About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

If you’re coming to Shanghai, you’ll most likely be arriving through Pudong International Airport (PVG). Located 30 km east of downtown, it took over most international flights from the older Hongqiao Airport (SHA) when it first opened in 1999. It is big, it is modern, and the architecture is, uh, big and modern.

It is also remarkably unremarkable.

You really do not want to hang out there.

Yes, you’d think such a cosmopolitan first-tier city like Shanghai would have an impressively cosmopolitan airport like Hong Kong’s, filled with name-brand shopping and palatable dining options for the legions of travelers passing through each day, but as far as major international airports go, Shanghai’s PVG sucks (so does Beijing, but that’s a story the Imagethief tells best). Get past immigration, head for the exits, and make your way to downtown Shanghai, where it is far more interesting.

If you’re foreign to Shanghai, and no one was sent to pick you up, there are three common methods for getting from the airport into the city center, which is where you’re most likely headed. Each of these options are detailed below, with pros, cons, instructions, and some useful tips.

Method 1: Taxi

Why: Convenience. Unless there is a long line of people waiting to get taxis, this is your option for door to door service, and especially useful if you have a ton of luggage. The major drawback will be the cost, and the risk of dishonest drivers intentionally taking a less-than-direct route from the airport to your stated destination. Unfortunately, this risk gets higher the more foreign you appear and the less familiar you are with Shanghai’s roads/geography.

Typical rates during the day to the Puxi side of downtown Shanghai will be around 150-170 RMB. To the Pudong side, around 100-130 RMB. As long as you’re certain your destination is in the city center, you should get worried if the fare hits 200. A vein on your forehead should pop if you see 300. (more…)

You are familiar with Subway Line 10, are you? It’s one of those new subway lines opening in about two months here in Beijing, and when it’s reality, you’ll be able to zip from Zhongguancun to the CBD in about half an hour. Eternally consigned to the history books will be those intolerable waits on the eastern 3rd Ring Road and bus rides that seem to take forever and a day.

I’d like to take a look at Line 10 today from an architectural point of view, or rather, point de vue. (Excuse my Français.) The average Line 10 station looks like one of these fellows below:

The Beijing Subway seems to be in box mode these days. Ever since the Mozart Line, or Subway Line 5, became reality in early October 2007, we seem to be in the Box Era, subway station design-wise. Boxes inside the 2nd Ring Road tend to get a bit more “traditionalistic”, blending in with the surroundings a bit more, while boxes outside the ringway look more like a mix between the Beijing Subway and Steve Jobs (as in that famous Apple “brushed metal” look). Above-ground stations look more like the designer got brainwashed with too much The Jetsons than anything else, with Beiyuanlu North looking especially way-out-there.

Most stations on Line 10 are of the boxed variety. However, the ones which also happen to belong to Line 8 look very different:

We’re not sure if these fellows are considering making all future Line 8 stations look like red roofs when the line gets extended further north (and south!) after the Games. From the looks of it, however, it looks like the Red Roofs are here to make a statement: “We belong to a very special era in the history of the nation’s capital!” (The Olympics!)

What we don’t get, however, is why no subway station was directly modelled after the Bird’s Nest… isn’t that supposed to be a Beijing 2008 icon instead? Ah well…

Zhang Liming (张黎明) from Beijing Morning Post (北京晨报) has a report titled as “Tencent learned from Korean Model to Hire a 3000-people Human Flesh Search Army” (腾讯参照韩国模式招三千人肉搜索军团) on April. 10, 2008 on Sina Tech. The author learned the news from industry insiders and quoted quite some comments from CEO Huateng Ma (马化腾) of Tencent Inc.- the largest and most used Internet service portal in China with annual revenue of $520 MM in 2007, about this big bet action. Here is the summarized translation of the report.

Tencent Inc. (QQ.com) is building a 3,000-person search result editor team. The employees will be/are hired as engineers but in fact, their job nature is to edit search results of its search engine called SOSO (搜搜, means “search search” in Chinese) soso.com (which was launched in Dec. 2005).

