Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop: 3 trends in Asian Art

Met up with Asian art journalist and fellow blogger Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop this week in Singapore to hear about the biggest trends on the Asian art scene.

Sonia highlighted three:

1- China as a new major art consumer: Chinese art collectors purchase everything from art to wine and jewelry, and you increasingly see international art galleries catering to them only.

2- The rise of Indonesian Art as a serious, political and social commentary: Very much different from the tourist-driven known Balinese art that is more catered to the tourists.

3- The rise of Asian cities as international art hubs: Although Hong Kong is the number art hub in Asia, Singapore is fast catching up and will host its first international art fair soon. Key to Singapore’s strategy is a bonded warehouse zone near the airport for Art that is so secure the government plans to store gold there.

A related post in which I spoke with Oliver Stone about why the film director is selling his Chinese art.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop

Shanghai Nightlife, Circa 1935

The lighted towers are department stores on Nanking Road, including the famous Sincere Department Store and its rival, the Wing On Department Store. These were the Macy’s and Gimbels of old Shanghai.

Special thanks to stevechasmar. Check out his full photo collection on Flickr or his website. For another blast from the past, check out this Amazing Video Footage of 1930s Hong Kong.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Demographics of China’s Twitter Users

In China, Twitter has taken an exceptional turn relative to other sites blocked by the government.

Properties like Facebook, YouTube and Flickr have languished when blocked by Beijing, but Twitter has continued to gain in popularity.

Since being blocked, Facebook usage in China has plunged from hundreds of thousands of users in mainland China to tens of thousands. Based on anecdotal evidence Twitter, on the other hand, remains a lively source of news, information and discussion from within China. (If anyone can provide reliable numbers on the growth Twitter usage in China, I will add them here.)

Microblogging itself is an interesting phenomenon in China, due to the nature of the written Chinese language: A Tweet in Chinese is almost a short blog post.

But the case of Twitter raises the question of why it has remained popular even as the inevitable government-compliant copycats proliferate.

In terms of why, for one thing Chinese users have found relatively painless ways around the Great Firewall. Having worked around the blockage, users may have developed an even stronger loyalty to the service. Some cross post using the Chinese services, while others have rigged up sites using Twitter’s API.

As to who is using it, that has been hard to say until a recent survey done by Kenengba that was picked up and translated by Oi Wan Lam in a post on Global Voices.

Sent out over Twitter, the 1,000 respondents to the survey were

…overwhelmingly male…
13% female
87% male

…in their 20s…
70% between 21-29
Youngest Twitterer 12 and oldest 55

…highly educated with interesting bump among High School students…
The majority have a bachelor’s degree and the second largest group is master degree holders followed by Twitters with tertiary education background. Interesting to note there is a bump among users in High School. If this is due to university authorities being more successful at blocking Twitter, what will happen when those High School students go to campus?

…based in wealthier Chinese regions, such as the capital and coastal regions…
More than half of the respondents come from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong followed by Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian… The 6 regions constitute 67% of the respondents. They are located along the coastal line and economically more well off.

…mainly students and techies…
The data shows that about 30% of the respondents are students followed by computer software and hardware sector (15%) and then Internet related production sector (12.5%). If we group the two into I.T industry, then we can see that students and I.T professionals are the key player in Twitter community as they together constitute more than 50% of the respondents.

…why do they Tweet?
1. To know the truth and open the horizon
2. To record and share my life
3. To get information and show my concern about democracy
4. Because Fanfou has been shut down
5. To get all the gossips in order to clear information for my colleagues who live in Mars
6. Follow the planet that I like and later fall in love with everything in Twitter
7. The exchange in Twitter is very interesting
8. No censor here and we can preserve the primary mode of communication here
9. To kill time
10. To follow uncle leg (@kcome)
11. I learn about twitter from kenengba and feel that as a party member I should learn more about this world
12. I can say what I want here without considering whether I should say this or how I should say this. Whether or not I would violate any law. This is the taste of freedom that I enjoy.
13. In an army school where ideological control is very strict, Twitter allows me to keep my independent citizen conscious.
14. University teacher introduces me here
15. Less liars here
16. Job requirement
17. An inevitableness choice for journalist student
18. Passion for new technology
19. At first I come here because I have a crush with a girl who is using Twitter…
20. Why not?

Popularity: 2% [?]

Technorati Tags: China, Kenengba, Oiwan Lam, twitter

James Areddy: China’s Unique Hacker Culture

A great article by James Areddy in The Wall Street Journal describes how the China hacker community is very different from the Hollywood stereotypes of loner American geeks or steely Russian mobsters.

China’s hackers are not very good, according to one of Areddy’s sources, but there are many of them. As a result, they throw manpower at a problem.

How do China’s hackers organize themselves?

