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?”
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’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?”
Yesterday in Longyan in Fujian Province, another rash of lead poisoning cases in children was reported. The 120 cases reported in Longyan come after nearly 2400 children in total were sickened in similar incidents in Hunan and Shaanxi within the last month and a half. Most of the children poisoned came from households very near to the factories that were the cause of the poisoning, some only a few hundred meters away. Continue reading “Bringing out the Lead (Poisoning) – China needs strict rural zoning now”
