I love dog

Dog is one of the loyalty annimals in the world, i always believe. Though I was biten by dog before(not my dog of course), I always think of raising dogs when I settle down some day. Today after seeing "the Eight Below", I firmed my mind.

I bought the DVD for a long time, but always wanted to watch it in a good time. Today is good, the first day of 2007, alone in home, with some fruit salad. This is the moment I enjoy.

The film is touching, and the dogs, the main actors and actresses, are so good at acting. In fact, you couldn't believe they are acting. All of those are really natural, making me laugh as well as cry. In a rugged world of cold and snow, the eight dogs help each other and try their best to survive even when people expected they couldn't make it.

Finally they made it after the death of two of the peers and fighting with stronger enemies. They learnt how to take care of each other. Though they couldn't speak human languages, I know exactly what they are thinking.

After all this, the start of the New Year seems more meaningful. I know the world is far bigger than I could imagine and there are far more things I need to cherish. I have a lot of things to do.

I earned money from Internet to pay Internet service I enjoy

Today, i got the email the "me" sent to me on December 31, 2005. The content is as below:

"Dear FutureMe, what are you doing now? I really want to know if you have got a fantastic career and a warm family. I am now preparing to set up the IBM system. Remember, the X41 system. This is the last day of 2005. I may fly to Milan next year. Do you know it would be good or bad? I still wanna to go further. At the same time, I miss the family.

P.S. do you know what you would do in 2007."

In fact, this website www.futureme.org really moved me. The email "me" last year made me remind a lot of thing I went through in the past time. Thanks to futureme.org to give me such an enjoyable feeling. So I donated US$1 to the website via my paypal account. (Accidentally, I have several bucks in the account because of a year's work for a VOIP weblog last year).

The website said it need donation to make everything free. Unfortunately, only 17 people including me have donated it. Wish there will be more. Internet is not always a free lunch.

Isn't Internet amazing?!!! you could listen to the "old you" and write to the "future you", too.

So this year, I will write another piece to the "future me" next year. I know, she will enjoy this.

Internet to the outside world down

such a terrible turn down on the cable which was damaged by yesterday's Taiwan earthquake. I couldn't access to my Gmail. Also couldn't access to MSN from the office(but could from home). But why blogger still works if gmal doesn't? and why everything was fine yesterday evening just after the earthquake happened but nothing worked today?

So strange.

Earthquake touches Hong Kong

I experienced my first earthquake in Hong Kong during 8:40 to 8:50 pm on December 26. It was really scaring when I was sitting in the office working on my features. The floor had been swinging for five or six times before someone in the office started screaming. Then a silent period for five minutes. Another round came but only for one swing this time. But in fact, I was already prepared to run out of the building with some water.

Checked quickly on the TV news which said Taiwan just had an earthquake, details are here(reuters). Seems Hong Kong and Southern China both felt it. TV news said that the Kowloon Bay area is the most serious attacked place. Seems nobody got hurt, which is lucky.

I never met earthquake in Hong Kong. Isn't that people saying the city is a lucky place without any earthquakes? Anyway, no place is safe.....

print turns to electronic, reluctant or hard?

My long-time online friend Fons seems didn't care on what's going on in the Hong Kong's largest newspaper. To him, "By maintaining a solid financial firewall, its articles fail to become part of the ongoing online discussions, making into the laughing stock of the 21st century." I could understand his feeling. As one of the active foreign bloggers in China, Fons has more than enough reason to believe the Internet power, and in turn, he thinks many things should be exposed out of the financial wall to Internet users.

When I was a young journalism student and active Internet surfer too, I couldn't agree more on his opinion. But after working in newspapers for several years, I understood more on the worries of newpaper, especiall the leading newspaper, from an inside view. SCMP is not the only one having the wall, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, two most accomplished business newspaper, also have the financial wall. As a new start-up media company, it is much easier to share the content freely in order to attract new readiers, and thus new advertisements; but for established and branded newspaper, their worries on turning around to use the new online profitable model, may kill their already-successful business model in one day. Destination to the electronic age already exists in everyone's mind, but "when" and "how" are the biggest problems. Several issues to consider:

(1) Subscribers.

When you could read the newspaper online freely, will you still buy newspapers? I believe that's the most important question in the desk of every newspaper executives. Possibly, many people will stop buying newspaper, so in the turning-around process, how to make sure the smooth connection between the time point when the subscribers could still buy the prints and the time point when the advertising could cover the loss of subscribing revenues.