CEO Huateng Ma (马化腾) didn’t comment on the size of the editor team directly, but compared with the practice in Korean search engine industry: “a 700-person search result editor team in Korea is very common.”

Ma continued to explain why “it is common”: “for example, 20 users might search one same key term, and what they need might be the same information in two paragraphs. But nobody locks the two paragraphs (on the top of search result thus enables a more efficient search for majority of users). So actually people want editing of search results.”

“Tencent is experimenting with ‘human+search’ model. In domestic market, Baidu Zhidao (百度知道) is a similar model, but its editor team is not strong enough.”

When continuing to compare SOSO with other human-powered search engines in Korea, Ma admitted that “one key reason that Korean local search engines beat Google and Yahoo to win the local market is that there are relatively less pages in Korean Internet (for Google and Yahoo to crawl). So I don’t know if human-powered search engine will be successful or not in China. I have a question mark for this model. But Tencent has a portal (qq.com), the edited search results are valuable to the portal anyway (so it worth a try).”

Other posts about Tencent (QQ.com) and SoSo here:

• Techcrunch: Soso.com partnered with Google
• Kaiser Kuo from Ogilvyy Digital Watch: Coin of the Realm, revisited
• Paul M. Denlinger from China Vortex: Understanding China’s Youth Through Tencent’s QQ: A New Must-Read Report

UPDATE Elliott: 4/14 made minor edits

After about two week at one of my newer gigs, the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall, I’ve a good idea what the average Chinese, born in the 1980s, uses on the Web. I also have an idea of what the more “internationalized” mainland surfer uses.

So, here’s what the Chinese Netizenry uses, Web 2.0-wise…

• Xiaonei: A lot.

The number one SNS in mainland China is not Facebook, but what they’ve resorted to calling “China’s Facebook”, with or without the controversial-it-may-be “copy” moniker.

Indeed, Xiaonei is all the rage. Its primary targets — students and white-collar workers — are pretty much the bulk of contacts for yours truly, which is why he’s in touch with 23 (and counting!) fellow uni and workplace colleagues.

There are other SNS networks around, such as Wealink and Hainei, but for David Feng, Xiaonei is the biggest mainland SNS on his radar right now. It’s just that he doesn’t check in all too often.

But a lot more these days.

• Facebook: Not everyone, but quite a few.

Facebook is home to more expats and folks outside China than mainland Chinese, mainly because of its interface, which is mainly English (although they’ve a Chinese translation underway), and because its servers are outside China. If you’ve known the Chinese Internet for any period of time, it’s strikingly similar to a massive intranet.

Facebook has a few of David’s friends. Mostly, they’re probably overseas Chinese or Chinese bloggers who’ve “made it” to the “big, outside World”. Not every Chinese blogger is there, but the “bigs” are almost guaranteed there.

• Twitter: “Internationalized” folks and the well-known (mostly).

Microblogging hasn’t taken off big-time in China (you’ll see that as we move on). Those tweeting along aren’t in China — yours truly is the obvious exception. Producing just under 500 tweets a week, David must be one of the more prolific tweeters around China — or in the Twittersphere (a guess only, though!).

Oddly eough, local services such as Jiwai.de or Fanfou are still pretty much “in the dark”. Few people I’ve spoken to are on those services — except for those I’ve met at Tweetups.

• LinkedIn: Expats only?

LinkedIn is very much “foreign language” in the Chinese Internet sphere, according to yours truly. He knows like about one or two mainland users on LinkedIn. And that’s about all.

Why? Language factor, servers outside nation, plus the “complexity” and “pro-ity” of the service are big bets here. Also, a lack of users from China — especially mainland users — make LinkedIn all that “new” and “strange” to locals.

I’ve also met very few mainlanders who use other services considered “pro-ish” such as Xing and Dopplr. It’s an odd, pro world here. Very few “compatriots”. All “expats”. Hmm…

• MSN (Windows Live Messenger): A lot.

