Is China a copycat nation, or capable of true innovation? Is cheap labor a myth?  How do you retain staff in China?  These were just some of the topics addressed in an event called “China 2.0: New Rules, New Opportunities” in Silicon Valley, hosted by the Churchill Club and sponsored by Symbio.  (Disclosure: I was invited to the event by Symbio and they paid for my $70 ticket.) Speakers included Linda Chen (Partner, KPMG), Jacob Hsu (CEO, Symbio), Harry Shum (Corporate VP, Search Development; Microsoft), and Lip-Bu Tan (President & CEO, Cadence Design Systems, Inc.) (Note: post is draft, I will add links to this post later today)

The event was moderated by Robin Chan (Founder/CEO of XPD Media, a social gaming company) and Robin asked the panelists to comment on several commonly held views about China, and whether these views were “myth or reality”.  Some of these questions include:

• Is China capable of innovation, or is it a copycat business and technology culture?
• Is China’s proposition the easy availability of cheap labor?
• Is China going to take over the world?
• Does China seek more Foreign Direct Investment?

I’ll cover some of what I heard in 2 parts.  Part 1 is below, and Part 2 is here.

Copycat Nation or True Innovation?

The common Western narrative of China is of  a country whose businesses unfairly compete by stealing intellectual property from others and making money off of copycat technology.  While undoubtedly a large amount of IP theft does happen in China, its hard to believe that anyone can look at China and not see innovation everywhere.  I’ve noticed that this question of innovation in China comes up often among Western observers of China.  Why?  Do we feel that the playing field is unfair?  Are we in the U.S. desperately looking for signs of an enduring competitive advantage even as we’ve shipped our entire manufacturing base overseas?  I’m not sure, but the topic sure comes up a lot.

Yes, China can innovate, but what kind of innovation? Jacob Hsu (Symbio) remarked that in Silicon Valley, investors and entrepreneurs are looking for “business model” innovation, which I interpreted to mean a new product that creates new markets.  He characterized  Chinese innovation as mostly incremental “technology” innovation in the past, but that increasing we were seeing highly innovative companies emerge, such as Tencent.  He also highlighted the phenomenon of “shanzhai” as an example of innovation on a much smaller scale.  The “shanzhai” consumer electronics economy in China is rapidly creating next generation connected devices out of laptop and mobile phone components, and that in most cases the minimum scale required to produce these units can be as small as a few hundred units to make money.

Conventional wisdom equates intellectual property protection with innovation.  But the “shanzhai” phenomenon challenges this idea.  Could the lack of intellectual property protection create opportunities to remix, modify and mashup existing technology that creates an “innovation capability” for China’s entrepreneurs even as the lack of IP protection prevents them from fully capitalizing on their successes (because the next guy will just rip them off)?

In this environment, is Open Source and Creative Commons a logical next step in creating a framework for rights that rewards creators by creating an orderly way for derivative works to be created, since they will be anyway?

Cheap labor is a myth (at least in software development)

The panelists generally agreed that the perception of China as a cheap labor destination is wrong, at least in the fields of software, semiconductor, and professional services.  According to Jacob Hsu, “if you are going to China for labor cost arbitrage, you are missing the point.”  I found it surprising that the CEO of a software outsourcing company would say this, because if cost is not a relevant factor, then why put up with the built-in inefficiencies of offshoring at all?  And yet Indian IT firms are also rapidly entering China to set-up their own China operations, to serve both the domestic China market and the global software outsourcing market.

Symbio shared that they are increasingly staffing in Chengdu and Hangzhou, cities with great universities, much lower staff turnover and lower labor costs than Beijing and Shanghai.  Earlier this year, while sipping coffee at the Beijing Wanda Starbucks, my friend and China business consultant Paul Denlinger put it even more strongly to me: “If you [a technology company] plan on coming to China, for heavens sake don’t ever come to Beijing or Shanghai!”  He then proceeded to regale us with tales of how aggressive Wuxi municipal authorities were about attracting software outsourcing.  Of course, the punchline on the joke is you have to live and work in Wuxi, a far cry from life within 5 km of that very same Wanda Starbucks (or life within 5 km of Wudaokou and Tsinghua, for that matter).  Here again, the conventional wisdom of 5-10 years ago (Beijing is the IT center; Shanghai is the business center) is being challenged by upstart second-tier cities with elite universities and hungry government leaders.  Looking forward 5-10 years, it appears that unless you have a special reason for locating in Shanghai or Beijing, you need to look seriously at other options where staff retention is easier and labor costs lower.

