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December 31, 2005
Happy New Year!
May the new year bring you and your loved ones good health, peace, and prosperity. Happy New Year!
Posted by John at 8:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina Photo of the Day: 2006 Celebrated on the Bund in Shanghai
From Flickr:
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Quote of the Day for Saturday, December 31, 2005
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December 30, 2005
The Powerful Trend in Productivity and Its Significance
Arnold Kling reports that average U.S. productivity growth over the past five years, at almost 3.4% annually, is at the highest level in half a century.
The importance of this performance is quite significant:
. . . it is important to understand that, for the most part, productivity growth is the economy's gift to policymakers, not the other way around. It would be foolish to attribute to tax cuts that which ought to be attributed to Moore's Law. . . .
. . . Robert Fogel suggested that productivity growth of 2 percent per year would be sufficient to ensure the soundness of Social Security. With three percent productivity growth, even Medicare may be sound.
In The Great Race, I argued that our economic future boils down to two trends. Moore's Law is raising productivity, helping to increase the size of the economy relative to government spending. On the other hand, Medicare is growing, which tends to increase government spending relative to the size of the economy.
In the 2-1/2 years since I wrote that essay, nothing has been done to slow the growth of Medicare. However, if the economy can sustain or increase its rate of productivity growth, the long-term outlook may be reasonably good. . . .
Only the dynamic U.S. economy, if anything, can stay ahead of its free spending politicians.
Posted by John at 6:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina Photo of the Day: Shanghai's Future
From Flickr:
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The Significant Impact of "Insourced" Jobs on the Southeast
The Organization for International Investment, an association of U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, released a report, by state, on employment due to such companies. The OII uses Commerce Department data to prepare this report (which raises the question of why the Commerce Department itself doesn’t publicize these figures, but that’s another subject).
California is the state with the most "insourcing" jobs (561,000), followed by New York (382,600), Texas (339,300), Illinois (254,900), and Florida (248,900). Other Southern states with large numbers of such employment include North Carolina, ranked number 10 nationally with 204,600 jobs, Georgia (#12 rank, 182,800 jobs), Virginia (#13 rank, 138,600 jobs), South Carolina (#15 rank, 127,500 jobs), and Tennessee (#16 rank, 127,400 jobs).
Consider what such employment means for Georgia. Georgia’s number of "insourcing jobs" is roughly equivalent to the population of Columbus, taking the city and county population combined. Columbus is Georgia's third largest city. Moreover, Georgia's "insourced jobs" are not much much less than the population of Augusta, its second largest city.
The impact of such jobs on a smaller state like South Carolina is even more striking. The entire population of the state is just over 4.1 million; again, population includes the working and non-working, including children and the retired. Removing the number of jobs due to foreign-owned companies would be akin to plucking out the entire City of Charleston proper.
Foreign-owned companies are a major contributor to Southeastern economic development, like it or not.
The numbers speak for themselves.
Posted by John at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackQuote of the Day for Friday, December 30, 2005
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December 29, 2005
Arab Equity Indices the World's Best Performing in 2005
From Bloomberg:
Posted by John at 11:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackEight out of the 10 best-performing stock indexes tracked by Bloomberg News are Arab benchmarks this year, led by Egypt's CASE 30 Index. Most reached records this year. . . .
"Oil and government economic reform in the Middle East is triggering the boom," said Haissam Arabi, head of asset management at Shuaa Capital, which oversees $2.2 billion in United Arab Emirates, Dubai.
The CASE Index has surged 152 percent this year in dollar terms, while the Dubai Financial Market Index has climbed 130 percent. Benchmarks in Saudi Arabia and Jordan have roughly doubled.
The total market value of stocks in Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Morocco has more than doubled this year to $1.3 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and statistics from the Palestinian stock exchange.
China Photo of the Day: 黄山之一(Mount Huang)
From Flickr:
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Quote of the Day for Thursday, December 29, 2005
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December 28, 2005
Coming Next Week: Predictions!
In Tidbits next week, we're going to have some special guests offering predictions for 2006. I think you'll find them very interesting and provocative, so look for them beginning next week!
Posted by John at 11:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackM&A Activity Reaches a Five Year High
Global M&A activity in 2005 has reached $2.9 trillion, up 38% from 2004. Deal volume hasn't been as robust since 2000.
Posted by John at 10:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackFurther Thoughts on China’s Declining Stock Market
While the Chinese economy has grown by 50% over the last five years, the Chinese equity market (as measured by the A share market) has fallen by 50%. This striking anomaly is explained in part by the attitude of companies which go public, as we explored in this post.