On to more familiar territory, though: a lot of people use MSN (Windows Live Messenger). People who use MSN, though, are more likely to be people working at “white-collar enterprises”, be they at HP, Apple, or state-owned enterprises.

MSN is big. I’ve pretty much the bulk of my “recent contacts” on MSN. In fact, MSN is such a big part of Web life and real life (indeed!) that the China Merchants Bank released an MSN-themed credit card a few years ago.

• QQ: Just about everyone.

Finally, we move on to the very mundane. QQ is common currency in the Chinese Internet. Just about everyone I’ve met uses QQ, which finally also has an official Mac version.

QQ is big. QQ is like a Web republic in its own right. It uses QQ currency, gives you a QQ second life, and has a news center. QQ is “it” for a lot of people. It’s got everything they want.

QQ is probably less “biz” and more “life” as in MSN is thought more of belonging to office desk, while QQ is probably what romantic couples use at home (or even solo people!).

That’s pretty much a quickie intro based on what I’ve seen on the Chinese Web 2.0 scene. Note the presence of IM as a “1.0″ aspect. China is moving quickly to Web 2.0, but it’s not forgetting its 1.0 roots, either.

UPDATE 5/5:  CNBloggerCon 2008 Location and date has been decided!

Fellow CN Reviews blogger Min Guo (@grigo) tweeted me the poll for 2008’s CNBloggerCon location via @webleon (webleon.org) and @shizhao (talk.blogbus.com).

The tinyurl just goes to a Google Docs form:

What you see after you press the Submit button:

As you many know, I would love to attend part of the CNBloggerCon 2008. That’s why I blogged about CNBlogger 2007 here, here, and here.

The form also asks “Whom do you want to see on 4th CNBloggerCon?” I felt I needed to put something down so I wouldn’t be dismissed as a ‘bot. So I listed:

• Aether
• Isaac Mao
• Keso
• Carol: @thecarol
• Tangos and Luyi Chen
• Awflasher (covered in our post about the new generation of tech bloggers)
• Bruce Wang
• Wangjianshuo (the first commenter on this blog!)
• Rebecca MacKinnon
• Oiwen Lam
• Jeremy Goldkorn
• David Feng
• Christine Lu
• Livid (CN reviews Livid interview, and about the V23X shutdown)
• Xu Jinglei (why not?)
• Acosta
• Andrew, founder of 1kg.
• Feng37 (and his incredible liveblogging translation which I will rely on)

After all, Min had blogged about the top China bloggers (probably) and also who’s who in the CNBloggerCon-connected blogosphere. And Robert Scoble had also expressed interest in China. So I am already prepared with my list of who I want to see.

I know the intent is to rotate around all the major cities in China. That’s probably the right thing to do. But Shanghai and Beijing are always the most convenient for foreigners like me, even though I have a nice, available family apartment in Guangzhou should the CNBloggerCon be in GZ.

I went ahead and voted even though I’m not really part of the CNBloggerCon club! But its a pretty grassroots even so I hope they will be laid back about a foreigner crashing the party!

Who wants to go to CNBloggerCon? Who would you want to meet and talk with? Where should the conference be?

Here’s an inspiring slide show to get you excited:

| View | Upload your own

Warning: long post about my recent obsession (no, not the other one) with RMB appreciation. My other posts here and here.

Today, I exchanged USD to RMB at the rate of 6.9835. A milestone. It seems like just yesterday that I was calculating the rate at 8:1. (4/12 Update: on 4/3 I also made a deposit into my new FDIC insured RMB Everbank account and the rate was 6.9544.  According to Xinhua the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) set the central parity rate at 6.992.)