Cost advantages further eroded by high cost of senior people and “always having a Plan B”

Harry Shum (Microsoft) was one of the founding members of Microsoft Research China and spent 9 years there as a research before moving back to the US.  He shared that while junior talent was abundant, senior managers can command international level of pay.  His strategy for retention of staff in China (or at least in Beijing) was refreshingly simple: overpay people!  What initially appears to be low labor costs in China can carry many hidden costs that erode your cost advantage.

Lip-Bu Tan touched on an interesting point during this discussion: you “always have to have a Plan B.”  What if your General Manager leaves?  What if your HR Director leaves?  What if the entire leadership team leaves?  What if all your servers walk off?  Because of unpredictable legal recourse, wage inflation, shortage of middle managers, and unsophisticated employees willing to jump ship for an incremental RMB500/month, your plan requires a greater degree of redundancy than you might have in a more stable, developed Western country.  I see this as a *huge* area of hidden cost for operating in China.

Retaining key staff through rewards on the one hand, and guilt on the other hand

How do you keep key staff?  Harry Shum said that Microsoft simply tries to “overpay people” but that often, this compensation is not purely monetary.  It can be in the form of the work challenges, the career opportunities, and other non-monetary factors.  Lip-Bu Tan characterized his strategy as more guilt-based!  Let top people recruit their own lieutenants, help cultivate a “family-like” team dynamic among their staff, and use guilt to prevent them from leaving this team behind if they jump ship.  This strategy makes sense, as long as the whole family doesn’t jump ship when the leader does!

Be prepared to invest in training and development

Robin Chan pressed the panelists to come up with mistakes they made and what they would do differently the second time around.  Harry Shum spoke very positively of his experience as a founding team member of Microsoft Research China (now Microsoft Research Asia).  What is most encouraging about China is the education and talent coming out of elite universities like Tsinghua, who is a partner with Microsoft.  The challenge is providing the training and development to morph that raw talent into world-class researchers and mid-level managers of researchers.  Harry said he underestimated the time required for local researchers to “grow up” into the mid-level and high-level research leaders that he expected.  Microsoft has had to import more foreign-trained (particularly US trained) research talent to work within the organization.   KPMG’s Linda Chen also reiterated the need to invest in training and development in local staff as a key factor to their growth.

So Why Staff in China?  Because for most global enterprises, China cannot be ignored

Lip-Bu Tan stated several times, China is so important, it is impossible to ignore.  Jacob Hsu highlighted the increasing cost of entry, and the need for a long term commitment to the China market in order to be successful in China.  My takeaway is that companies that have global aspirations and either seek to ultimately have a presense in China, or hope to be a global innovation leader, must factor China into their plans.  The advice from the panel is:  prepare to put your best people, your best technologies, and your best products against the opportunity in China or else you will fail.

I’m interested in hearing reader’s comments on these points.  I’m sure many of them can be debated and are highly situational to the challenges that Symbio, Microsoft, KPMC, and Cadence face.  Where is their advice and perspective simply not true in today’s China?

More to come in Part 2.

Photo credit : CNReviews under CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0

Post from: CN Reviews

China 2010: Innovation, Copycats, Cheap Labor, Staffing Challenges

It was in this knowledge gap that we saw an opportunity.  Unlike most developed nations, China has very little open source information.  Paying for traditional market research and consulting is expensive and the quality varies greatly.  Qualitative data is often inaccurate (simply completely made up) and more importantly qualitative analysis is disconnected from reality.  Over many long lunches and teatime brainstorming sessions, we came to the conclusion that the required information was not only offline, but still internalized by experts and industry practitioners.

In our day jobs and through personal networks we often received requests for assistance in understanding China or executing projects locally (those “hey, I know someone in China” sort of introductions).  What we lacked was a convenient, low-cost way to get market feedback.  While a lot is written on the importance of “guanxi” in China, most of it misses the point.  I can tell you that starting a business here today is not about bribing government officials and shady back alley deals.  If it were that easy everyone would be doing it. Guanxi is the friendly currency of favors, invested over dinners and trust-building exercises and spent in return for connections and assistance. To me, strong guanxi means having the ability to call someone who knows someone who knows the answer.

