“Should I bother to come to China, people ask often, The answer generally is: No.” William Bao Bean talks to a group of Israeli startups in Tel Aviv. “When you use your gut feeling in China, you are mostly wrong. In China technology is not important, its about cash, friends or both.” Lessons from a seasoned investor, who says you can only succeed if you have an “unfair advantage”.Read More →

The anti-corruption campaign has hit China´s financial industry midships, and is now in the process of derailing the announced reforms, warns financial analyst Sara Hsu in the Diplomat, despite China´s inclusion into the IMF currency basket and the lifting of the deposit interest rate ceiling.Read More →

Beijing underwent for the first time a code red for pollution: officially the worst air quality ever. But the air had been worse before, even a week earlier. Beijing-based journalist Ian Johnson sees a silver lining on the code red: the people and the politicians start to see things have to change, he writes in the New York Review of Books. And that is good new for the Paris talks.Read More →

Luxury spending might have been hit by Xi Jinping´s anti-corruption campaign, but travel is on the way up. Rupert Hoogewerf just published his 5th China Luxury Travel Report and sees the super rich spending more time and money on more trips. Technology and luxury travel agencies set the trends, he tells Thoughtful China.Read More →

President Xi Jinping´s “China Dream” comes along with a slick propaganda campaign. But the center piece of the campaign, a clay figurine of a chubby peasant girl in a red smock, has split the artisan Tianjin family who made the image, discovered journalist Ian Johnson for the New York Times.Read More →

Zhou Qunfei, owner of Lens Technology, now China´s richest woman, is yet another rags-to-richest story from China. Ambition and success have been on her path, tells Hurun China´s rich list founder Rupert Hoogewerf to the Australian Financial Review. Ambition and taking risk is what most rich women have in common, he says.Read More →