Taobao is everywhere_My Shanghai Experience_part one

I already came back to Hong Kong. Time flied fast while 22 days just went away in a second.

It's the longest time for me to stay in the mainland China for the past year. I have to admit, things go faster than I thought. China is an amazing country, I would say, in many areas.

Near my place in Shanghai, there is a street where people sell various stuffs along it during the night. For example, pirate DVDs, make-up, and cups. I shopped around for some cheap, really cheap accessories on the street before the day I left. And the experience is really interesting.

"How about the quality of this necklace?" I asked a boy who must be under the age of 20.

"Good, good. It is just transported from Thailand". The boy answered.

"Really? are you sure it is really good?" I asked again, just for fun.

"Yeah, definitely'. He said firmly, then handed out a name card to me with the name for his accessory store, something like "luxury jewlery", and a website address.

"We are a famous store on Taobao.com". The boy answered. "So we will not cheat".

Oh, my god, this is amazing. someone selling stuffs out of the street told me to go to a website to check his stuffs. I wouldn't imagine it before, but now it seems true. He must be not the only person who do it, and I guess there are thousands of thousands of.

That's the amazing thing about Taobao.com, as well as other websites in China. As China is so big, Internet suddenly becomes something businessmen shorten the distance from the customers. I am not a fun of Jack Ma, the founder of Taobao.com, but I would like to say he knows a lot on China's common consumers. I once had a flatmate in Hong Kong who sells her clothes online, and who really likes Taobao.

On the other side, Eachnet.com, the Shanghai-originated website founded by two Harvard Business School graduate, has went out of play these days, at least, told by my former flatmate.

Say, that's the Internet, where Jack Ma, a former English teacher, could beat two HBS graduates. And there will be more amazing things.

How the China's financial futures market going?

I attended the two-day China Futures International Forum last weekend. The conference was a little bit different from the conferences I attended before, where speakers only talk their own ideas without any kind of Q&A and replies. Compared with other conferences where people could only argue, this conference is more like an investor education course, where attendees could only listen to speeches from overseas stock exchanges, investment banks, brokerages, and academics. Just like a baby, China's financial derivatives are learing how to walk, though slowly, walk.

China FX, do people care?

I am attending the two-day conference of the 4th China FX forum held by Euromoney in Shanghai. To my surprise, attendees are not as many as the people I have ever seen for the Euromoney conferences before. Does it mean not many people care, or what?

Here is some update on the coming 2006 Chinese Blogger Conference. As I overheard, they are still short of half of the sponsors. If you by chance know anyone who would like to sponsor it, please contact the organizer. If your company wants more exposure, please try to register it, too. As I overheard again, the attendees of starting companies in 2005 conference have all got funding till now. So good choice for enterprenuers..... Never too busy to attend a good conference.

the newspaper's struggle 2

BTW, it shows people are still interested to read the print copies, isn't it? It feels different when your photo are carried online compared with carried on a print, black-and-white, and famous newspaper.

the newspaper's struggle

One of my interviewees asked me for ten copies of our paper carrying an article on him. (Of course he promised to pay) My first response is like this: "what, ten copies, I don't even have one for me. " Then I calmed down to understand his feelings that he may love the story so much. So I called around to my colleagues in Hong Kong but seems no one had the clue. Their responses are: "Hi, come on, it is an electronic age, and we could send him the electronic copies".

Hmmm, speaking frankly, it is weird for newspaper to say "electronic age", or at least not in a right position. I know most of the newspaper still make money from selling paper copies as well as the advertisements carring on those copies. Then why it is hard to do print print copies specificly, or seems everyone is reluctant to?

As I wrote months ago, newspapers are struggling between the print copies, the main source of profit, and the online copies, the emerging source of profit but still small. How to balance the production in the two area is a hard question for every CEOs managing newspaper. I even read an article from the print copy of Asian Wall Street Journal which is trying hard to attract readers to its charged websites. It is a breaking story, but in the second paragraph( the paragraph in the journalism is a complimentary part to explain the lead in the first one), it says things like this "WSJ. com is the first to report it yesterday". So what? So people should read stuffs on WSJ.com as the print one doesn't carry breaking news.

It is hard. To be fair, WSJ did a good story on how the website of MTV, the most popular music video television station amoung teenagers, failed to attract the same group of audience. Those youths, aged between 15 to 25, preferred more "cool" place such as myspace.com.