For foreigners and locals alike, “research” means talking with experienced people in the industry.  Understanding the complexities of the Chinese markets (China is certainly far from uniform) and staying ahead of the competition remain the largest challenges.  But everyone’s personal guanxi is limited and repeatedly asking personal connections to help others without compensation isn’t fair.  BloggerInsight was founded with the idea of closing the knowledge gap by using crowdsourcing to democratize market intelligence in China, connecting companies and experts online.  We use Chinese bloggers because they cover so many facets of life and their blog allows us to qualify their expertise.  What started as our own personal guanxi has ballooned into a full network of authoritative experts who specialize on their unique areas of expertise that we target based on their past performance.  As a platform BloggerInsight controls quality and works to build trust with both bloggers and clients.

Since launching in October 2008, we’ve been fortunate to grow quickly.  As entrepreneurs we chose to execute the BloggerInsight concept over all other competing ideas for two main reasons. First we felt the service was very practical; it filled a need we had ourselves.  Second, and this has become increasingly important given the current worldwide financial situation and troubles companies face fundraising, the business model generated cash flow from the very start. There’s a rule of thumb in startups that everything will take twice as long and cost twice as much as anticipated.  This was at least half true with our development taking much more time and energy than originally anticipated.  Finding reliable Chinese hosting providers, registering for ICP licenses and jumping through legal hopes is not my favorite part of running a company.  Main takeaways from our pre-launch period were:

• Bootstrapping shouldn’t mean skimping – Find people, quality people, with experience doing exactly what you want and pay them what’s needed to do the job well.
• Try before committing – It is true that working long hours in a startup is similar to marriage (or so I’ve heard as a bachelor).  I certainly spend way more time with my coworkers than my friends.  Luckily there’s overlap here.
• Nothing is impossible, it just takes time and patience – Learning “on the fly” is absolutely necessary and everyday is a challenge but baby steps turn into real progress.

Since launching in October at the CNBloggerCon in Guangzhou, our platform has grown to include hundreds of bloggers.  They continually impress me with their knowledge and critical thinking.  Each individual approaches problems from a unique angle but brings an open mind and constructive criticism.  As founders, our challenges have quickly changed from finding enough qualified experts to complete case studies to limiting the number of responses to avoid overwhelming clients.  We’ve learned how to shape the questions we ask and information we present to more accurately help customers make decisions and solve problems.

By connecting clients and expert bloggers, BloggerInsight hopes to fundamentally alter the economics of information and lower the barriers to success.  In doing so, we hope to reward new media for it’s independent voice.  Finally, entrepreneurs and businesses have access to high quality qualitative market intelligence in China at reasonable prices.

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to share my experiences here on CNReviews, BloggerInsight will be contributing more in the coming months with mini-case studies, translated Chinese blog posts and personal experience. We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas as well, I hope CNReviews can continue to be a place to share and connect with others.

BloggerInsight founders Lucas Englehardt and Xue Ying will be regularly guest-posting on CNReviews over the upcoming months, sharing with CNR readers some interesting insights their army of expert Chinese bloggers from various fields have on modern China. Have a topic about China you’d like to ask them? Take this opportunity to suggest some questions in the comments below.

Post from: CN Reviews

China’s Knowledge Vacuum & Founding BloggerInsight

Gabriel Monroe, 2006 Chili King of Beijing (Credit: the Beijinger Magazine on Flickr)

If you’re an expat in China, how many local Chinese friends do you honestly have?

I’m not talking about your co-worker or the neighbor you might occasionally wave “hello” to. Moreover, I’m definitely not talking about that one Chinese person you keep on your phone whenever you need help dealing with China’s authorities and the bureaucratic formalities of your stay here.

I’m talking about a real friend, someone you genuinely respect and regard as your equal. This is someone you talk with and listen to, not someone you talk to and get answers from. You don’t just share common interests, you pursue these interests together. I’m talking about that person whom you like, associate with, or even envy because of who they are and not what they can do for you. Someone you’d invite to your wedding and seat them near the front because you’d actually care to talk to them on your big day.

How many do you have?

If I told you exotic Chinese bed-buddies, mistresses, girlfriends, or wives don’t count, how many then?

How often do you guys hang out?

Relative to how often you hang out with those of your own “kind”?

I see a lot of foreigners in China who more or less only surround themselves with other foreigners. This is particularly true when you go out for a night on the town, where the closest thing to cross-cultural socializing is usually foreign men hitting on, er, “upwardly aspirational” Chinese girls. I’m not just talking about white men either.