Here’s some more links on the subject of RMB appreciation and why it will likely continue. Here’s my quick summary:

• Foreign direct investment and hot money continues to flow in. This more than offsets the reduced trade surplus that results in an appreciated RMB. Therefore, China’s “monetary trap” will continue with the likelihood of a one-off maxi revaluation more likely.
• With a higher RMB, importers are winners, exporters are losers. In general, Chinese people should feel more wealthy, with international travel, foreign real estate, and study abroad less expensive in RMB terms.
• With a 15.6% increase in value since the peg was dropped in July 2005, China’s economy has miraculously offset that increase by generating over 20% productivity growth rate, and overall profit margins increasing from 3% to 6.5%, according to JP Morgan.
• RMB appreciation is a key weapon against inflation. But it is not the only tool. And even with the accelerating appreciation we’ve seen, it appears that inflation has not cooled and now is 13% annualized based on Q1 data.
• In fact, the RMB hasn’t really even appreciated against a trade-weighted basket of currencies. It has only appreciated because the US dollar has depreciated. So expect accelerating appreciation and increasing likelihood of a shocking one-time revaluation.

Michael Pettis: Money Keeps Pouring In

Pettis notes that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has increased substantially:

According to the numbers released today, FDI for the first quarter was $27.4 billion – nearly 73% more than the $15.9 billion recorded last year over the same period. So although the trade surplus declined by $4.7 billion, it was more than matched by the $11.5 billion increase in FDI

His argument is simple: even if RMB appreciation cools the trade surplus as one would expect, RMB appreciation is causing more FDI and “hot money inflows” to take the place. This further increases government USD reserves, and further accelerates what he calls “the monetary trap” that will lead inevitably to a large, maxi-revaluation of 15-20% to dramatically change investor expectations:

We are now caught in the most mechanical and frustrating part of the monetary trap in which China has been caught during the past five years. The trade surplus was the original driver of China’s out-of-control money growth, but by now the growth seems to have taken a life of its own as money piles into the country seeking to take advantage of the nearly-inevitable run-up in the value of the currency. Hu Xiaolan, the head of SAFE, said that SAFE and the Ministry of Commerce are going to investigate whether FDI has become a channel for hot money inflows. Hmmm, I wonder.

Pettis’ conclusion: a one-time maxi-revaluation of 15-20% is on its way.

ChinaStakes: April 10 report on the RMB exchange rate

ChinaStakes reports that on April 10 the RMB exchange rate to the USD dropped to 6.9920 and that RMB appreciation was “beginning to transform China from a labor power to a capital power.” This represents a 4.06% increase during Q1 2008.

What is amazing is that the RMB dollar peg of 8.28:1 was lifted July 2005, and that the total appreciation to date is 15.6%. So almost one-third of the appreciation has happened in just the last 3 months. If this isn’t accelerating RMB appreciation I don’t know what is!

Who are the winners as the RMB appreciates?

• companies that import raw materials, e.g. crude iron and ore
• companies that import high tech items, e.g. planes and capital machinery
• people who plan international travel or study abroad. (Min, Stanford is getting more and more affordable by the day!)
• people and companies who want to buy foreign real estate
• RMB denominated assets, such as China’s real estate and stock markets

Guardian.co.uk: China exporters feel pinch of rising yuan, costs

Who are the losers as the RMB appreciates?

Answer: export oriented Small and Medium Businesses.

The Guardian covers this:

Deutsche Bank analysts Jun Ma and Wenjie Lu project that 20% of “Up to 20 percent of low-end exporters could go belly-up this year as the harsher operating environment dissolves profits and demand slows in major markets such as the United States and Europe,” they said. “China’s export sector faces multiple shocks simultaneously this year. Many of these are unintended, but the magnitude of these shocks combined is stronger than we had expected,” they wrote in a recent report.

Small and Medium Businesses (SMB or SMEs) who are export oriented are the clear losers. In addition to having thin margins and competition, they are less familiar with hedging options, such as forwards contracts and options markets.

ChristineLu.com: Frank Gong, JP Morgan, at Harvard China Review Conference.

Christine Lu spoke at and blogged about the Harvard China Review Conference. She highlighed a video of Frank Gong, Managing director and China’s Chief Economist with JP Morgan Securities in Hong Kong. He framed the recent 5 year period as an incredible period of achievement in China that has allowed the government to allow the RMB to appreciate vs. the US dollar.