I would say it is the problems among all traditional media. They use the traditional thinking to set up an emerging media, which is wrong. They have the expertise, but it doesn't mean they will succeed in the new world. Getting rid of the old, and sometimes arrogant thinking, they could listen clearly on what the users think.

Speaking all things above, I feel a bit of weird, too, as myself is a newspaperer. Anyway, to be fair again, I found something for the interviewee who asked for ten copies of our paper. We do have a website for reprint, though you need to submit a lot of information such as the reason you reprint it. There is still a solution, though I would think it will be exciting if you could order online and then print as many copies as you want.

A new generation of China officials

Talking about Chinese officials, what will you think? someone very old with a pair of big glasses. No, they are a totally new generation, educated in the west and then coming back to China for government career.

Got the leaflet of a finance forum in Shanghai. Reading the officials' resume, I learnt that they are different. Examples:

Mr. Fang Xinghai, Deputy director of Shanghai Financial Services Office
42, PhD from Stanford University, Previously investment officer and the economist of the World Bank

Mr.Zhang Guangping, Director, business Innovation & Supervision Department, China Banking Regulatory Commission
PhD in Economics from U.S., worked in Standard& Poor, Deputy President for JP Morgan Japan, studied in Harvard Law school on securities and banking regulation

Mr. Qi Bin Director for the research center of China Securities Regulatory Commission
MBA from Chicago Business School, worked in the asset management department of Goldman Sachs, Partners in a New York venture capital fund.

And there should be many other in the same type.......

A new generation of China officials

Talking about Chinese officials, what will you think? someone very old with a pair of big glasses. No, they are a totally new generation, educated in the west and then coming back to China for government career.

Got the leaflet of a finance forum in Shanghai. Reading the officials' resume, I learnt that they are different. Examples:

Mr. Fang Xinghai, Deputy director of Shanghai Financial Services Office
42, PhD from Stanford University, Previously investment officer and the economist of the World Bank

Mr.Zhang Guangping, Director, business Innovation & Supervision Department, China Banking Regulatory Commission
PhD in Economics from U.S., worked in Standard& Poor, Deputy President for JP Morgan Japan, studied in Harvard Law school on securities and banking regulation

Mr. Qi Bin Director for the research center of China Securities Regulatory Commission
MBA from Chicago Business School, worked in the asset management department of Goldman Sachs, Partners in a New York venture capital fund.

And there should be many other in the same type.......

How China could set up a worldwide financial organization

I was in the 3rd China Finance Forum last weekend. Some speakers are really good and open, while some others are talking on rubbish and wasting audience's time. The last speech from Xu Xiaonian, the managing director of Goldman Sachs Gaohua, the U.S. investment bank's joint venture, however, gave something unique for me to think.

His topic is on how China, the world's fastest developing ecnomy, could set up a worldwide financial organization. He compared the financial sector to the manufaturing sector, and expected some successful private financial organizations will come out to serve the world as Lenovo or Huawei, or ZTE in the manufacutring sector. His basic arguement is that China should continue to open its financial sector as well as introducing managements with international views and incentive salary system to set up world-level financial organizations. He also said that the successful financial organizations will finally come from private sector in which profit is everything, instead of state-owned ones, where management cares more on the employment rate and society stability.

I don't usually believe in economists, especially those in-house researchers, as they always speak for their companies. Xu may have a point saying state-owned companies may not become the worldwide successful onew. I have seen many bankers, or traders from state-owned companies are complaining on their salaries as well as their jobs. but I don't believe the private companies could neglect the employment rate and society stability. As one of the corporate ethics, companies should care about the social principles instead of 100 percent caring on revenue.

Also, I think Mr. Xu may miss another point on the creative culture among the sectors. Lenove as well as Huawei both have their own technology, while now the financial sector in China is only learning from outside. During the conference, it is so common to hear people, from banking to futures brokering, all talking about the difference between China and other countries.

"Now, China is *****, different from the other countries with ****, so that's why China will change".

I am not sensitive on the gap. If China has 1 percent people drink milk, while 60 percent of the U.S. people drink milk, I still don't think China will have 60 percent of people drink milk in the future as China will not become U.S. I believe in China's own character, say, environment, geography, habit, and or so.

That's like the financial sector. We may not have another Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, but we may have a Chinese financial service provider doing different business with investment bankers but succeed in the world. Let's see.