Oh, I know foreigners and local Chinese tend to gravitate towards different places when it comes to nightlife and socializing. I know much of it has to do with differences in what they can afford and what sort of social environment they prefer. I know there are plenty of other reasons as well, and plenty of exceptions too.

But just how well are you integrating into this country and the people of this society? Just how well are you identifying with them and understanding them, as people who despite such extreme differences in background and upbringing, still feel the same basic emotions? Or are you separate and removed from them? Isolated? Do you see them as people you can learn from or people who should learn from you? Are they background noise to you? Obstacles in your way? The uncouth natives that would be too politically incorrect to wish they were either more like you or just weren’t there?

Yes, it is true, the Chinese diaspora doesn’t do a good job of integrating with their adopted countries either, shacking themselves up in their Chinese communities and surrounding themselves with other Chinese immigrants so they can all speak Chinese with each other. Yes, that’s pretty much true for many expats or immigrants of any ethnic group. So, hey, what’s wrong with Westerners doing likewise, socializing and fraternizing with only the people they most comfortably identify and can communicate with? Why should you break your comfort zone just because you’re in China? What makes the Chinese people so much more deserving of you going out of your way bridging culture and language gaps in hopes of establishing more meaningful friendships?

Absolutely nothing.

You don’t have to and there’s no real objective reason you should. There’s just a lot of other people with their own values and interests telling you to be more like them. The truth is that it is your life and your choice. You may, however, want to reflect upon what your original goals were for coming to China in the first place. You may want to ask yourself whether your lifestyle decisions are helping you reach those goals. Are you satisfied with your life here in China? Are you happy? If you’re not, why are you still here?

You should only do what matters to you. Others will just have to accept what matters to you based upon what you do.

What do you think? Is there an objective reason expats or foreigners should strive to make real meaningful friendships with local Chinese while they’re in China?

Post from: CN Reviews

Expats In China Don’t Need To Make Chinese Friends

Quintet Shanghai courtyard

Quick Summary

Quintet Shanghai is a 5 room bed and breakfast in the center of the French Concession in Shanghai at Changshu Lu and Changle Lu. Fay Yen, the owner and “innkeeper”, makes your stay feel more like a stay at a local friend’s nicely appointed home, and she provides advice that is superior to what you would get at most hotel’s concierge desks.  The rooms are very tastefully decorated, with amenities like an in-room safe, boutique soaps and shampoos, and fluffy towels.  The only potential complaint is that the building is a typical, renovated older French Concession building and the walls and windows don’t provide the same sound insulation you would get in a high-rise 5* hotel building.  Rack rates range from RMB800 – RMB1100.  I recommend this B&B for a romantic getaway, a business trip that doesn’t require a business center or conference room.  I don’t recommend this B&B for families, for elderly people (it is a walk-up building without an elevator), or for sound-sensitive people who require an absolutely quiet hotel room.

Basic Information

Quintet Shanghai Bed and Breakfast – http://www.quintet-shanghai.com/

Address: 上海市静安区长乐路808号 – 808 Changle Road (near Changshu Road) – Maps & Directions

Inquire about rates and availability

How I found Quintet Shanghai

In Shanghai, I’ve stayed at a variety of hotels at various prices and quality:  St. Regis Pudong, Hongqiao State Guest House, JC Mandarin, Hengshan Picardie Hotel, Central View Suites, Asset Hotel, Tianci Service Apartment, Tianping Hotel, and others I’ve probably forgotten about.  But recently, I’ve mostly stayed in a Shanghai room rental arrangement through Fay’s Rooms, who has an informal room network in Shanghai.  And at around RMB250-300, it fits my entrepreneur budget and desire to localize my cost perspective in China rather than act like a wasteful tourist.  I usually stay at Fay’s Manhattan Place apartment at Xikang Lu and Xinzha Lu, walking distance to Plaza 66, CITIC, the Portman Ritz Carlton, and the area of Nanjing West Road where I invariably end up having meetings.

I was devastated to find out that my apartment was rented this last trip.  Somehow, after having stayed at the apartment several times a year, I had built up a sense of entitlement to the apartment, and the familiarity it imparted to my visits.

After lengthy negotiations where I pretended to be an indigent blogger, I convinced Fay to give me a discounted rate in return for free business advice (ha)  and pimping out my blog by writing this blog post. (Yes, that’s my disclosure!)