(2) Content.

How many content could be publicized freely is also another question. It decides finally on how many print readers will leave and how many advertisement could attract. FT.com will make the first and second paragraph of every story as free, which is a common model among many media; getting advertisers' eyes as well as readers' stomach is a good trick.

(3) Employee.

Online expansion also needs more stuffs to work on more as getting rid of the space limitation on the print copies. It is hard to recruit good employees when online revenue is still zero(except for the period of Internet bubble). So if is it a good way to push the current employees to contribute more to the online copy or invest more in the expansion remains a question.

Having said those, one of my good suggestions for estabilished newspaper is trying to set up "free" model in the emerging market providing new content to new customers. The online Chinese version of Financial Times and Wall Street Journal have done a good job in bringing many Chinese readers without affecting the current revenue from English version. They also brought a bunch of advertisers. At the current stage, the newspaper could subsidize "the new model of new content" based on the revenue from "old model of old content". When the new model is profitable enough, the old model could be subsidized in a reverse way to finish its turn around.

That's just like the egg-basket strategy. When you could afford the risk of losing all eggs, you could definitely put all eggs in one basket; but if you couldn't, then better put some eggs in another basket to test its stability, and then try to move more. Finally some day you will put all eggs in one basket when you trust that basket fully.

P.S. SCMP also started to provide its Chinese content freely on the website. A good beginning but still in the progress.

something interesting to read

Keso is one of the few bloggers in China having deep knowledge on the IT industry. In this post, he publicized a letter from an employee with Ebay Eachnet on the inside first hand info behind the deal between Ebay and Tom Online. The letter is in English, and quite interesting, though couldn't be confirmed it is true or not.

Could U.S. International model work in China?

Heard from someone on a very interesting observation: "There are two theory in China's internet world: (1) If U.S. could do it in this way, we could also do it", (2) Nothing in U.S. could be implemented in China.

In fact, I would like to see U.S. International model will work in China but only under the management of local professionals. Say, when Ebay finally reached the deal with Tom.com on selling(sorry, they called it the cooperation) of Eachnet.com, many big financial media called it is a failure for American Internet model to work in China. However, it seems no one could remember how Eachnet.com, a once popular star auction website based in Shanghai, wrote a new page in China's internet history when the two HBS-graduate founders successfully implanted Ebay's model into China. The failure today is not caused by a couldn't-work model, but by the local management Ebay hired to run Eachnet.

So I would only sigh to Eachnet which couldn't deserve some excellent local management. But in another word, it is more like U.S. corporate culture to control everything in its acquired companies. Different from European peers, American companies consider the controlling right as the most important item when they make international acquisition. For example, Citigroup, who just bought Guangdong Development Bank, already assigned a new CEO to the Chinese venture. Succeed or not, we will see, though I hold a negative view.

In the different business environment, businessmen should try to trust the local professionals as they are the only people knowing the market. That's the most important key in developing business in other countries and other cultures.

Good luck to Eachnet, and thousands of companies which may follow its fate.

Such a long week

Sorry for having not uploaded posts these days. It's such a long week to me since Monday when some sudden news came. I am always quick to adapt the latest news, but this time it took me a week to think through the whole thing.

I am not in a position to do a story on the whole thing(as I couldn't be fair enough) , but when this website reported on it in a unfair way in terms of biased view, I think I should say something to balance the article. Many outsiders, especially people doing business in the mainland China, have seen our changes in the business coverage during the past seven months. We have more breaking news, more in-depth features, and more efforts in trying to cover a true mainland China. The direction is different, but absolutely correct, while most of the readers I've talked to praised it as a good move. Behind all the politics, we should see the effort made by someone to pursue a long term development. It is hard for a regional newspaper, once only focusing in Hong Kong for 100 years, to make such move. But it has to for its own sake. When economists are talking about the peg between Hong Kong dollars and RMB, when stock market sees many mainland-concept IPOs, Hong Kong media has to extend its hands and legs to meet the demand of all readers.

Having said, politics, sometimes, makes the situation more complicated, and makes people including me angry.

Will Hong Kong be marginalized when other mainland China cities are developing fast? Even the taxi drivers in Hong Kong will tell you there is possibility, say, in ten years. What HK should do then? be more open and be more involved in the China's economy. The city does have an advantage based on the efforts from the older hard-working generations, and now, with the changing surroundings, Hong Kong people is also quick to adapt to new things, so will Hong Kong media do, I believe.

