companies, including Alibaba, are preparing for IPO´s, both at home at abroad, insights in China´s financial industry are more important than ever,
The government wants to allow market forces to decide what financial direction the country is taking, and because more than even capital is owned by Chinese citizens, just looking at what the central government in Beijing is doing, is not longer good enough.
From a cash country, where transactions were done by moving plastic bags with money between bank branches, China has turned into a leading force in fintech or financiel technology. Mobile payment are standard. Bitcoins and blockchain technology found in China early adopters. Social media have – more than anywhere in the world – adopted payment systems to facilitate online trade.
Making sense out of China has always been challenging, although the questions companies and people have to ask themselves change permanently. From a rather uregulated booming economy, now dealing we a tsunami of new rules, anti-corruption and a – relatively – slowing economy changes the strategic questions you have to deal with And while everybody has an opinion, at the China Speakers Bureau we are happy to have a range of expert opinions on China´s strategic challenges. We have a selection here (but you can always ask for more).