Location: 808 Changle Road near Changshu is a pretty ideal

Address: 上海市静安区长乐路161号 – 808 Changle Road (near Changshu Road)

I am very particular about location.  I like to have easy access to Line 2 Metro in case I have to go to Pudong.  I find that people like setting up meetings near Nanjing West Road.  With easy walking distance to Jing’an Temple station, and walking distance to Line 1 Metro and Huaihai Central Road, I found the 808 Changle Road location to be pretty ideal for a short trip.  The only criticism is that it feels like a very “Westernized” area of Shanghai…and is much less “local” than Xujiahui or other less touristy areas.

Here’s where it is on a map:

And Quintet Shanghai on Google Maps (larger map).

Neighborhood amenities

When you arrive, Fay will provide you with an exceptional handout with addresses in Chinese and English, to help you get to the places, restaurants and attractions that you want to go to.  On her website, she also has a great French Concession Neighborhood Map with a list of her recommended local restaurants and other amenities.

Private, hidden entrance

Unlike most hotels, Quintet Bed and Breakfast is hidden from the street.  Here is a picture of the street and the front door:

Closed Door: Exclusive, private restaurant in the lobby.

On the ground floor, is a reservation-only restaurant called the Closed Door.  Shanghaiist gave it this review:

Kelley Lee and Eduardo Vargas have teamed up again to give us Closed Door. Well, not exactly all of us. Their new little wine bar and Italian restaurant is willing to share its coziness with only those who call ahead and reserve a table at this purposefully tiny and hidden place. And they seem pretty serious about this initial round of exclusivity; prospective diners are queried first through a sliding peep-hole in their large, inconspicuous front gate….Closed Door – 808 Changle Lu near Changshu Lu (常乐路808号近常熟路) Tel: 6248-0098, Prices: 40-80 RMB for starters, 80-120 RMB for mains

SmartShanghai also has a review for the Closed Door.

This is exactly how you would approach the Quintet Shanghai as well.  Here’s some photos of the Closed Door restaurant/bar:

Room Details – Fleur de Shanghai

Fay gave me the room called Fleur de Shanghai. The room was small but charming.  I did not have one “you just don’t get it” experience where I felt that the hotel designers, the hotel, or the housekeeping staff didn’t conceptualize what Westerners wanted in a hotel room.  Fay shared that she has a 100-point checklist that her staff follows when making up the room, and they are fined 1 RMB when she finds something wrong.

Here are some pictures of the room:

Desk:

A great amenity you don’t always get at budget hotels:  an in-room safe.

Bathroom Details

What you see out the window in the front.

The glass building to the right of the picture is called The Center at 989 Changle Road which is a very prominent high-rise in the middle of older low-rise buildings.

More of my pictures are on flickr tagged quintetshanghai.

Summary

I’ve stayed at two other hotels that are around the 800 RMB price point.  The Hengshan Picardie Hotel is newly renovated and has some very nice rooms for the price, and is located on Hengshan Road and Xujiahui Park.  The location is less convenient but still close to Line 1 Metro, and close to Xujiahui which has a much more “authentic” Shanghai feel (and more Chinese food options).  However, it is a traditional business hotel and lacks the personal touch that Fay provides.  If you want to stay near Nanjing West Road, I’ve stayed at the Central View Suites which is walking distance to Plaza 66 and CITIC.  However, both of these quite acceptable hotels lack the creative feel, the personal concierge/innkeeper service, and the sense of “belonging” in Shanghai that you get by staying at Quintet Shanghai.  So if you don’t mind the level of street noise that you would get living in a renovated historic building or someone’s home, Quintet Shanghai is a great place to get a deeper experience of Shanghai and a much more memorable travel experience whether you are traveling for vacation or business.  I highly recommend this to visitors to Shanghai!  You will not regret passing up a generic Western business hotel (that could cost you RMB2000+) or a generic 5* Chinese business hotel (that could cost you RMB800-1200).

Post from: CN Reviews

Quintet Shanghai Bed & Breakfast Review

ChinaGeeks first caught my attention about a month ago when Charles Custer, the founder, sparred with the notable but wily Chinese blogger Hecaitou over the issue of Racism in China. I’ve been subscribed to their RSS feed ever since, impressed with the excellent writing and insights they’ve offered on China, though the relatively young English blog about China has been publishing since early January. Earlier today, I had a chance to interview Charles and ask him to tell us a little more about ChinaGeeks and his thoughts on China and living in China.