Here’s my summary of his points:

• The stereotype is that China is a “profitless growth story”
• During the last 5 years, that has not been the case.
• Return on Equity (ROE) in corporate sector has increased from 7 to 17%.
• Profit margins have also been rising
• Three years ago, export sector had only 3% profit margin.
• People believed that if the RMB appreciated by 3%, the export market would just go bust.
• When the peg was lifted, the first year saw only 2.1% revaluation.
• However, three years later, the RMB appreciated more than 15% vs. dollar.
• In 2008, the annualized rate of RMB appreciation is 15%, based on Q1 numbers.
• So what happened to export sector? Did they go bust?
• No. In fact, their profit margin is now 6.5% vs. 3.0% in the past.
• The export sector did not die, but became stronger with a stronger currency. They moved up the value chain and became more efficient.
• Same process has been shown with other developing countries like Japan
• For example, Japan was at 400 Yen to USD and now is 100 Y to USD.
• Even with this revaluation of the Yen, Japanese business has remained competitive.
• The same process happening to the chinese economy as companies are moving up to higher value-added work.
• What has powered this growth is 20% productivity growth rate during lats 5-7 years, the highest in the world.
• Labor cost has been rising over last 5 years. Wage growth up 10-12 %
• Oil and commodity prices also rising.
• In the face of all these changes, productivity growth has more than made up for this.

Michael Pettis: Inflation consensus inching higher

Inflation is still high in China, even with the increase in RMB. March appears to have a 8.3% year on year inflation rate. This means 13% annualized influation in Q1 2008, vs 9.2% annualized inflation rate in Q4.

Speaking of appreciation, today Zhu Baoliang, chief economist at the State Information Center, a think tank under the NRDC (China’s powerful planning agency), wrote an article in China Securities Journal, the official securities newspaper, saying that China had to speed up the rate of appreciation. He said this was needed to combat inflation. Interestingly enough the same newspaper had a front-page commentary arguing that China needed more than just currency appreciation to control inflation.

China Securities Journal is not the formal voice of government policy, but it does have the reputation of reflecting official opinion, so I assume that it must also be reflecting the ongoing debate about how aggressively the currency must be managed to deal with inflation. What does Mr. Zhu mean about a faster rate of appreciation? Since the RMB is already appreciating fairly quickly, I suppose it might be code for a one-off revaluation.

Fighting inflation is clearly a key reason why the monetary authorities need to keep driving the RMB up.

Brad Setser of RGE Monitor: Could a stronger RMB help limit food inflation in China?

Brad’s answer is yes: a stronger RMB could make food imports profitable, and that would cause domestic producers to lower prices.

Brad Setser: A RMB that isn’t appreciating cannot be killing you

Setser critiques a New York Times article entitled Seeing the Sights of Industrial China: 2 Factories, 2 Future. The article first profiles the Shanghai Jinjue Fashion Company and makes the point that low cost exporters are facing pressure because of the rising RMB. It then profiles ReneSola, a solar panel silicon wafer manufacturer. Chinese exporters believe they need to move up the value chain to survive in the face of increasing costs and RMB appreciation. ReneSola did just that and as a result claims that RMB increases resulted in “trivial” money lost.

Brad makes a simple point: the RMB is appreciating against the dollar, but is going down against the euro and yen. “It is basically flat against a trade-weighted currency basket.” And the RMB is down 4% versus the euro in Q1, according to the Wall Street Journal quoted in Setser’s post.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a brief post advising would-be entrepreneurs and business-owners looking to source from China to do their due diligence when using Alibaba to source products from Chinese suppliers. As Alibaba continues to ramp up its marketing and advertising efforts, I want to reiterate this advice.

I passed through Hong Kong’s international airport this past Monday, and was amused to find that Alibaba had blanketed the entire terminal with its advertising. Most prominent were the 16 massive banners (similar to the one pictured to the right) suspended from the ceiling across the entire reception area of the terminal. Each one featured a random “member” from some randomly significant country exclaiming how Alibaba helped them. Every one of them also “Thanks Alibaba.com!”

