China’s most popular short-messages platform WeChat has at last included Snapchat/Instagram style stories. Long overdue, says Tencent and WeChat specialist Matthew Brennan at his website. He tells how it works, and why – if very late – this is a smart move.Read More →
Google’s effort to enter China’s censored search market has failed a second time, first in China itself, now because of opposition in the US and Google staff. Former communication director Kaiser Kuo at China’s leading search engine Baidu looks back at how the internet company failed at its first move back in 2006, for the MIT Technology Review.Read More →
Chinese media got orders to avoid bad news on the economy, but according to financial analyst Sara Hsu, signs indicate that China is unofficially in a recession. Spending has gone down despite encouragement from the government to spend more.Read More →
Videos of 5-star hotels in China showed unhygienic practices and went viral last week. But business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The War for China’s Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order, did not see anything new here, apart from the Western media picking up the upheaval this time, he tells at the Bangkok Post.Read More →
Short entertaining videos of 15-30 seconds were hot in China a few years ago, says vlogger and marketeer Ashley Dudarenok on her vlog, but the internet population is moving to a long format, that is three minutes. Viewers really want to be part of your life, she says.Read More →
The disappearance of famous movie star Fan Bingbing now three months ago has kept many guessing for the reasons behind it. Being a celebrity in China has some extra risks, explains business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The War for China’s Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order, for AP. “There’s a greater risk for celebrities to get in trouble with the law and never be able to get a chance at redemption.”Read More →
Most Western media reports focus on the oppression of religion in China, and miss one of the most important developments in the country when it comes to religion, argues journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the China Zentrum. “Faith and values are returning to the center of a national discussion over how to organize Chinese life.”Read More →
Following the investigation into Russia meddling into US elections, California Congressman Jeff Denham has also accused China of the same. While there have been some minor spying incidents, political analyst Victor Shih, author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation, does not see a similar effort for interference from China, he tells Politifact.Read More →
US media tend to frame their stories by dividing the world into winners and losers. In the US-China trade war they have declared the US the winner, for all the wrong reasons, writes political analyst Harry Broadman in Forbes. In this case, the media framing is creating a dangerous and wrong myth, he writes.Read More →
The China Speakers Bureau is happy to announce that Hong Kong-based marketing veteran Ashley Dudarenok is joining her speakers’ agency. Ashley not only has 12 years of business and marketing experience in China, and is an expert on social media but also using those tools in a very creative way.Read More →
Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, interviewed the sociologist Guo Yuhua, a known critic of the government. One jewel in the interview on how she was able to open an account on WeChat, despite the governmental censorship, for the NY Review of Books.Read More →
Journalist Ian Johnson gained most recently celebrity by his latest book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. Last week we got a peek into his research activities showing what immerging into a subject mean for a dedicated journalist like Ian.Read More →