The Blogger

CNReviews: So tell us, just what the hell were you doing at Little Bighorn?

Charles Custer: Oh, you know, just looking at the scenery and stuff. I had no idea there would be so many indians there. (Actually, I’m not related, or so my parents claim.)

CNR: It wasn’t until today that I learned that the “C” in “C. Custer” stood for Charles. Tell us a little bit about who you are, where you’re from, and what you do.

Custer: Well, if it isnt obvious from the site, I’m American, born and raised in New England. In college, I studied China quite extensively. My major was East Asian Studies with a focus on China, and during my time there I set departmental records for the most courses taken in-department, etc. Now I’m teaching English in Harbin, as well as pursuing some other side projects. The blog is one of them, of course; I’m also, believe it or not, an underground hip-hop artist with three albums under my belt, currently working on my fourth and firth. I’m headed back to the States for the summer at least, but my long term plans are…well, let’s call it “up in the air”. Either way, the blog is here to stay for quite a while, I think.

The Blog

CNR: The About page for ChinaGeeks gives a fairly typical explanation of wanting to provide articles, original essays, translations, news, and relevant links about China, and creating a community of English-speaking people interested in China, you know, so you can all have conversations and stuff. What about your personal or professional reasons for starting ChinaGeeks? Do you have ambitions for turning this into a profitable venture or building up your own reputation? Where do you see ChinaGeeks heading?

Custer: Well, the idea of ChinaGeeks as a blog actually came about just as an anchor for selling t-shirts with Chinese on them. You probably haven’t noticed — no one has — but there is a store on the site that currently sells one t-shirt, with an excerpt from one of my favorite Lu Xun stories printed on it.

The reason you probably haven’t noticed that is that I stopped caring about it fairly quickly when I realized that the blog part of the site, originally intended as sort of a sidenote, was a lot more fun than the main part. In fact, it’s a lot more fun than my actual job. So I started posting a bit more frequently and a bit more seriously. Roland Soong once said about ESWN that the blog was just a way for him to learn more about China, and really, ChinaGeeks is doing the same thing for me now. When you first come to China you’re learning something new, ten new things every day, but eventually that slows down and as life became “normal” again for me I was looking for a way to dig deeper into things without constantly harassing my Chinese friends about politics and culture. I quickly realized the blog did that for me, too.

I do intend to go to graduate school and continue my study of China, probably studying modern Chinese history, and I don’t deny that having a blog like this might help somewhat on that front, but that wasn’t the reason for starting it, and I wouldn’t bother to keep posting every day if all it was was a bullet point for the resume.

In the future, I guess I do have some ideas. I’d like a few more contributors, as having Chris Hearne on the team has worked out tremendously well, and given my other projects and, you know, real job, I don’t always have the time to write a post. (Or review things as carefully as I should, see the recent post about Zhejiang University girl I translated from Hecaitou’s site but completely missed his follow up post about how the whole thing was a hoax). So having more people — reliable, talented people like Chris, who I can pretty much just ignore and be sure they’re going to bring great stuff to the table — is one thing I hope for. I guess I’d love to see some way to make some money off the site too, whether it be through advertisements or selling t-shirts or whatever, but that isn’t really a priority at the moment. I’m willing to pay what I currently pay in hosting costs out of pocket because I enjoy running the blog. If our traffic goes up to the point where I need to buy more expensive hosting, at that point I might be a bit more concerned.

I really do want to build a community though, something like what chinaSMACK has managed to do but, you know, a bit more focused on real issues and less on internet memes (not that I don’t love the internet stuff, but that’s their niche and they do it better than I ever could). You may have noticed, I just added some stuff yesterday, or maybe the day before, so that readers can rate posts and comments. We’re also going to try to end most of our posts with discussion questions of a sort, to encourage commenting, which is something your site does too, and which I’ve seen applied to great effect on one of my favorite blogs, Kotaku. (They cover video games, not China, but they regularly ask for readers input if the post is suitable for it, and it seems to work very well for them. It’s one of the only blogs I’m actually registered to comment on, and the reason is that after a long time as a reader-only, I saw a question that really appealed to me and threw in my two cents. Hopefully, we can get a few more people to comment on our site in that way, as well).

CNR: What are the difficulties or challenges you’ve faced or still face as you build up ChinaGeeks? How did you overcome them or how are you trying to overcome them?