In China’s hacking community, each person does a specific job and, rather than working for a big score, gets paid piecemeal by selling his work, cybersecurity experts say. The programmer of malicious programs usually assembles his program, as Mr. Li did, with lines of computer code he bought elsewhere. The operation works like an assembly line: The programmer then makes customers of others who pay to undertake the broader attack, spreading the malicious software, triggering it and sharing the payoff.

“The chain business is uniquely Chinese,” says a Chinese security expert for a major U.S. technology company in Shanghai. Hacker conspiracies in China are structured like multi-level sales networks and even pyramid schemes, he said, not tight-knit criminal gangs that write “technically clean” code designed from the ground up.

Hacker “crowd sourcing”—when large numbers of people contribute to writing code and executing it—reduces the risks individuals face and leaves the network intact if someone does get caught or a forum is shut, Internet security experts say.

How do China’s hackers get training?

Like most Chinese hackers, Mr. Li says he was nurtured inside the informal but active network of online chat rooms where technology break-ins are plotted. According to hackers and Internet security people, such forums are little more than criminal training schools and hardware stores, a cyber underworld where the locks on technological secrets that power online games, bank Websites and Apple Inc.’s iPhone undergo brutal stress tests from the world’s largest Internet population.

To sidestep laws against selling malicious software, programmers euphemistically advertise their hacks as “training” and “tutoring,” hackers say. Would-be distributors tout themselves as “mail senders,” while “script kiddies,” keen to build an underworld reputation, will buy hacker tools and pull the trigger.

The full article tells the tale of 27-year old hacker Li Jun and the havoc he wreaked in 2006 and 2007 with the Panda Burns Incense computer worm.

Popularity: 1% [?]

John and Doris Naisbitt: China Megatrends

While in High School, my school’s principal required all teachers to read “Megatrends”, the runaway bestseller by John Naisbitt about ten big trends hitting the world.

A few weeks ago at the DLD Conference I met with John and his wife Doris for the first time and learned about their latest passion: China.

The husband-and-wife team recently completed a book on the social and economic implications of China’s rise.

The fruit of work done at the Naisbitt China institute in Tianjin, China Megatrends was published in German last month and will be coming out in English later this year.

As you can see from this video, John and Doris fall into the half-glass-full camp of China watchers, emphasizing that those looking at China’s development must recognize how much change has taken place in just 30 years. Western democracy has developed for more than 200 years with lots of bumps on the way - the same is now happening in China.

China is in the middle of an emancipation process, they said, but the goal is not to become exactly like the west. The new (digital) generation of Chinese wants to join the world, but on their own terms. In fact, China has become a model for other developing nations.

But what about the problems of corruption and pollution that is always mentioned in connection with China? No one is more aware of these problems than the Chinese themselves, John and Doris said. It is the main topic in the national newspapers and even in the speeches by president Hu Jintao.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: John Naisbitt

Youth: Indians Obsess; Chinese Chat, Share Personal Info

Compared with their peers globally, the Millenials in India obsess more about the technology of their employers than youth of any other nation surveyed in a recent poll, while Chinese use real-time chat and speak about themselves more in online fora.

These results come from a recent survey by Accenture on how the Millenial generation uses technology. The intention of the report was to look at Millenials from the perspective of how companies should manage technology, but the survey is also interesting for cross-cultural comparison of Internet usage.

Chinese Millennials spend an extraordinary amount of time in the virtual world for both business and personal use, especially engaged through real-time communication tools. Young Chinese in the workforce spend an average of almost 34 working hours a week on communication tools, versus almost 11 hours for the rest of the world. For leisure, the Chinese spend 14.8 hours a week playing video games (versus 3.4 hours for the rest of the world), 5.1 hours shopping on the Internet (versus 1 hour), and 5.3 hours in a virtual world such as Second Life (versus 0.4 hours).

China and India topped the charts in three respects:

1- Tech-Obsessed India
Indians are more obsessed about finding employers with great high-tech infrastructure than any nation surveyed.

2- Chinese Chatting
Chinese are more obsessed with real-time chatting at work than any nation surveyed.

3- Sharing with Friends
Chinese are more enthusiastic about posting personal information on blogs or social networks than any nation surveyed.

Survey details: Acccenture surveyed 5,595 employees and students, ages 14-27, in 13 countries: Brazil, Canada, and the United States in the Americas; Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in Europe; Australia, China, India, and Japan in Asia-Pacific.

Details and charts:

1- Tech-Obsessed India

Millennials want to choose what technologies they use, especially in emerging markets. Globally, almost one in two mid-Millennials in school (ages 18-22) expect not only to use the computer of their choice once they are on the job, but also to access their preferred mobile and technology applications. By contrast, only one in four want the employer to choose these technologies, and one in four remain uncertain. This sentiment is even stronger in Brazil, India and China. Indeed, in India, only 6 percent of mid- Millennials expect to use only corporate applications at work.