Private equity investor Weijian Shan offers a straightforwardly coherent explanation as well in an essay published in the Far Eastern Economic Review:
. . . China’s economic growth is so driven by capacity expansion or fixed-asset investment, that investments now account for more than 50% of the gross domestic product, more than any other country at any time in the history of economic development. The relentless capacity expansion has led to economy-wide overcapacity and overcompetition, to such an extent that profit margins of the firms are constantly squeezed. Data show that the prices of Chinese exports to the U.S.. have fallen by more than a quarter since 197 whereas the price index for China’s raw materials has risen by about 20%. If growth only translates into ever declining profitability for Chinese firms and decreasing return to their shareholders, is there any wonder why their stock prices also fall?
Moreover, the Chinese stock market has never been a fair game. To be permitted to go public has long been considered a policy favor often reserved for weak firms requiring government support. . .The practice of meting out policy favors as a way to select listing candidates has created a mix of some good quality firms and a lot of bad ones on China’s stock exchanges. In addition, the parent company of many poor quality firms are also know to have helped themselves with the money raised by their listed subsidiaries in the public market, further weakening them.
The equity markets, therefore, are reflecting both declining profitability and poor governance practices. It’s virtually impossible for equity prices to do anything but fall given the headwinds of these two considerably important conditions.
Posted by John at 9:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina Photo of the Day: Winter in Beijing's Jingshan Park
From Flickr:
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Quote of the Day for Wednesday, December 28, 2005
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December 27, 2005
Spanish Language Marketing Dollars Paltry Compared to Market Size
Darrel Rhea at the Cheskin Fresh Perspectives blog is amazed at how little some large, seemingly sophisticated companies spend on Spanish language marketing in the U.S. I share the surprise:
Capital One and Sony score a big zero. That’s right, in 2004, they reported spending virtually nothing on SLM! [Spanish language marketing] Wouldn’t you think that Capital One Financial, who appears to be aggressively going after just about everybody, would focus on one of the fastest rising economic segments in the U.S.? Ditto with Sony Corp.! Any major supplier of entertainment electronics should know better. Perhaps they use nontraditional techniques, such as viral marketing (Sony does sport an RSS feed on its website), but I still find it curious.
In the tech world, HP is spending almost more than Microsoft and IBM combined.
Three out of four of the top advertisers in total spending are telcos. The top spender overall is SBC Communications ($523,503,000). What’s noteworthy is that SBC is also the top spender in Spanish language media (at $9,466,000), which even outranks it own expenditures in business-to-business publications ($9,305,000). Other telcos also include Verizon Communications (#2) and Sprint Corp. (#3) – certainly connoting the competitive nature of the category. Both are way behind SBC when it comes to traditional Spanish language media spending, at $5,333,000 and $382,000, respectively
I am most surprised that there are so few companies that spend more than $2 million a year in SLM, and all of these companies spend a minimum of $40 million a year in total advertising. While Hispanic dominants represent somewhere between 6 - 12% of total population, ad spend is still about less than 4% of total. The level of commitment just seems out of whack with the size of the market opportunity. The short list of players includes Bank of America, Time Warner, Office Depot, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, SouthWest Airlines, MasterCard International, Aflac, Wal-Mart, AMR Corp., First Data Corp. But…no more.
In fairness, ad spend, in isolation, can be a misleading figure. As Rhea points out, non-traditional marketing techniques do not usually get picked up in conventional measures of advertising spending.
Even still, the concentration of Spanish language marketing dollars among a short list of Fortune 500 companies seems to imply that there will be just a few meaningful large company beneficiaries of the continued economic rise of the U.S. Hispanic market.
Furthermore, these circumstances also imply the tremendous opportunity which corporate America is leaving to smaller companies who decide to exploit the opportunities in this demographic.
Posted by John at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina Photo of the Day: Snowfall at the Great Wall
From Flickr:
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Living Without "Made in China"
Freelance writer Sara Bongiorni and her family tried to go an entire year without buying anything made in China. She wrote about the experience for the Christian Science Monitor, which you can read by following this link. (Hint: Life was costlier, trickier, and a bigger hassle.)