"Adaptability and flexibility are the most important two things in a new situation", a foreign expat working in BJ and having a successful career once told me. Now, I sent the words as Christmas gift to all Hong Kong media. And Merry Christmas.

3G, the second round for service providers to grow

Hong Kong has its honor to hold the ITU Telecom World 2006 from December 4 to December 8, the first ever city outside of Switzerland to hold such an event.

The event is so big to even affect the telecom stock in Hong Kong. When China Telecom president Leng Rongquan said China will launch the 3G service soon, the company's stock increased by 15 percent that day. Market is always driven by breaking news, while however, not many people think it in a long-term way.

From my telecom experience, the creative business model usually doesn't come from the telecom operator side. Say, the model of SP, or service providers, only followed after thousands of small private companies which support the China Mobile and China Unicom. Telecom operators, whose main character is monopoly, are hard in trying new and effective model because of its own big strucuture. So the smart way is to give a piece of pie to private companies, and thus, benefit themselves.

So to me, 3G is more like the opportunity for second round of growth for service providers. In the first round, companies such as Sina.com, Sohu.com and Netease.com benefited most, while in the second round, the most creative one may be from some new one.

Among them, media conglomarates such as CCTV and Shanghai Media Group are likely to benefit. The two already competed hardly on the launching of IPTV, a way for people to watch TV via handy or order programmes freely. With 3G, they will have a better platform which are faster.

However, to them, the problem is still their character. As state-owned companies for a long time, it is a question if they could response quickly as small private ones and if they have any advantages beyond their monopoly character.

Saying so, monopoly usually win at last, though not the full pie, 80 percent is pretty enough.

coming back from BJ to HK

I am back to HK today. The weather is so nice, cool and dry. Feel much more comfortable in my apartment than the hotel.

Need to find out what's happening in Hong Kong....

Also, could access to my blog now and have a 100M internet. so happy now.

Climbing fragrant hills in BJ

Fragrant Hills, or Xiang Shan, is the most popular place during Autumn in Beijing. Red leaves, clean air and cool weather, you couldn't find a reason not to go there.


The hill was once the place for the emperors to rest and have a breath out of their busy lives. They would definitely enjoy such a peaceful place.

I used almost an hour and half (including the rest and shopping time) to climb to the top from the bottom, which is really impressingly fast. The view is so fantastic beautiful, especially when you could shout strongly saying "I am on the top of the hill". In the minute, I feel like the happiest person in the world.

diversifying Focus Media's profitable terminals

Focus Media, a legend in China's media industry last industry, is famous for its idea to put terminals in the offices and residential building. The concept is simple: the middle-class people usually working or living in those buildings will look at those advertisements showing on the terminal flat screens when they are boringly waiting for the lift and taking the lift.

Here, I, as a common client but not as a professional financial journalist, think something may go wrong on this idea. The building I am living in BJ right now, (I am on a trip to BJ from HK if everyone remember), has two TV terminals on the first floor. It may be for people waiting for the life coming. Unfortunately, I have been living here for almost four weeks, but couldn't remember a single advertisement from those terminals.

First, because I never need to wait for a lift to come. The lift is always available, so I only need a maximum five seconds to get to the lift, while never put my eyes on the screen beside.

Second, and more importantly, is I am never interested in pure advertising content. In fact, I will call the sales way of focus media more like a forced advertising way, while people have to, not actively seek to, watch the advertisements. Imagine if you will watch a pure advertising TV channel. No, I will not, as I will be bored.

Focus Media is still making good money, as advertisers already believed in this story created by both company and the venture capitalists which once invested in this company. It also expands quickly with more terminals covering more buildings. But I would like to remind all of the people to check the effective number of clients the terminals attracted, instead of a null quick expanding number. One terminal doesn't certainly mean people paying attention to those advertisements.

When I was in SH, I found many taxies already had a small screen in their cars. I found the ones carried more interesting contents, say Music Videos from Channel V, are more attracted to me and I watched them closely even when advertisements come. it means audiences need interesting contents, instead of pure, or boring even worse, advertisements. So I doubt Focus Media's profitability in the future.

Just personal opinions, not on behalf of any others people or any media.

how to find a job in China's financial sector

I got an email from one of my readers. He(or She) asked me to advise the job hunting in China's financial market. I am trying my best to answer it here. Hope it will help that reader, as well as many others. But what I would like to say that it is more important for me to tell more details which sector in the financial field you guys want to work in.

