Mike.Shaw

There’s an interesting debate going on among the expat community in China these days. The conversation is focused on the merits of living in this country and its ebb and flow is a great example of how people in small communities (there are only about 250,000 expats in Beijing & Shanghai combined) speak with themselves and how trends evolve and change as a result. Back in August of 2012, a longtime expat with a great story (and friends in the media) opined in an essay, “You’ll Never be Chinese,” that…

Like Heraclitus said, the only constant is change. And in the digital age, change comes fast and furious, indeed. When we last left WeChat, their registration numbers for 2012 had just come out and the service was making its first forays into the West. There were over 300 million users of the free messaging service in China, and the first few million users outside of China had started signing up. Six months on from our mention, WeChat (or “WeiXin” (微信) as it’s known domestically), has boomed steadily within China and…

  In any business transaction it’s important to do thorough due diligence before signing on the dotted line. And when you’re considering entering the Chinese market there is a LOT of diligence to do. Beyond market research and economic analysis, there’s much more that potential investors or entrepreneurs need to familiarize themselves with to get a real grip on the business potential that China offers… and its dangers. For those considering making the move to China, the amount of information flowing from here to the West can seem like a…

  If content is king, then a consumer’s attention span is his fickle, cruel mistress. The always entertaining Farhad Manjoo over at Slate recently explored just how much content is actually consumed by visitors to their website every day, and the results are startling. Here are the big highlights of what they found (because we don’t want you leaving before getting to the good stuff): 5% of visitors to a web page will not look at anything other than a headline or photo. 43% of visitors will leave after reading…

  Westerners of a certain age who follow economic trends in China these days could be forgiven if they’ve had 80s synth-pop tunes stuck in their heads of late. While the Chinese government has been promoting the movement of people towards growing cities in the interior instead of the already bulging megalopolises on the east coast, the explicit economic shift in terms of development dollars and infrastructure projects only started to ramp up last year. As a result, this is a region that is just now taking off. Western brands…