Stephen Vines: Hong Kong’s schizophrenic China patriotism

Eleven years after Britain returned the crown colony of Hong Kong to China, Stephen Vines, a longtime Hong Kong-based journalist and entrepreneur, highlights the territory’s schizophrenic patriotism in this video.

While many in Hong Kong cheer the Olympic victories of China, the commemoration of the June 4 crackdown shows the complexity of the territory’s relationship with Beijing. Many Hong Kong people see the commemoration as an intensely patriotic event, while Beijing sees it as a dissident event, Vines said.

Until fairly recently, the vast majority of Hong Kong’s population had fled from China to Hong Kong as refugees escaping the cultural revolution.

As for the Olympics, there was great support for China as the torch relay came through Hong Kong. For all this celebration of Hong Kong’s Chinese-ness, however, the recent scandal about top government advisors holding foreign passports shows that the residents don’t have full confidence in Beijing.

Beijing should celebrate the territory’s uniqueness rather than fear it, Vines said.

Jimmy Buffett concert in Hong Kong

Thanks to a chance encounter with Jimmy Buffett in the Paris newsroom of the International Herald Tribune last May, I convinced him to come out to Hong Kong on January 18 to give a charity concert for the FCC Charity Fund.

The fund, which I co-founded a few years ago, raises money to educate the children from Hong Kong’s Po Leung Kuk orphange.

Jimmy has generously agreed to donate his time and been extremely involved in the event. Held in the Hong Kong Football Club, it is sure to be a great event, so spread the word book your tickets soon!

UPDATE: The concert sold out within weeks of tickets going on sale and without any publicity! We’re looking forward to showing Jimmy around Hong Kong.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jimmy Buffett in Aid of the Hong Kong’s Neediest Children

HONG KONG: Jimmy Buffett, the famed and much loved musician of such hits as Margaritaville, Cheeseburger in Paradise and Come Monday, will make his Hong Kong debut with an intimate one night only charity concert on January 18 at the Sport’s Hall of Hong Kong Football Club.

The concert will benefit the Foreign Correspondents’ Club Language Training Centre that teaches English and Mandarin to 300 children aged 2 to 18 who are in residential care at the Po Leung Kuk Orphanage.

Known for upbeat songs extolling island escapism, Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band will perform those songs that his fans, affectionately known as Parrotheads, flock to his sold-out concerts to hear. Jimmy has recorded more than forty records, most of which have gone gold, platinum or multi-platinum, and as a best-selling author, he is the sixth author in the history of the New York Times Bestseller List to have reached #1 on both their fiction and non-fiction lists.

For tickets, please contact Sandy Chan @2521 1511 or banquet_ mgr @ fcchk.org

Technorati Tags: FCC Charity Fund, Jimmy Buffett

SIME 2007, conference wrap-up with Rodrigo Sepulveda

Yesterday Rodrigo Sepulveda and I discussed in this video what we learned at SIME 2007, the Stockholm-based conference featuring some of the brightest minds in new media.

Technorati Tags: Rodrigo Sepulveda, SIME, vpod, vpod.tv

SIME: Esther Dyson on why Investing is sex and Venture Capital is like raising children.

Liveblogged the SIME conference in Stockholm with Ola Ahlvarsson hosting the first panel of eminent Internet entrepreneurs.

Esther Dyson on Investing
Investing is like having sex and venture capital is like raising children. Investing is quick and you feel really good. Venture Capital, however, is like a marriage and raising children: You know you are going to have problems and - like children - some turn out ok. The ones that do very well take care of you when you are old. The hard part of Venture Capital is finding the right people to surround the entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs do it for love, even though they pretend they want to get rich. The hardest part is to find the managers and all the other people to surround the entrepreneur. Esther Dyson, EDventure, investor, author, Internet pioneer, blogger, US

Most of the panel centered on: What is really important right now in the Internet?