- the job market, number of job opportunities available

The job market is pretty good this year. Many of banking getting listed are recruiting more people, especially from overseas. one example is ICBC is recruiting now, even including fresh graduates, which is not that usual. Securities firms and insurers are also have a good time, too.

- the skills generally required (language, technical, quantitative)

Languages are basically English and Mandarin. You must have some finance degree or better some working experiences from overseas, which will help a lot.

- Credentials, education (masters, CFA, MBA, the school name)
All of them will help, but depending on what types of firms you want to join. MBA will be the best to join the investment banks and consulting firms, while others will help you with other financial companies or industrial companies which need financial person.

- what is the usual career path (starting positions, promotions, exit opportunities, the easiness of transitions into other industry)

Starting positions is depending how many experience you have. It is hard to tell in general. But I believe in a new sector, it will be easier to get promoted. As I know many investment bankers are pretty young, beyong their 40s.

- the pay scale (compared with other industries, benefits, tax)

Paid normall better than others, if not the best. Commercial banks paid pretty good among all types of careers before, and now investment bankers and consultant are catching up. But commercial banks usually have off-the-record income, such as house compensation, while the others may not have that.

- What are some of the bigger industries within Finance and what are the developing ones (Asset management, risk management, consulting, Investment Banking, Hedge funds, private equity, etc) ?

Bigger industries are commercial banks and brokerages. Hedge funds and private equities are growing, but still small. Fund managerment companies is also big, while expats could easily find a lot of sino-foreign joint ventures. Consulting, to tell the truth, is not as popular as before. Risk management is a pretty new area, but I believe it will develop quickly.

- Which cities are good for this industry (Shanghai, hongkong, guangzhou)?

hoho, this also depends on various sector, but to tell the truth, Guangzhou is not comparative with SH and HK. Hong Kong is still the international financial center, which is more efficient and regulated. Good place for investment bankers, at least based there to enjoy the low tax benefit. SH is better for sino-foreign joint venture career development, such as funds and importing/exporting related. BJ is a place for financial experts working closely with policies, such as commercial banks, investment banks, and even brokerages. Private equity and venture capital are usually based in BJ too. Also, SZ is also a good place for small and medium size companies, the city also has a lot of loca private equities and hedge funds.

All in all, it depends on various choices, and my understanding is just for reference. just meeting a banking expert last week, and he told me attitude is more important than others for financial professionals overseas to work in China. And that's true.

India and China

I was attending the Business CEO Forum in BJ on Wednesday. One of the session is on India and China's competitiveness. Why people always like to compare country from country? Especially like the emerging China, people first compared it to China, then India, then maybe some time U.S. But I would like to argue China is always China, with its unique history and opportunity and weakness. China has its own fantasy.

Among the Q&A session with a governor from Saudi Arabia, a guy from China Beijing Secondary Exchange, a government-owned secondary market for company sales, stood up and invited governor for a visit. It sounded no problem if he could stop then. But he continued to complain a lot on the foreign investors' bad opinion on China and....( I almost forgot his point in fact). The moderator had to stop him in a really rude way. I could say he is really brave but the timing was not proper, and the manner was not polite. One senstence, not a good show-off time.

Many Chinese businessmen are agressive these days, especially when dealing with foreign people, but in fact, they haven't learnt the well-rounded way to show themselves. I still remember when I meet the guy, a senior official with that exchange, in a conference where he gave an exciting speech. But during the conference break, I tried to talk to him, but he behaved in a really strange way: he raised his two hands near his mouth, without speaking anything, only his lips moving around, trying to show me he couldn't speak; doesn't make sense at all, right? if you don't want to talk to the media, then just tell them directly. why behave so strangely?

I always remember this, and I believe it shows they need a lot of professional training on how to do a good show off.

Difference between ICBC's A share and H share

ICBC, finally, got listed, after a month's hard work of my colleagues and me. The first trading day, interesting things happened, A share in Shanghai increased by 5 percent, while H share in Hong Kong rose by 15 percent. (A share and H share were priced same) People asked why, and I asked too to SH fund managers. They have different answers, and I quoted them as well. But I got one simple answer for myself(not for newpaper, nor for anyone else) is like this:

Compare the average consumer price in SH and HK, SH is lower than HK of course. Then how come could the stock to have the same price between SH and HK?

