Stir Fried China

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?”

With their business prospects dwindling by the year – including in search (Google.cn), online video (YouTube), blogging (Blogger) all at best playing second fiddle, 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”

China Mobile announced their third quarter results yesterday, as well as one little, small tidbit of a milestone – they just passed half a billion subscribers. However, even with 508 million users and plans to have 3G networks set up in 238 cities by the end of the year, China Mobile is still facing stiff competition from both China Telecom and China Unicom, the later gearing up to launch the iPhone 3G & 3GS in Q4 (which should be a boom for content providers such as QQ). Bloomberg has more info and analysis on the results. Continue reading “China Mobile – Half a Billion Users and Counting”

China’s GAPP (General Administration of Press and Publication) announced yesterday that foreign investment in China’s online gaming industry won’t be allowed (I presume from this point on and not retroactive). In this case, foreign investment includes foreign entrepreneurs, as the edict from the GAPP also denies foreigners from setting up wholly owned enterprises (WOEs) and/or joint ventures. Continue reading “China’s GAPP to foreign investors: You Don’t Have Game”

Ok, now I’ve done it. After 15 years of being involved in China one way or another – including living there for 7 years – I’ve finally decided to open up the cupboard, pull out the wok and all the spices, get some fresh leafy veggies and pork knuckles from the open air market and start blogging about China. I find myself for the first time in those 15 years with enough time on my hands (big thanks Wall Street and Main Street) to finally devote an hour or so a day to blogging about what 1/5 of the world’s population is up to (don’t worry, I’ll cover every single one before I’m done, I swear).

Many people that I really respect already write some pretty amazing blogs on China (see Top Chefs in the sidebar), and I’ve been following them for years. Over the last two years I’ve been interacting and commenting on China memes through Twitter, and I will continue to do so, but I’ve decided that I need more than 140 characters to ramble. While I already have a fully functional website/blog at chadcatacchio.com, it’s too scatterbrained an effort for anyone who is only interested in China discussions to follow, so Stir Friend China is born.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, yeah, swell, but what are you going to write about?”

Well, I’m pretty interested in the Internet, so there will be regular posts on what I hope you’ll find to be interesting news about what is going on on the web in China. I’m also pretty interested in everyday life in China, especially how the poor and emerging middle class deal with the slew of challenges they’re presented with day in and day out. Beyond that, the sky’s the limit, the world is my oyster, etc., – i.e. anything could happen. If anyone has any interest in any of this, or would like to hear about other topics, please let me know and I’ll try to get the first real post up here asap.