Not only high costs are stopping Chinese women from getting more children, as the government wants them to for offsetting the dramatic aging process of the country, writes journalist Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus, a novel, on prostitution in China,  in the South China Morning Post. “The reality is far more complex. One important reason, in my view, is that women have changed. They don’t care to be only the reproductive tool of the family or the state,” she writes.Read More →

China’ struggle against the coronavirus has been on the front pages worldwide on the past weeks. Western CEO’s of companies with operations in China have been calling for calm and try to convince their audiences all is well for those operations. The question is whether that is more than wishful thinking.

China has been into lunar festival mode over the past weeks and all offices and factories would have been closed anyway. Damage might have been obvious in the consumer industry as even outside Wuhan many inhabitants kept off the streets. But the major question is now, as the lunar festival holidays end, whether China’s massive work force returns to their workplaces.Read More →

By trying to take on China alone on trade, the US failed to achieve real results in its first trade deal, says trade-veteran Harry Broadman to Bloomberg. China did not adhere to the multilateral trade deal it closed by joining the WTO, but Donald Trump failed to address the issues related to that.Read More →

Content-providers have been trying to lower costs for the notorious censorship in China, for example by introducing more AI-driven tools. But the government is fearing too much unwanted content if falling through the cracks, asks for tougher censorship, adding dramatically to the costs, says business analyst Ben Cavender to MSN.Read More →

Gamers are increasingly becoming a group of luxury buyers in China, overlapping other segments, says marketing expert Arnold Ma at OZY. “Chinese luxury buyer demographics overlap with hobbies normally associated with a younger audience, such as gaming,” Arnold Ma says.Read More →

Foreign media mostly focus on China’s crackdown on religion, but it’s approach has become much more nuanced, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, at the New York Times. Two truly global religions, Islam and Christianity, cause China’s leadership most trouble.Read More →

Brands focus too much on social media platforms and generic influencers, and forget often they need to get closer to their customers, says marketing expert Arnold Ma in the McKinsey Report on the 2020 State of Fashion. In China and the rest of Asia consumers are faster to adopt new trends and increasingly guinea pigs for Western brands.Read More →

Brands need to dive into youth subcultures in stead of focusing on platforms, says branding expert Arnold Ma at a meeting in London. You have to focus on people, rather than technology, and he explains how three rebellious Chinese youth subcultures relate to different brands.Read More →