President Barack Obama will make his first trip to China as president on November 16-18, first in Shanghai and then in Beijing. He is the first president to make the trip in his first year in office, and follows on the heels of earlier meetings this year with Hu Jintao in Italy and at the United Nations. Beyond the standard US-China relations issues – human rights, Tibet, Taiwan, currency valuation (which is becoming more internationalized, see below) – Obama will also need to discuss a number of worldwide issues with his Chinese counterpart, and probably to an extent that no other US President has before. Beyond that – and although the Chinese press is trying to downplay it – the reaction that Obama will receive in China is going to be very interesting. Part 1 here will focus on the issues and in Part 2 I’ll talk about how I think Obama will be received in China and how he’ll approach Chinese domestic affairs. Continue reading “Obama in China, What to Expect – Part 1″
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”
Everyone goes back to work today in China after 7 days of forced vacation known as a Golden Week, this one for the October 1 National Day (the other two being the first week of May and Chinese New Year). To cut right to the quick, the Golden Weeks simply have to go, and China should use the 60th anniversary as a turning point where they say that this will be the last one.
The debate over whether to end the Golden Weeks has gone on for some time within China, and to be fair, it is a complicated issue. Here are the three main reasons usually given in support of the holidays. Continue reading “When will China’s Golden Weeks End?”
Just finished watching CCTV.com’s coverage of China’s 60th Anniversary Parade in Beijing on Chang’An Jie in Beijing. I was tweeting along with a number of other people in China (including @imagethief @granitestudio @davesgonechina @goldkorn @beijingboyce @kaiserkuo @christinelu @chjis and a certain Eric A.) – let’s say in not the most sombre of ways (i.e. lots of it was hilarious). Everything from the pink skirt wearing “fembot” female soldiers to the prepensity for rainbows to how much hairspray must have been used, to yes, tanks and such was…discussed. Continue reading “China’s 60th Anniversary Parade Twitter Coverage Goes Ballistic”