Custer: Well, the first difficulty is obviously getting people to read it. You can write as well as you like, but if no one is coming to your site, what’s the point? Early on, I’d say the first twenty posts or so, we had a readership of pretty much nobody. Overcoming that was mostly just a matter of linking other sites (and commenting there) so that our link was around the “China blogosphere” (I hate that word), and ensuring that we weren’t just writing the same stuff as everyone else, so that people had a reason to keep coming back. We were lucky (or Roland Soong was nice), and got some links from ESWN fairly early on, which helped traffic, and then the Hecaitou thing, Chris’s English teacher scandal post, and recently the Zhejiang girl post, have all directed large amounts of traffic our way; some of which hopefully stays. Obviously we’re always trying to increase traffic, but at this point, we’re just trying to do that through good posts. If we post something worth reading, “big” blogs link it.

The other difficulty is just finding stuff to write about and doing a good job with it every day, or as close to that as we can get. Being a new blog, we can’t really get away with taking a break, nor can we get away with posting crap. But since I have other stuff to work on as well, it can be difficult to maintain that schedule and also maintain quality. Especially if we’re translating something. My Chinese is OK, but it isn’t perfect; I’m certainly not at the level of a professional translator so translating things takes me a while and is sometimes pretty difficult. As you can readily see, sometimes this problem is evident in the results and sometimes it isn’t. Hopefully, I’m getting better at this as we go along, but I’ve really never done anything like this before (it’s certainly a far cry from academic writing about China), so who knows.

CNR: I know this is something of a trite question but, what has been a post, or perhaps a turning point, that has been significant to you with regards to ChinaGeeks?

Custer: Well, obviously the “Racism in China” post and the follow-up to it were huge, although I genuinely didn’t expect that to explode the way it did, because I didn’t realize how Chinese people were going to interpret the word “racism“. We got a lot of traffic, but what was more significant to me was that it gave me an opportunity, and our commenters an opportunity, to actually interact with the Chinese language blogging community, which I thought was really cool. It wasn’t always the prettiest discussion, granted, but I certainly learned something from it, and I think other people probably did too. I still agree with everything I wrote in the original and follow up posts, but through email correspondence with hecaitou and reading the comments, etc., I do feel I understand their side better. And really, that’s the point of all this, right? Understanding?

So that was one post, or one moment where I realized that something could really come of this beyond it just being a way for me to to force myself to read China news every day.

CNR: I know you’re always looking for good writers to contribute to ChinaGeeks and one of your contributors is a certain Chris Hearne. Do you have any other contributors I’m missing? Would you like to take this opportunity to tell Chris or your other contirbutors how much you appreciate them or how many children you’ll bear them?

Custer: I will have as many children as Chris wants, and stay at home cooking and cleaning up after them until they’re in college. Seriously, he’s been a huge help. He seems to have an innate ability to post something right when I’m sitting down at the computer thinking “Crap, I’m exhuasted, I just want to watch some TV but we really need a new post.” Suddenly, Chris posts something, and I go sit on the couch. It’s great. The fact that what he posts is always, always excellent is just icing on the cake, really.

We don’t have any other contributors yet. We do have a graphics guy, kind of, but he’s so busy with his real job that, thus far, all the graphics and web design have been done by me. But I really don’t know what I’m doing. Help!

Advice, Insights, and Recommendations

CNR: I presume you’re an expat living in China so you’d definitely have plenty of genuine first-hand experience with Chinese people, society, and culture. What are are your top three pearls of wisdom or pieces of advice you’d like anyone living in China or thinking of coming to China to heed?

Custer: Well, whatever you expect coming in, just forget about it. If you’re coming from the West, and haven’t traveled much before (when I first came to China it was also my first time abroad), I think it’s better not to have expectations one way or the other. That leads right into my second piece of advice, which is keep your mouth shut for the first month or so. Meet people, ask questions, watch life unfold around you, but refrain from offering up any platitudes about “what China is like” or “what Chinese people are like”. The third one, I guess, would be keep an open mind. As I’m learning from the blog, even when your everyday life has become “normal” and China as a place to live doesn’t really surprise you, there’s lots more to learn. Just like the language, studying China is a lifetime endeavor, not something you can ever “finish”.

Oh, and also, learn Chinese.

CNR: As a China observer, and at the risk of oversimplifying what is undoubtedly a huge topic, what is the most poignant issue that you see with regards to China or the Chinese?

