Innovation and China have not been an obvious combination of the past few decades. US vice-president Joe Biden even challenged us to name any innovation from China. Business analyst Shaun Rein takes Biden on in his upcoming book The End of Copycat China: The Rise of Creativity, Innovation, and Individualism in Asia.Read More →
When US fast food chains entered the China market, they mostly kept rigorously to their American diet. But now they are struggling to gain share of the US$100 billion market by experimenting frantically with tastes and flavors, tells retail analyst Ben Cavender in CNNMoney.Read More →
Anti-trust actions, anti-corruption drives and safety issues have made corporate life for foreign firms in China tougher than 10, 15 years ago. Whether they will actually leave China in larger numbers depends on how the costs of doing business develop, writes financial analyst Sara Hsu in the Diplomat.Read More →
Six years after introducing anti-trust legislation, China´s authorities have started to use those tools. Foreign firms fear they are targets, but business analyst Ben Cavender sees at CNBC another reason: the growing anxiety at the central government for the huge inequality in China´s incomes.Read More →
China´s central government tries to shift its economy from investment-driven to a consumer-drive one. While the effort seems to have effect, financial analyst Sara Hsu points at a few bears at this road in the Diplomat. Will the consumers keep on spending more? It´s in the hand of the government itself.Read More →
Has China become an imperial force in Africa? Author Howard French of China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa discusses the question how China jumped into a power vacuum in Africa and took the opportunities left by others. The use of the word “empire” has triggered off a debate, and French explains at ChinaFile how he sees Sino-African relations.Read More →
Expiring drug patents, including those of Pfizer´s Viagra, is not going to change the market in China, says retail analyst Ben Cavender at CNBC. Most of those drugs are anyway already available in China, he says. And the second-child hype most more materialize.Read More →
Chinese building projects are popping up all over Africa. But mostly those construction projects are no partnerships with locals, but Chinese ventures tend to be all Chinese, author Howard French of China’s Second Continent tells Al Jazeera.Read More →
China is winning in Africa, author Howard French argues in his latest book China’s Second Continent. Can the US still catch up with China in Africa, he wonders in Bloomberg. Some serious rethinking is needed.Read More →
China´s is setting up five asset management companies or bad banks to buy up bad debts on a local level, comparable to five national firms that bailed out China´s largest banks in the 1990s. But that will not help, if the current fiscal dilemmas for local governments are not solved, writes financial analyst Sara Hsu in the Diplomat.Read More →
The formal arrest and expected trial of Zhou Yongkang means a change in how China is dealing with its ruling elite, tells political scientist Victor Shih in the International Business Times. “No leader is safe from corruption investigation… We see now the rule by law.”Read More →
Walking El Camino, the famous pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela, is an old European tradition, but rapidly becoming popular today too. Author Zhang Lijia started yesterday her El Camino, and will keep us updated on her weblog.Read More →