Posted by John at 5:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackQuote of the Day for Tuesday, December 27, 2005
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December 26, 2005
Uncertainty in Bolivia Means a Boost for South Florida
 Evo Morales, President-Elect of Bolivia |
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You can read a very good analysis of Bolivia’s situation by the Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer by following this link:
The conventional wisdom in Washington is that Sunday's elections in Bolivia may result in a Venezuelan-backed radical leftist stronghold. But the more likely outcome will be political chaos, a powerless central government and growing calls for secession from the wealthy Santa Cruz region.
Judging from what I heard in telephone interviews with foreign ambassadors, politicians and political analysts in Bolivia, the country is headed to an even greater political and geographic confrontation . . .
My conclusion: Anything could happen in Bolivia. But nobody I talked to predicted that Bolivia will slowly fade away from the news after Sunday's election. On the contrary, this story is just beginning and it will probably become the biggest headline from Latin America next year -- a sort of new Venezuela, but plagued by violent tribal and regional conflicts.
Capital flight from Latin America continues to be South Florida's lucrative wildcard.
Posted by John at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina Photo of the Day: Lugu Lake
From Flickr:
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Quote of the Day for Monday, December 26, 2005
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December 25, 2005
A Softly Lit Christmas Quote
"A Christmas candle is a lovely thing; It makes no noise at all, but softly gives itself away." (Eva Logue)
(From Flickr)
Posted by John at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackDecember 24, 2005
Thoughts of Thanksgiving this Christmas
As I write these words, it’s a quiet Christmas Eve and everyone’s asleep, except me and Blaze the cat. Mama went down early, exhausted from a busy day. The kids, willing to do what it takes to allow Santa Claus to do his thing, went down not long afterward.
A soft rain is humming its own rhythm outside. Sleep comes in short, deep stretches for me, but it’s not here quite yet for me. Part of my restlessness comes from thankfulness for the Christmas peace and joy our family is able to enjoy.
Our week, you see, started by going to a memorial service for the mother of a friend of ours, someone who my wife rides horses with frequently. Megan’s mom died in her 50s; suffering from pneumonia, she went to sleep one night and died quietly in her sleep. Her daughter, her best friend, is left crushed. Her pain and grief was palpable.
On Tuesday I visited Robert Chapman, husband of my associate Jamie, who remains in the hospital recovering from brain surgery. His family is hopeful but on edge, waiting for him to come out of his sleeping state.
Walking into the hospital, I answered a call on my cellphone that was a frustrating business-related call. I told Sharon, who also works with me and is a close friend of Jamie’s, to go on inside. I stood out in the cold, animatedly talking and trying to solve a problem with one of our portfolio companies. All I had to show for my effort was cold hands; it was freezing in Memphis that day.
Hanging up I walked into the hospital and met Jamie coming out with packages and presents. I helped her get out to her car, which was parked under a tree loaded with birds. It was a scene straight from Alfred Hitchcock.
You can guess what happened next. The birds took off as we were loading her car, with seemingly hundreds of flapping wings making an almost deafening sound. We had to make a run for it back inside, laughing all the way.
Indeed, one bird found his target. I had a deposit on my shoulder. Jamie, Sharon, and I hooted with laughter. I had to go into the bathroom to clean my coat, and check my hair while I was at it.
I came out and we went up the elevator to see Robert. The concerns I’d carried so heavily just a few minutes earlier floated away like the stray ash from a campfire, lifted by the wind. Our laughter over bird droppings was an echo. I was in front of a man fighting to come back.
That short distance I traveled, from a business call outside the hospital, to running and dodging the bird crap, to Robert’s bedside, is quite a metaphor for the short distance we can all trace, in our lives on this earth, between the mundane and the profound, between joy and grief, between health and sickness.
As we’ve prepared for Christmas this week, our children are full of joy, questions, and anticipation, like all kids are this time of year. Their enthusiasm is almost intoxicating.
At the same time, my own Christmas joy has a heavy shade of thankfulness this year. Yes, I’m grateful, in spite of all the problems I’ve had to deal with lately, in spite of the frustrations of work, despite the deep personal disappointments my wife and I have dealt with this year.
Our family enjoys a time of relative bliss this Christmas. We have health and a settled happiness that some of our friends and family can only hope for in the future. Their pain is our perspective.
Blaze the cat is now sleeping soundly at my feet. My five year old has walked into the room, half asleep, and snuggled up next to me, oblivious to the glow of my laptop.
It’s time to me to sleep as well, and I’ll drift off with thoughts of Thanksgiving this Christmas.
Posted by John at 11:53 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBackQuote of the Day for Saturday, December 24, 2005
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Posted by John at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackToday's quote is from Agnes M. Pharo: "What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace."
