Stir Fried China

Thought I’d have a little fun with all of this. Enjoy.

I had the pleasure of being part of a panel on the business aspects of the Internet industry in China on Friday during the Wilber K. Woo Greater China Business Conference at UCLA Anderson. I was a last minute sub for Sage Brennan of Enovate, and shared the panel with Bobby Chao of DFJ Dragonfund (seed investors in Baidu) and Eddie Chen, CEO of THQ*ICE (a gaming joint venture between THQ and Shanghai’s ICE) moderated by Richard Colback. It was a fun conversation in a lecture hall setting, and was mainly attended by Anderson students and a few China enthusiasts from around Los Angeles.

One of the more interesting parts of the discussion was the question of whether Mainland Chinese MBA students (of which there were a good many in the room) would – and should – go back to China once they get their US degrees to be Internet entrepreneurs. Continue reading “Internet Opportunities Knocking Across the Pacific for New MBAs?”

Google today announced that they will take off the filters from Google.cn in a “what the hell? we might as well go out swinging with head held high” blog post. Whether you think it’s brilliant, courageous and/or desperate (I think it’s some of all, with the caveat that I also want a completely free and uncensored web for everyone, everywhere), it certainly marks another milestone in this ongoing clash between one of the world’s tech darlings and China. Continue reading “Google Decides to Throw Haymaker at China”

Over the last few weeks, some people have been saying that 2000-2009 was China’s decade, including Fareed Zakaria. China’s acendency was also named the most read news story of the decade. Having spent the majority of this decade in China, all of this got me thinking – was this China’s decade?

From a personal standpoint, this was certainly China’s decade for me. I lived, got married and found a career in China this decade. I traveled to over 20 provinces, SARs and autonomous regions. I celebrated the new millennium with a few million other people in Shanghai, worked from home in Beijing during SARS, spent a week going to the Olympics, and even had a major role in a never-made-it-to-TV-because-the-plot-was-too-controversial-prime-time-soap-opera. Above all though, this was China’s decade for me because of the amazing friends that I made – all of which were helping to make China even more spectacular for me and others.

But that’s me. Other people (Chinese and expats) that have spent most or all of the last decade in China may or may not have the same feelings, or not. But I know that’s not what everyone wants to know – people want to know on a worldwide scale if this was China’s decade. Continue reading “Was This China’s Decade?”

This is Part 2 of my pre-visit thoughts on President Obama’s visit to China next week. In Part 1 I focused on issues, but here I want to talk about why I think that Obama will get a very warm welcome in China next week (despite some Chinese English publications such as this one trying to tone down his overwhelming worldwide popularity).

First of all, lets face it, Obama is cool. Most likely the coolest president ever. He’s a rock-star, etc., etc. China’s citizenry is just as susceptible to coolness as every other citizenry in the world, and if for no other reason than his coolness and his personality, Obama will be very well received. Ok, enough scientific analysis. Continue reading “Expect China’s Citizenry to Embrace Obama”