2- Chinese Chatting

Asia-Pacific Millennials spend the most time, and the highest share of time, on real-time communications technologies like instant messaging. China and India lead the pack in emerging methods of employee communication: 27 percent of employers in China already use online chat and 20 percent use mobile texting to communicate with employees.

Millennials in China, India, and Brazil lead the world in use of emerging technologies for work purposes, while most European countries and Japan are lagging.

Young Chinese employees, in particular, are pushing the boundaries of multi-tasking. While the time spent on email is similar to their U.S. counterparts, the Chinese outpace the rest of the world in using real- time communication tools. Working respondents ages 18-27 in China tell us that, during an average week, they spend 9.2 hours on email, 9.2 hours on instant messaging, 6 hours texting, 3.3 hours in a blog or tweet, 3 hours in a virtual community, and 2.9 hours on a social network site – a total of 33.6 hours per week.

3- Sharing with Friends

Related to IT security, Millennials sometimes have a much looser notion of online privacy than do older workers. Some 30 percent of global working Millennials write openly about themselves and friends online. The most open, as shown above, are in China (51 percent), Germany (42 percent), Japan (37 percent) and Brazil (36 percent).
The most discreet, who say they never or rarely post information about themselves or friends online, are in India (50 percent), Canada (50 percent), and France (46 percent).
Social profiling is most common in China and India, where more than three in four Millennials use social networks more than half of the time when trying to learn more about peers or superiors. Similarly, Brazilians use social networks more extensively than their peers in other countries to investigate prospective employers, service providers, or clients.

You can see the full study here.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: Accenture

China’s Social Media Buzz on Shanghai Expo

In the run-up to the Shanghai Expo, our Social Media team at Ogilvy has partnered with CIC Data to produce a series of reports about what people are saying online about the Shanghai World Expo. This first report gives a peek into what people are discussing online more than 100 days ahead of the event. Their obsession: Tickets. Some are looking to get around the increase in ticket price, students are self-organizing to group-buy tickets and some companies are offering a discount on tickets as a promotion. We will be producing reports on Expo on a monthly basis going forward.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Job: China Correspondent for NPR

Looks like a great job!

xx

To apply, email a resume and cover letter to careers@americanpublicmedia.org. Indicate position #154-10, China Correspondent. Please see job description attached for more details.

Job Title: China Correspondent
Date Written/revised: December 2009
Grade Level: LC

FLSA Status: Full-time, exempt

Reports to: Foreign editor

Department: American Public Media, Marketplace

Location: Shanghai, China

Position Summary:

The China correspondent develops, reports, writes and produces news spots and features on a wide range of topics for all Marketplace shows and platforms. The correspondent provides extensive expertise on the financial trends in China and stays abreast of economic developments there and across Asia. He/she helps set the coverage agenda for the bureau. The position starts July 1, 2010.

Position Responsibility:
* Work effectively with minimal supervision, even in complicated situations.
* Deepen the beat and establish priorities and goals.
* Highlight big stories and propose coverage streams in their area.
* Develops ideas/proposals and participates in story generation and special programming planning for his/her own reporting and for reports by other reporters.
* Identify and cultivate outside talent for inclusion in Marketplace programs.
* Develop stories at the highest standard of quality reporting, as measured by clarity, balance, creativity, originality, analysis, thoroughness and effective production.
* Deliver a minimum of 25 radio feature reports per year to Marketplace programs.
* Provide spot news coverage on economic/social issues as required for Marketplace programs.
* Provide “live” reports and host two-ways at expert level as required for Marketplace programs.
* Initiate, research, write and produce stories and segments for air.
* Deliver stories with fully developed on-air style and originality in writing.
* Deliver substantive reports quickly – quick turnaround on varied subjects.
* Work with editors, reporters and operations staff to coordinate show content.
* Participate in the budget planning process and manage the budget for the bureau.
* Recruit and supervise a bureau assistant (hire, terminate, ongoing coaching, provide annual review).
* Manage the image of Marketplace in China.
* Represent APM/Marketplace in public settings/at public events.
* Keep Marketplace staff updated on trends in China.
* Works with news editors to generate ideas for programs.
* Gathers information and audio for reports.

Required Education and Experience:

* BA degree or equivalent
* Ten or more years reporting or similar experience. Some experience at a national level preferred.
* Special expertise in areas of interest to program audience.