It is important that the Internet is now helping the good guys…
Esther also said that the best thing now happening has nothing to do with IT, but perhaps the result of it: The Monks in Burma and the lawyers in Pakistan are protesting. For thousands of years we have made progress on a treadmill. A new set of bad guys get into power. Now, with the Internet eroding the power of the center and spreading information and tools out to individual people we may break the cycle. You no longer need the capital for a printing press to get your message across.

…but the Internet also helps the bad guys.
Launching into the attack, Alexander Bard countered against Esther that the problem is there is something called Al Qaeda which is also using the Internet. The Internet also helps the bad guys. Alexander Bard, popstar, producer, writer, provocateur, netocrat, philosopher, Sweden

Talent generated content is really important
Bard says it is not going to be Facebook or user generated content from YouTube that will be the future. The future lies with talent generated content. Esther says the problem is that the non-talented are eroding the revenue for the talented.

Digital ID Idea is really important
Digital ID will allow talented people can have control over the content they create rather than Google or Facebook or Google controlling the content, said Johan Staël von Holstein, serial entrepreneur, IQube, Sweden

Profit is really important
Countering the others, Morten Lund said that profit is the future. It is not a taboo anymore. “A lot of our investments have profit. We have a nail business, for example. We sell nails with Santa Claus on them and we make a lot of money,” Morten Lund, Founder and managing partner Lund Kenner, serial investor, Denmark

How will content be paid for (an argument)
Esther: If some girl is willing to dance naked for free, it makes it harder to charge for a slightly more talented woman dancing.
Alexander: It is the guy who finds the content that gets paid.
Esther: But your friends will do it for free.
Alexander: No, they won’t do it for free. In the music industry the idea that record companies is ridiculous because I don’t have the time to go through YouTube to find the talent. YouTube is for the underclass, this is not for the mass media. Somebody has to sort out who has talent and who does not.

Technorati Tags: SIME, Esther Dyson

Highlights from Chinese Blogger Conference 2007

Snips from conversations in the hallways and remarkable live blogging in English of the Chinese-only proceedings by John Kennedy at the Chinese Blogger Con 2007 here in Beijing. Rebecca Mackinnon (from whose blog I borrowed the below photo) is here and will no doubt be blogging as well. Update: David Feng at Blognation has done some great postings.

Conversation on China’s blogosphere can turn against foreign brands
Foreign companies can quickly turn into targets of attack in the China’s blogosphere, as Dell learned.

Chinese prefer anonymity
Unlike the US and much of Europe, where blogs dominate, a good deal of China’s conversations - on brands and other topics - take place in bulletin board services that allow a slightly higher level of anonymity than blogs.

Internet cafes dominates
Unlike other parts of the world where people use computers at home, many of China’s Internet users in second tier and third tier cities use Internet cafes. These are environments that tend to be easier to control than individual users at home.

With Wikipedia blocked, a domestic commercial alternative thrives
Launched in July 2005, Dr. Pan Haidong, CEO and founder of Hoodong.com, told the conference his company has the largest Chinese-language wiki in the world, with 2,000,000 articles, 5,000,000 edits and 20,200,000,000 Chinese characters. (from John’s live blogging)

Technorati Tags: Beijing, blogging, China, cnbloggercon

AdTech: Martin Lau on QQ and China’s online communities

Martin Lau, executive director of Tencent (also known as QQ), described his company - the largest online community in China - pitched his advertising concept to AdTech.

Tencent, more commonly known as QQ, is the largest online community in China…
270 million users of their QQ IM service.
Covers 85% of China’s Internet users
Largest portal in China
Largest online casual game portal, with 3.2 million users
Largest blog site in China, with 77 million active user accounts

…yet frustrated by the lack of adspending on communities relative to other markets.

Because China’s Internet is…

…more closely related to daily life…
Since the Internet’s arrival in China came at the same time the country has opened up to economic and social development, new social habits have been developed at the same time as the Internet. While people in the US still generally go offline to meet friends, Chinese are very comfortable meeting new people online. A large portion of people in China consider online games a favorite for of entertainment. They do not look, for example, look to the cinema or other kinds of entertainment.

