Journalist and academic Ian Johnson reviews a documentary of artist Ai Weiwei with hidden footage of the coronavirus crisis in Wuhan for Plataformamedia. “The public needs to understand that this film is about China,” Weiwei said in a telephone interview with Ian Johnson. “Yes, it is about the coronavirus lockdown, but it is an effort to reflect what ordinary Chinese have experienced.”Read More →

The coronavirus crisis has hit China’s economy and its graduates face a rough time for at least a year, as they are looking for jobs now, says financial analyst Sara Hsu, a visiting scholar at Shanghai’s Fudan University to CGTN. Job creation has come to a stand-still, and graduates might rely on finding jobs at state-owned companies, the government or even the military to survive in the coming year, she says.Read More →

What is happening to the trade shows? The bigger events are not yet sure about their future. While even some of the most established trade show organizers start to file for bankruptcy, some see a future ahead in fully or partly virtual events, reports the Global Trade Magazine. For smaller events recovery might a slightly easier, the massive gatherings might have a hard time to recover any time soon from the coronavirus crisis, says the magazine.Read More →

While the jury is still out on the economic effects of the coronavirus crisis, the majority of the wealthy ended off better since the COVID-19 hit the world, says Hurun rich list founder Rupert Hoogewerf in the Business Standard. “The two biggest ‘winners’ from the Hurun Top 100 of Covid-19 were online retailers Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Colin Huang Zheng of Chinese low-end ‘social shopping’ giant Pinduoduo,” says Hoogewerf.Read More →

China is trying to contain a second wave of the coronavirus. Economist Arthur Kroeber looks at what the government wants to do. Unlike other countries, China tries to eradicate the number of cases to zero, whatever it might cost. Even though that is not realistic, it has huge consequences for some consumer good sectors and travel, who might not recover for the time being. An overview of the situation in June.Read More →

Two months ago we still hoped the event industry would recover from the Covid-19 crisis in a similar way as SARS in 2002/3. But history seldom repeats itself and also in this case it looks we have been too optimistic. While much of Europe is slowly opening up, and other parts of the world remain in crisis mode, the traditional events as we knew them might not return any time soon. Whether we will go through a second wave of the corona crisis is still an open question: major disruption is here to stay.

That is bad news for those event companies who relied on physical conferences including massive flights, hotel bookings, and entertainment for their business model. Much of our business disappeared initially, leaving our speakers often empty-handed. Now a miraculous revival of the event industry might not come fast, at the CSB we can focus on our core business: connecting established China experts to companies and organizations eager to pick their brains, now in online seminars.Read More →

At the China Speakers Bureau, we keep a close eye on event organizers and how they prepare for the coming year, in the post-coronavirus period. We see two broad movements: definitely, a part of the gatherings is turning to virtual events, like for example the Felixstowe Book Festival.

More troublesome is the black swan scenario taken this week by Stage Entertainment, organizers in Europe of larger musicals like Tina, Anastasia, and Lazarus to delay their productions till March 2021. For most annual events, like the Olympic Games, a one-year delay might sound obvious, but stalling ongoing shows and events sounds more troublesome.Read More →