*The following is an excerpt from our One Hour China Consumer Book (which is available here.). Part 1 of this story is here. Sunny and Carlsberg Leave China Sunny Wong joined Carlsberg China as a sales manager in 1987, six years after Carlsberg had opened its first China brewery (in Hong Kong ). Carlsberg’s first […]
In Part 1, I gave a summary of my visit to the Mobike headquarters in Beijing – and my meeting with founder Hu Weiwei. That is located here. I ended up touring and asking questions for about 2-3 hours. It was really fascinating. Here are my five take-aways on Mobike and bike-sharing in general. Take-Away […]
I think we are officially at the end of Phase I of China’s bike-sharing / bike-rental phenomenon. There are now a couple of clear leaders – Mobike and Ofo. The services are experiencing tons of daily usage by Chinese consumers, and growth is continuing rapidly. This is definitely not a fad. The economics of the […]
Hollywood studios have been coming to grips with the fact that China will soon be the world’s largest market for entertainment. Movies increasingly are co-produced by cash-rich Chinese moguls. Chinese stars are cast in supporting roles. And praise for Chinese culture is being randomly stuck into scripts. But Hollywood’s success in China is going to increasingly […]
Hey, I was on CGTN Global Business on July 28, 2017. The discussion with Cheng Lei and Kitty Fok was about China tech vs. the West. The video is located at this link. Or try this one. Full video is here. .Cheers, Jeff
At the end of 2016, I started counting how many people on the Beijing subway were wearing sportswear. It looked like about 30% of commuting Chinese had started wearing some type of sweats or other athletic gear. And if I just counted the running shoes, it was above 50%. This was kind of confusing. Somehow […]
Earlier this year, United Airlines got massive criticism in China. The video of David Dao being dragged down an airplane aisle went viral in China, much to United’s surprise. KFC had a somewhat similar surprise last year when their China outlets suddenly got protests, a response to a ruling at the Hague. Both events highlight […]
Haier’s acquisition of GE Appliances in mid-2016 resulted in the usual stories about Chinese outbound M&A – and about China’s global ambitions. Such foreign acquisitions are almost always regarded as a type of ambition or strength. Chinese companies are going global! But sometimes such acquisitions can be a type of surrender, an acceptance that there […]
It’s been about a year since Apple’s $1B 2016 investment in Didi Chuxing. At the time, there was a lot of discussion about the rationale for the deal. Would it garner goodwill with the Chinese government? Would it help Apple’s slowing sales in China? And so on. So what happened? It doesn’t look the deal […]
*The following is an excerpt from the One Hour China Book, for which a new 2017 version is available here. In Part 1, we laid out the early history of China Vanke founder Wang Shi. Following a string of successful deals in 1980’s boomtown Shenzhen, he made his first entry into real estate in 1988. […]