Required Skills, Knowledge and Abilities:

* Ability to deliver stories of the highest standard as measured by clarity, balance, creativity, originality, cogent analysis, thoroughness, effective production, eloquence and compelling delivery.
* Skilled at developing own stories and at judging which stories to pursue and how most effectively to complete assignments.
* Knowledge of China/Asia.
* Ability to mentor and guide the work of others.
* Extraordinary ability to synthesize.
* Ability to function as a leader in news judgment, influence in agenda setting.
* Offer unique personality and perspective.
* Ability to represent APM in many official functions – liaison between APM and outside world.

Preferred Skills and Experience:

· Fluency in Mandarin.
· 10 plus years in national/foreign journalism.
· Supervisory/management experience helpful.

Reporting To This Position: Bureau assistant

Physical Demands and Working Conditions:
* Must be able to perform the essential duties of the position with or without reasonable accommodation
* Physical Demands: required to walk, sit, and stand; reach with hands and arms; balance, stoop, kneel, or crouch; frequent use of hands for data entry/keystrokes and simple grasping.
* Working Conditions: moderate noise level, occasional exposure to prevalent weather conditions.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Europe’s Sharpened Stance on China

China can expect some pushback from Europe in coming months, warns Mark Leonard of the European Council of Foreign Relations in this video. His data points leading to the coming sharp shift in the EU-China relations:

1- French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s meeting the Dalai Lama caused China to cancel the EU Summit.

2- At the Climate Summit in Copenhagen, both Europe and China blamed each other for the absence of a deal.

3- The Google vs. China conflict.

4- The execution of the British citizen Akmal Shaikh in China.

The Economist this week has a similar take:

There is, however, a new self-confidence these days in China’s familiar harangues about anything it deems sovereign. That is the second trend: China, after its successful passage through the financial crisis of late 2008, is more assertive and less tolerant of being thwarted—and not just over its “internal affairs”. From its perceived position of growing economic strength, China has been throwing its weight around. It played a central and largely unhelpful role at the climate-change talks in Copenhagen; it looks as if it will wreck a big-power consensus over Iran’s nuclear programme; it has picked fights in territorial disputes with India, Japan and Vietnam. At gatherings of all sorts, Chinese officials now want to have their say, and expect to be heeded.

These events and attitudes on the part of Beijing have caused a shift in Europe’s view of China, so Beijing should expect a pushback from Europe over the next years, Leonard said. This could mean a hardening of Europe’s approach to various issues like Iran, climate and currency.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: China, Mark Leonard

Shai Agassi: Why Electric Vehicles Work

Five years ago, while at a YGL gathering in Zermatt, Switzerland Shai Agassi was bothered by climate change, pollution and the impact cars have on the environment. Suddenly, he had an epiphany about the company he wanted to launch.

His pollution solution: Create an electric car network. Instead of becoming a seller of electric cars, Shai decided he should create a network to become the AT&T of transportation.

His company, Better Place Plc, aims to introduce electric car networks into the mainstream consumer markets at emphasis affordable prices and great convenience. The project recently got a great boost with US$350 million of investment from HSBC, Morgan Stanley and others.

Electric cars would be especially valuable in areas of high density and short distance driving, such as Hong Kong. His main target in Hong Kong is the taxi fleet.

More than half of Hong Kong’s kilometers are driven by taxis, so eliminating the pollution from these would eliminate a great deal of ground level pollution. The first launch of his system will take place in Israel and Denmark within the next year.

Agassi’s real target, however, is China. With the fastest growing fleet of cars (13.5 million and rising fast), China will play an important role in the development of this technology. If China decides to go electric, the world will go electric, Agassi says. But is anything pointing in that direction?

China already incentivizes electric vehicles with a US$9,000 tax break and a new city only for electric cars is planned. All the right policies are driven top-down from the government as well as bottom-up from the car industry, Agassi says.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Orville Schell: In China vs Google, Google resembles a country

With a deep understanding of both China and the California technology scene, China expert Orville Schell is in a unique position to understand the mentality and thinking on both sides of the Google vs China confrontation.

One key issue in the confrontation, Schell said, is that Google has become more like a nation than a company. By this he means that not only is Google closely connected to the Obama administration, but the company has a high resonance in the western world. Only a company like Google could take such a stance against China, he said in this video recorded at Davos.

As for China, Schell China said that in its very tentative reaction he expects the Beijing leadership to seek a face-saving compromise. It is impossible to imagine that China will yield, but there is a chance, that the government will recognise the importance of Google and be willing to compromise.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Desperately Seeking China VPN

In the wake of Google’s clash with Beijing, it is interesting to note that more and more people are searching for VPNs in China. (Actually, people started searching even before Google’s clash, so there may have been a tightening of the Internet even before Google went public.)

How do I know? Due to a poll I did a few months ago about The Best VPN for China, my blog is one of the top results listed on Google search for VPN China.

In the last two weeks traffic has increased precipitously. The other spike of searches took place in October, during the 60th anniversary celebrations for the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Popularity: 2% [?]