December 23, 2005
Taking a Christmas Break
We'll be taking a Christmas break for the next several days. Have a happy and safe holiday time with your family and friends.
Posted by John at 11:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina’s Competitive Christmas Industry
The results for 2005 are still being compiled, but last year China exported approximately $1 billion of Christmas-related products such as artificial trees and decorations, according to an Asia Times article.
This industry is extremely competitive, and is a testament to some of the issues affecting industries in Guangdong Province we’ve previously noted here in Tidbits, including labor shortages and rising raw materials costs:
Many of the Pearl and Yangtze River delta Christmas product manufacturers have their own websites in English and Spanish, and some are starting to branch out into other holidays, such as Halloween. But competition is stiff. "We have begun to feel the heat a little in the last two years because there are so many small factories that have set up shop in our city, driving down prices," says Edith Yan, the sales representative of Decoart Design & Manufacturing Ltd, located in Huizhou, Guangdong.
Recent labor shortages in the Pearl River Delta have meant higher salaries. Both Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, and Shenzhen pushed up their minimum wages by a third earlier this year, to $83 per month. Combined with the rising costs of raw materials like plastic, profit margins are suffering.
A six-foot-high tree in Yiwu's Futian market for example, is priced at less than $4. A package of six sparkling ornaments costs about 25 cents to make, and sells for 36 cents.
Concerns regarding product quality and intellectual property rights have also begun to hinder the mainland's exports to Europe. According to Xinhua, Guangdong's Christmas exports actually fell by 19.6% last year, compared to 2003.
Manufacturing in China is no panacea if the industry itself is as brutally competitive as that for Christmas products.
Posted by John at 11:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina Photo of the Day: The Holiday Shopping Mood
From Flickr:
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Quote of the Day for Friday, December 23, 2005
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December 22, 2005
Hispanic-Owned Businesses: A Comparison of Georgia and Missouri
Atlanta Latino reports on the continued increase in Hispanic buying power in Georgia, which will reach almost $11 billion in 2005.
The economic heft of Georgia’s Hispanic community is growing at a "really amazing" pace, according to Dr. Jeff Humphreys at the University of Georgia's Selig Center for Economic Growth. Dr. Humphreys regularly compiles statistics on the buying power of the Hispanic market.
Reasons cited for this rapid growth include the movement up the job ladder to better paying jobs and "the burst of activity among Hispanics starting up their own businesses at a higher rate than non-Hispanics."
Humphreys’ comments on these trends are instructive:
"It is not necessary to treat our Hispanic immigrants differently," said Humphreys on the best way to maximize the potential of this growing market. He added that Georgians should make sure that the same services that are provided to anyone living in Georgia are available to Hispanic immigrants.
"Particularly, I think that what is important is education because it’s what really opens doors to opportunity her in America," Humphreys said. "It provides the credentials that you need to enter occupations with higher wages and better benefits, and provide entrepreneurial activity. It’s very clear that Hispanics are very entrepreneurial, that there is an entrepreneurial zeal in the Hispanic population. So anything that makes it easy to do business in Georgia will be good."
Authorities in Missouri clearly agree. The Republican governor of the state, Matt Blunt, just abolished Governor's Commission on Hispanic Affairs in favor of the Missouri Hispanic Business, Trade and Culture Commission. Part of the purpose of this commission, according to Gov. Blunt, is to "better address the needs of the growing Hispanic business community in Missouri."
According to Small Business Administration statistics I’ve previously cited, Georgia had over 18,000 Hispanic-owned businesses in the state in 2002. Missouri had fewer than 3,700.
 Courtesy of the Missouri Economic Research & Information Center |
Missouri sees the value of encouraging growth in Hispanic-owned businesses in its state, even though their numbers are a fraction of what they are in Georgia.
Some Georgia politicians, on the other hand, are akin to a blind man holding the tail of an elephant. They have no idea, in some cases deliberately so, what’s under their own nose.
Posted by John at 7:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina Photo of the Day: A Group of Santas Getting Ready in Hangzhou
From Flickr:
(I hope the Santa in the middle got his beard fixed!)
Posted by John at 9:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackQuote of the Day for Thursday, December 22, 2005
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December 21, 2005
China Photo of the Day: Winter Day in Beijing
From Flickr:
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Baby Steps in Banking Nashville's Hispanic Market
The Nashville Tennessean examined what commercial banks are doing to address the city’s rapidly growing Hispanic population.