“Tushar, let me ask you: How do you find the ‘best quality suppliers’ when the suppliers can simply purchase their positive reputation on Alibaba?” (Note highlighted portions to the left)

Yes, let’s recommend TrustPass to ALL suppliers. That way, they will all appear to be more “reliable” and prospective buyers everywhere can rest at ease! Suppliers also get “Verified Company Status” as an extra!

Fantastic.

Oh, and just why is Alibaba on an advertising blitz, particularly in Hong Kong’s international airport?

Because the China Sourcing Fair will be held there between April 12-15 and 20-23. Not a bad idea to remind all those fair visitors that they didn’t really need to come to Hong Kong to find “the best quality suppliers.” They’re all on Alibaba.com already.

Thanks for the tip, Tushar.

More pictures: Terminal Left, Terminal Right, Tushar, Kenneth, Charles, and Eden.

Caught this GOOD Magazine feature by Thomas P.M. Barnett via China Law Blog and felt violently compelled to share this with as many people as possible. Sure, it doesn’t cover everything, but it should be a required reading for a basic foundation of non-idiocy for everyone (especially Americans) when it comes to understanding the relevance and importance of China. 

Put down your rifle (no offense, Mr. Heston), pick out another cold one, and get your read on:

10. Because Nixon went to China and your world was born.

9. Because China may be an ancient civilization, but it’s a young society that’s growing up very quickly-and unevenly.

8. Because China’s transformation echoes much of America’s past: not only the good, but plenty of the bad, and the ugly too.

7. Because China’s rapid and deep integration into manufacturing means that Chinese products permeate your life-at some risk.

6. Because China’s demand for resources is altering global markets in ways both profound and perverse.

5. Because the panda “huggers” versus “sluggers” debate is a lot of hot air-until Washington scares Beijing into raising your mortgage interest rate five points overnight.

4. Because as China builds out its infrastructure, it can set a good or a bad example to developing economies struggling to deal with fragile environments.

3. Because China is globalization’s general contractor: always happy to take the job and your money, but hard to get on the phone once you discover problems.

2. Because China will not be our biggest future enemy but our most important ally.

1. Because we’re less than five years from a new generation of Chinese leaders with whom a far stronger relationship may well be built.

I’m particularly amused that the list ends with something that could be construed as a point of hope.  

Talk about Tibet and Taiwan, as well as anything political, is off-limits to your fellow co-blogger — voluntarily, as politics and religion set (or could potentially set) more people off than anything. (It’s more about not making anyone ballistic than “creating a harmonious society”, as is the officialspeak here.) The bits and bobs of news we’ve been hearing lately, however, show that we’re probably a bit more informed about what happens outside our borders than — could it be — fellow folks State-side…?

No joke: the evening Network News Broadcast, available to the masses by both TV and radio every evening at 7 PM, contains 25 minutes of domestic officialspeak. In the last 5 minutes, however, you get the 5 minutes of news that matter. The co-hosts are seen less during the last 5 minutes: instead, seen more often are the likes of Bush, Her Majesty, and even planets outside our own Terra. Indeed, the final 5 minutes of news on China’s Central Television takes a look at the world outside mainland China. And sometimes, we get a quick report or two about new breakthroughs in technology, the discovery of a new planet, or maybe a yell-a-thon from Japan (yes, they do have that).

By contrast, when I was in San Francisco in 2006, I was treated to news on CNN about everything inside the US — a bit of Israel — and then, nothing. We’re not talking about the small bits and bobs like Switzerland Invents New Milka Chocolate Ad Slogan or North Korea Issues New Stamps To Commemorate National Day. Nope, we’re talking about big nations like China, India, or bigger parts of the world like Europe and Australia. I was shocked to see no coverage about China! (No surprise: I switched the TV off and got my updates from the Web instead.)

Come to think of it, this is supposed to be America, where “freedom of the press” and “news freedom” are common currency. We folks in China believe that the Americans should come to understand the World better, as they are more “free”. Instead, I was given the impression that the US is a country that locks itself inside its own frontiers, more than anything else — if that 15-minute report on CNN USA told me anything.