… and highly interactive…
China’s IM Penetration is 86% vs 39% US

…QQ pitches weaving advertising into China’s Internet community by…

…providing brand interaction…
To advertise a car, you do not run the ad across a range of small blogs, instead QQ offers what they call a “Branded Qzone” page that encourages people to submit stories about the car and award prizes to those who interact the most. The community aspect is further encouraged through other means, such as connecting to the others who are connected.

…and embedding advertising in services.
This means that QQ monitors how long a gamer has been playing and - after a certain amount of time - an advertisement will come up offering eyedrop and eye protection.

William Bao Bean, moderator of the panel, summarized the approach as: “Tencent knows everything and they want to charge you for it.”

Technorati Tags: AdTech, AdTech Beijing, Beijing, China, Martin Lau, QQ, Tencent, William Bao Bean

AdTech: William Bao Bean on China’s Internet youth

William Bao Bean, a former analyst at Deutsche Bank and now partner at Softbank China and India Holdings opened AdTech with a quick rundown on Internet usage by China’s youth.

China’s young Internet users interact more online…
Nearly 70 percent of Chinese youth use social networking sites and they have a lot more Internet friends than in the US. Chinese have 37 friends whom they have never met before, whereas US youth have 18 online-only friends.

…download more music…
Nearly 60 percent of youth in China download music, compared with 32 percent in the US.

…enjoy playing free games…
China has 40 million gamers, but only 21 million pay. Advertising supported gaming is gaining traction.

…watch more Internet video than US youth…
The video platform Tudou (which claims 47% China market share) claims 15 billion minutes uploaded per month vs 3.5 billion for YouTube.
Average session Tudou 40 minutes vs 15 to 20 for YouTube
Tudou is now launching an ad system where ads come before the videos.

…and even prefer Internet video over television…
US vs China
18% vs 33% Watch video online
15% vs 27% Watch full length video online
45% vs 30% Turn on the TV to watch a specific television show

…yet, online spending remains relatively low.
While the total adspend of China will be $25.8 billion in 2007 only about 4.3% of total goes online (compared with 12% in the USA). That said, online spend is growing strongly, with 55% growth in 2007. Search ad spending in particular is expected to grow 64% in 2007 and 2008.

Technorati Tags: AdTech, AdTech Beijing, Beijing, China, Softbank, Tudou, William Bao Bean

Beijing101: Count with your hands

Our teacher at 1on1Mandarin, Wang Lao Shi, demonstrates the meaning of those gestures made by Beijing taxi drivers when explaining the bill.

Observing how different cultures gesture - such as counting or asking for the check in a restaurant - is one of the great pleasures of travel.

Technorati Tags: 1on1mandarin, beijing101

Composer Chou Wen-Chung and the Meaning of Music

Today I was delighted to have lunch with Chou Wen-Cheng, the Chinese-American composer.

In Beijing to prepare for an October 14 concert of his works by the Beijing New Music Ensemble, Chou and I discussed the meaning of music and its relation to words.

Is music emotion? How does music relate to sounds in the real world? How does music relate to words in English and how does music relate to Chinese calligraphy?

A further opportunity to meet Chou comes on October 14 in Beijing before his concert at 11am for a public discussion of his work ahead of the 3pm concert.

The Beijing New Music Ensemble is China’s only independent group dedicated to performing Chinese contemporary music.

Chou’s concert has been organized by Sarina Tang of Currents and takes place at Currents in the 798 arts district. The lecture takes place at the Alliance Francaise of Beijing.

For further details, the program is here.

Technorati Tags: Beijing, beijing101, chou, chou wen chung, currents, Music, Sarina Tang

Beijing101: Land of the Man Bag

One joy of moving to a new country is seeing the different customs that prevail. One of my favorites in China is seeing men carrying their wife or girlfriend’s handbag, often the latest fru-fru LVMH knock-off.

Technorati Tags: beijing101, manbag