The answer, quite simply, is not too much that’s particularly groundbreaking. Bilingual tellers or statements in Spanish are a tactic, but hardly a strategy.
The Nashville area president for First Tennessee Bank summed it up the best:
"We look at it as a rapidly growing market, but as one that's still a very small percentage of the overall market in Tennessee," said Mike Edwards, Nashville region president for the Memphis bank. "It's a market we continue to evaluate what out future plans and actions should be — it's one that has our attention."
Translation: We’re all still trying to figure it out.
Posted by John at 5:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackQuote of the Day for Wednesday, December 21, 2005
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December 20, 2005
An IP Expert on China's Intellectual Property Laws and Enforcement
My friend Tim Xia, a partner with Morris, Manning & Martin, spoke recently on intellectual property laws and enforcement in China:
"The Chinese government has intellectual property laws, and they enforce them. Copyright infringement is a criminal offense that is very, very important in China," said Dr. Xia.
Part of China's motivation, Tim notes, involves the large amount of foreign investment in the country which involves intellectual property. Chinese companies and the government itself, in many cases, has an ownership stake in this IP, and consequently, a protective motivation.
Tim’s opinions are valuable, as he is a native of China and is a specialist in intellectual property law both in the United States and in China. His doctorate is in physics and he’s been involved with more than 700 patent applications.
As China moves up the value chain, enforcement of intellectual property will become more vital. Quite simply, the more China produces which is worth safeguarding, the bigger the incentive to bolster and enforce those protective laws.
Posted by John at 8:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina Photo of the Day: The Forbidden City Meets Starbucks
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South Florida's Lit Fuse
Bill Bonner, writing on LewRockwell.com, relates a conversation with a Florida real estate developer involved in "dozens of different projects" who calls the real estate market in South Florida a "lit fuse."
This developer goes on to cite three factors converging to feed the size of the problem. Speculators are buying up most of the excess production. (This problem has been a major factor in Shanghai’s recent slowdown.) Second, consumers have bought as much or more house as they can afford, and their lifestyle spending has crept up as well. Third, lenders are being pressured by regulators regarding interest-only lending.
"The problem in real estate," he says, "is going to be worse than people can imagine."
Posted by John at 7:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackQuote of the Day for Tuesday, December 20, 2005
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December 19, 2005
China Photo of the Day: Shanxiajiu Street in Guangzhou
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Under the Surface, Improving Chinese-Japanese Relations
Seemingly few days pass in the Chinese media without a story on Japan’s "hostility" or "insensitivity" to China. During my visits to China, anti-Japanese sentiment, even subtle, is easy to recognize.
Behind the banter between the two country’s media and its citizens, however, there are signs of easing tensions.
Trade, which can be inhibited by politicians quite readily if they’re in the mood, is one major indicator. China has supplanted the United States as Japan’s top trading partner.
Tim Shorrock of Asia Times points out a few other indicators of note:
Posted by John at 4:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack. . . in 2004, Beijing hosted the world "manga summit", an annual event that draws hundreds of people involved in this popular Japanese art form. Moreover, the universal draw of manga has made the study of Japanese language increasingly popular in Chinese colleges and universities.
"I now sense that the bedrock of pro-Japanese sentiment has been formed in China, especially in the urban society," said Takahara Akio, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Tokyo and a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.
As for Japanese sentiment toward China, "I can safely say that the common sense in Japan now is that the Japanese economy has been more or less lifted by the rise of China and the so-called Chinese economic threat is hardly perceived any more," Akio added. He noted that 1 million Chinese workers were directly employed by Japanese companies in China, and another 9.2 million employed by Japanese sub-contractors.
Yang Bojiang, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who follows Sino-Japanese relations as a director of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, agreed that a thaw in bilateral relations was coming. But he argued that, in both countries, the public had been pushing their respective governments to take more confrontational stands while their leaders had been acting behind the scenes to ease tensions.
"China is trying hard to improve relations," he said, particularly in regard to North Korea. In recent years, after Japanese diplomats told their counterparts in China that they wanted more understanding of North Korea's admitted abduction of Japanese citizens, Beijing responded, he said, and "Japan is getting more and more cooperation" on this issue. "For those reasons, I'm cautiously optimistic." . . .
Quote of the Day for Monday, December 19, 2005
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December 18, 2005
China Photo of the Day: Beijing Botanic Garden
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Telenovelas in English Coming to Network Television
English language versions of telenovelas are coming to television in the United States. News Corporation affiliate Twentieth Television will distribute up to three telenovelas a year, remaining faithful to original scripts and hour-long episodes.