When people start locking themselves in, they start refusing different viewpoints — as in viewpoints of folks from other places or those with different opinions. This is nothing new to China: a self-locked China as late as the 1970s saw the nation way behind the Western World. No Jianwai SOHO then; nope, if you lock yourself in, you can’t move ahead.

This may seem a paradox indeed; folks in the Western world, often given to the fact that the Chinese are a “locked-in nation”, tend to have the misconception that China could care less about the outside World. In fact, international headliners are all the rage on Chinese media. Even the mouthpiece People’s Daily carry news about what’s happening outside national frontiers.

It’s time move beyond national frontiers and out into that great big World out there.

Excited and a bit humbled to be on the same page with all these China A-listers!

I was excited to hear that CN Reviews was featured on the new China.Alltop.com, a new blog aggregator created by Guy Kawasaki. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki, Christine Lu, and the Alltop editors.

So now we are on the same page as many of our blogosphere idols. This will force the humble CN Reviews blogging crew to continue to raise our game!

Six other China blogs that we recommend for your personal Alltop

It was hard to find blogs in my Google reader not already on Alltop. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, we wanted to share the love by mentioning six diverse blogs for you to consider on your own version of Alltop:

China Financial Markets

I’ve been increasing on edge about the global economy since the Bear Stearns meltdown, and Michael Pettis’ excellent blog has helped me make sense of it from China’s perspective. Michael is a professor at Peking University’s Guanghua school of Management. If you like Seeking Alpha, where Michael often posts, you’ll like China Financial Markets.

IfGoGo

IfGoGo was started by Aw Guo (郭启睿 Guo Qirui) who mainly blogs in Chinese at Awflasher. We first posted on Aw Guo and the new generation of Chinese blogosphere in December 2007. IfGoGo is a group blog by Chinese who choose to blog in English. Some of my favorite writers include Cat Chen, Lisa, Aw Guo himself, Gijo, and Chris Ding. The blog frequency is too low for my tastes, but I love connecting with “real” Chinese blogging in English. If you like Wangjianshuo, you’ll love IfGoGo.

Sinosplice

Sinosplice is written by John Pasden, who works at ChinesePod. It is lifestyle blog that covers interesting topics around language learning, linguistic and cultural differences, and travel. Having looked at other people’s blogrolls, it is no exaggeration to say that All Roads Lead to Sinosplice where the China expat blogosphere is concerned. If you like China but have “This is China moments”, you’ll love Sinosplice.

Thomas Crampton

Thomas covers technology, politics, media, and startups. He often has great video interviews of executives and entrepreneurs. His posts are more journalistic than personal. Based in Hong Kong, Thomas was a journalist for International Herald Tribune and New York Times. If you like Ogilvy Digital Watch, RConversation, and China Business Network shaken, not stirred, then help yourself to Thomas Crampton.

TechBlog86

Our own David Feng has his own technology centric blog, that takes over where CN.Blognation.com left off. David is a consummate blogger and journalist, who covers news fast and furious on both his Twitter stream and his various blogging projects. If you like China Web 2.0 Reviewand Pacific Epochbut at Twitterlike speed and brevity, you’ll like TechBlog86.

Violet Eclipse

Finally, one of my favorite expat bloggers is Meg Stivison, who also is a guest blogger here at CN Reviews. She first started blogging when she was at Yantai as a student, and now resides in Beijing with her boyfriend Stick. She writes about Beijing life, her work, and has a keen eye for cultural differences as a foreigner in China. In addition to our common interest in China, we also share a common interest in Azeroth! If you like Sinosplice, you’ll like Violet Eclipse.

There you have it. Elliott’s picks for his own china.alltop.com. What are some of your favorite undiscovered China bloggers?

Updated 4/11:  Dan Harris at China Law Blog offered the following four suggestions:

1. Absurdity, Allegory and China
2. China Bystander
3. Mutant Palm
4. The China Game

Thanks Dan!