So the trading different is natural to me. Then I got the question: so what will be the relations between stock market and consumer price? Will the stock market in HK with many mainland stocks same with SH lead the SH consumer price finally? or SH stock price will tend to be lower than HK for the same company?

terrible BJ transportation

Hong Kong could always be a financial center, just because of its efficiency: this is what I think most when my taxi met with traffic jam during the past days in BJ. For my working 12 hours in a day, almost a third was on the way, or on the way to get a taxi. So many transporation lights, so many traffic jam in every minute(even in the noon of Friday). I am kinda of used to it as I learnt that it will not become better even I become angry.

So HK, the city with no jam, will always be the place for the efficient work. In one second, you could reach everywhere without waiting in a taxi.

BJ is still good for politics, SH is catching up with BJ in terms of traffic jam(see how long it takes to go from Pudong to Puxi during the busy hour), while HK, smaller, is the most efficient. That's the advantage no one could catch up in five years, or maybe ten years.

Wikipedia's ban got lifted

After I just complained on the wiki connection, I found the story from my professor Andrew Lih's blog on a comprehensive research of wiki's connection in every province in China. In fact, the ban on the wiki's english website was already lifted. Congratulations. China has another channel to communicate with the world la.

Speaking of wikipedia, it grows so fast. Every time I search something via google, link to wikipedia will always appear among the top five, which is quite impressive.

I always want to write some tips on how to make use of different search engine. With a computer background, I always use three search engines:

Google: good for direct search in english and Chinese for the specific websites. always good for search in english

Baidu: good for search the most popular info in Chinese. you will always know which article people read most. but bad for searching the right websites.

www.iask.com: created by Sina.com. it is kind of hidden behind the big name Sina, but I suggest sina.com seperate it as single searching business. This website is so good at searching on news archives, especially good for journalists and PRs. you could find all news for certain topic in the time sequence from the website which is backed up by the fantastic news database of Sina.com. really a waste when Sina.com doesn't promote it much.

what happened to Wikipedia accessed in China?

In one second, it worked suddenly for wikipedia's english website after I accessed to it from google searching link; then, suddenly, in one minute, everything stopped working.

I am using the internet connection in Beijing right now. Such a strange behaviour.

Chinese voice in the blog world

The 2006 Chinese blogger world will be held on Oct 28 to Oct 29 in Hangzhou soon. I believe the conference this year will attract more people from last year dut to the fast growth of the number of Chinese bloggers. Company employees and students are the most active groups in the blog world, while the joining of celebrities, such as their blog in Sina.com, also added more exposure to the blog. I hope it will become a successful conference in which attendees will get what they want. For examples, I overheard that some venture capitalists will attend to look for their investment target....


P.S. Hiking picture last weekend. The Peak in Hong Kong is always fun, no matter when you go and who you go with.

Wealthy Chinese feel no safety

I talked with an assistant of a rich Chinese businessmen on Thursday. He told me his boss is going to finalize his business in Hong Kong at last as the city is more safe. I keep wondering what the businessman is afraid of right now?

Two guess: first, his money is illegal, but from what I know, his business is pretty legal without involving many politics and state-asset stuff. Second, he may be concerned on the safety of his millions of yuan asset, which may be under danger when the whole society lost balance. Seems the second answer is more close to the right answer.

President Hu Jintao has talked for several times on the social harmony. It is a right direction, but needs more solution. This is a target, but behind the social harmony, we should see people's scare. A shanghai financial controller of a state-owned group told me that there is so many bubble in the economy right now, and he wonders how the country will go in the future. His worry does reflect the concern of a lot of people, especially among wealthy class. They have seen their peers fall down and lose their wealth, even their lives, in one night; they also have also sensed the jealous group which hadn't made as much money as them. When Deng Xiaoping allowed a group of people to become richer, he may, or may not, predict that the conflict between the group and the others will be harder and harder.

Under those conflict, China is kind of wandering between the two groups: it could try to stand at the side of the still-poor people, or it could try to protect the already-rich people. It is a hard decision-making process, while no answer has been given out yet. That's why wealthy people ended up in the huge worries.

Glenn Hubbard, a senior economist working with U.S. Federal Reserve and the Dean of the Columbia Business School, said in a recent speech that China's fast growth is highly boosted by the enterpreneurship, rather than from the companding heights. I agreed partly: I agree the commading heights are not well structured to give all transparent policy, but some of them did try to protect the enterpreneurship. Hope more and more officials will be aware of this in the future.