One remarkable conclusion by author Zhang Lijia of Lotus: A Novel on sex work in China is her conclusion that prostitution in China is largely a free choice, where women are free to enter, and free to leave. Yes, there is economic pressure, but no organized crime or human trafficking on a major scale, she says.Read More →

China is becoming fast one of the most innovative markets, explains Shanghai-based managing director William Bao Bean of the Chinaccelerator. Fintech and mobile will leave their marks on 2017, he explains to a non-Chinese audience. While startups have a hard time to find funding, 9% of the startups in Shenzhen get one million US dollar in funding. In stead of joining foreign multinationals, young Chinese prefer now an entrepreneurial career.Read More →

Social mobility between the generations in China has stalled, argues author Zhang Lijia, even more than elsewhere. While she moved herself from factory worker to a social commentator, and recently wrote Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China, most Chinese are currently stuck socially where they were born.Read More →

Author Zhang Lijia explored the life of more than ten million women in the sex trade in China for her book Lotus: A Novel. How is the trade organized? How does their life look like, and how voluntary is a choice to go into prostitution? Zhang Lijia spent years on the ground, and comes with a few remarkable conclusions. Organized crime has only little grip on prostitution, and most is organized by women themselves.Read More →

Journalist Howard French, author of the forthcoming book Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Powerdiscusses with Jeff Wasserstrom China´s mindset as a geopolitical power and its problem to reinvent itself in developing a new, true Chinese story during the upcoming era of US president Donald Trump.Read More →

China´s state media have gone in overdrive pointing out, what they call, the decline of US democracy, Zhang Lijia, author of Socialism Is Great!: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China tells at CNN. “They have gone into an overdrive,” she tells, although the official reactions have remained polite, naming this a win-win situation. Hillary Clinton, much more than Donald Trump, was seen as a potential anti-China force in the US.Read More →

Chinese internet companies took the lead in selling through social commerce, rather than poorly working ads. China entrepreneur William Bao Bean explains how China is taking the lead from Western companies, at GetGlobal 2016 in Los Angeles. “Traditional ads are under pressure.”Read More →

This summer journalist and internet expert Kaiser Kuo left his position at Baidu, to return to the US and works as a host of the Sinica podcast at China-focused media startup SupChina. At CCTV he looks back at almost 30 years of change, he experienced. The 1980s saw still most profound change, he tells. Then the software, the mentality changed profoundly. Later it was mostly the hardware of the country that adjusted to those earlier changes.Read More →

Light can transport data in higher volumes and speed than the current cable systems, shows an experimental setup at Shanghai´s Fudan University in the documentary “Smart China” at Discovery Channel. It documents how the massive data exchange at food chains in China can guarantee food safety. Our technology speaker William Bao Bean comments at the documentary.Read More →

The world´s most populous country is facing an unprecedented crisis, as its population ages fast, tells former New York Times Shanghai-bureau chief Howard French to PBS. The fast rising demand for social security, health care and a diminishing work force, will narrow down China´s economic expansion in the near future. The aging crisis not only shows the immense failure of the one-child policy, it will also force the country to become more welcoming to much-needed immigrants.Read More →

Leading economist Arthur Kroeber does not see reason for financial volatility in the short run, he tells at Bloomberg. The Chinese government will not try another devaluation, like they mistakenly did in August, and the funding of banks is very solid, at least for the next two to three years.Read More →