The Miami Herald reports that Colombia's Table for Three (Mesa para Tres) and Cuban hit Fashion House (Salir de Noche) are among the series which will be adopted for U.S. television starting next year and distributed under the Desire label. (In case you have any doubt about the temperature of the steam which will emanate from your set.)
All of the Fox owned and operated stations have signed on for Desire, which means that those of us in Atlanta will see the series on WAGA/Fox 5.
Posted by John at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackDeficit of Media Content in China
China has a deficit of content relative to distribution in media similar, but obviously for different reasons, to that of the U.S. A casual search of channels during a visit is a first indicator; the offerings seem to be either news/talk or a seemingly endless string of the Chinese version of telenovelas.
Zhengrong Hu, professor at Communication University of China, spoke recently on this dynamic of the Chinese media industry to students at Penn's Annenberg School of Communication:
. . . Audiences and potential advertising revenues are staggering. China today has 1.2 billion radio listeners and 1.23 billion TV watchers, and there are currently 282 radio stations, 314 television stations and 1,913 broadcasting stations at the city level. Income from these outlets totaled approximately $10 billion in 2004 -- numbers that will only grow as cable and digital TV roll out nationwide over the coming years.
Such growth puts the Chinese government in a difficult position. "Broadcasting outlets are able to produce less than 70% of content locally," Hu said. "The shortage of content is the biggest burden for the Chinese government," so much so that the government took an unprecedented step in its 2003 culture reform policy by segmenting content into two major categories: the public sector and the business sector. Now all programming that is within the realm of ideology, such as news, current affairs, political information and education, will remain within the public service sector, while less ideological activities -- such as production, distribution, transmission networks, advertising, entertainment, music, movies, TV dramas, sports and lifestyle -- will fall to private media companies.
(from Knowledge@Wharton)
While there are investment opportunities in content for Western media companies, another speaker at the same conference warns that the same factors impacting newspapers in the U.S. are in play in China. Young people, for example, like receiving news and information from the Internet. Continued urbanization, says Renmin University’s Guoming Yu, should continue to be a positive for the industry, however.
Posted by John at 9:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackEven Tougher Times Coming for Traditional Radio. . .
. . . If the sentiments of young people are any indication (courtesy of Podcasting News):
Posted by John at 7:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackKey findings [from a Bridge Ratings survey]:
--85% of the total sample would choose their MP3 player over traditional radio as their preferred option for music.
--There is a clear generational difference between 12-17 and 18-24 year olds.
--For music listening, the Internet is preferred over traditional radio.
--MP3 use far out-paces radio use.
--When given a choice between listening to music over the Internet or traditional radio stations, 54% prefer the Internet while 30% prefer radio. This preference is more pronounced among 18-24 year olds.
Quote of the Day for Sunday, December 18, 2005
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December 17, 2005
The Pendulum Swings on Shanghai Real Estate
China Daily reports that the supply/demand equation for Shanghai real estate has, in less than one year, gone from this:
Darkened windows became a common feature of the night-time cityscape, as developers and speculators stockpiled vacant apartments in anticipation of further price increases. Prices jumped 19 per cent in the first quarter of 2005 from a year earlier, prompting central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan to say Shanghai's home prices were worthy of "concern and attention."
To this:
Slowing demand has prompted some developers to offer perks such as free plane tickets and air conditioners, while others are guaranteeing refunds in the event of further price declines a tactic used by Hong Kong developers after 1997, when the city's real estate prices slumped by 60 per cent.
The amount of apartment space for sale is now three times that being offered at the end of 2004. The amount of residential space actually sold through mid-December is only two-thirds of that sold for all of 2004.
Even in a rapidly expanding economy, demand can be hard-pressed to keep up with supply.
Condo buyers in South Florida should pay attention.
Posted by John at 10:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackPressure on Urban Infrastructure in China
China’s urban population is expected to reach 560 million by the end of the year, and this growth is putting pressure on infrastructure in the country’s cities.
One example: almost three hundred cities in China, mostly small and medium sized urban areas, do not have sewage treatment facilities.
As we mentioned here, here, and here, Chinese authorities are actively reporting on the problem of pollution and its effect not only on the environment but on what is often referred to as "sustainable development."
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the business opportunity in this area is tremendous.
Posted by John at 11:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackChina Photo of the Day: Hills in the Mist
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Quote of the Day for Saturday, December 17, 2005
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