Custer: Well, that’s an impossible question, so I’ll give you an equally huge answer: the future. I think what everyone is concerned with is where China is going. Some Chinese bloggers want to approach that issue through corruption, English bloggers want to approach it through talking about dissidents and human rights and Tibet or whatever else, but the question we’re all hammering away at from our own angles is, where is China going.

One thing I’m very interested in, and this probably isn’t the most poignant issue or anything, is international communication and understanding. Chinese people get angry when Westerners start protesting Chinese “internal” issues, but as I see it, the international attention is something that comes with being a superpower. It’s unavoidable. So the question then becomes, how is China going to address and interact with the international community. There are people who want to just ignore it, but the government seems like they’re working to address it in their own (perhaps misguided) way. Just as a foreigner living in (and interested in) China, that’s one issue that’s interesting to me. But I don’t know if it’s the most poignant issue.

CNR: As an up-and-coming English China blogger, how do you feel about the English China blogosphere? Any observations, criticisms, or…challenges?

Custer: I think overall it’s pretty good. I think the criticism everyone has, and that I would even level at my own blog, is that too often we don’t have any real interaction with Chinese netizens or the Chinese blogging community. We address an issue or we translate a post and say “here” and we discuss it amongst ourselves, and it ends there. That’s another thing I’m going to try to work on in the future: developing connections with some of these bloggers I translate, to deepen the level of analysis and broaden the spectrum of opinions being represented. That’s also why we stole chinaSMACK’s comment-translating idea. If you look at Danwei, arguably the most respected English language China blog out there, that’s one of the things they offer that no one else really does. If a Chinese blogger says something interesting, they might translate it, but they also might call him up and interview him, or ask him to clarify a point or something.

Developing sources, calling people and interviewing them, these are the sorts of things professional journalists do, but — as lots of people have noted recently — the amount of good, professional English language journalism on China at the moment is sparse, and with the economy as it is, very few media outlets are in a position to increase their overseas correspondents, so to some extent that may be up to us amateurs. But generally speaking, I’ve been really impressed with the stuff I see on a lot of other China blogs, and the quality is really only getting better as time goes on.

CNR: Finally, and without sounding like a sycophant, what are your favorite English China websites that you both regularly read and strongly recommend to any person interested in China or the Chinese?

Custer: Well, the long answer is here, at our recommended readings list. Believe it or not, I check every one of those blogs more or less every day, and I think they’re all worth it, although some of them don’t update that frequently. (They’re not in any order except the order I discovered them in, more or less). If you want more specific recommendations than that — and that’s a lot of China for most people to absorb every day — I do have my own favorites, I guess. ESWN is, obviously, essential. Everyone says so, and there’s a reason. Shanghaiist is good for a quick fix because they update more frequently than anyone else, but it’s probably more useful to people who live in Shanghai than it is to me. All the “professional” blogs (Evan Osnos, James Fallows, the TIME and WSJ blogs, etc.) are worth checking just because these are people who are working on China more or less full time, and are apt to have connections and access the rest of us don’t. Granite Studio and the Useless Tree are favorites of mine because they appeal to my academic interests somewhat, but that’s probably more personal, some people might not like them as much. Really, all of these blogs are worthwhile, I think, and with China blogs especially it’s better to check a bunch of them then just check one. Danwei is great and a few years ago they were more or less all I read, but there’s interesting stuff they miss that you (CNReviews) catch, or that ESWN catches, or Black Cat catches, or whatever, and all of that is important. So, in conclusion, read everything!

For more creamy Custer goodness, check out his music at Sun Zoo or read his insights at ChinaGeeks.

Post from: CN Reviews

Charles Custer: Underground Hip Hop Artist & ChinaGeeks Founder

Bottom Line: Yes, Chinese people discriminate too.

No big surprise there. Look, racism is just a form of discrimination, and like every country, society, and people, many Chinese can and do discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, or skin color. They will do it for mundane things and they can do it for more important things. They may stand a bit further away from you on the bus or they may hire someone else over you. It happens.

Like you and I, some people’s racism will be glaringly obvious while others will hide it really well, when they can’t control it. We can discuss the reasons behind it in Chinese society or compare them to examples in other societies all day long and it won’t change the simple fact that the phenomenon exists. It’s human and they’re human too. It sucks…but a lot of things in life suck.

But why won’t many Chinese admit it?

Don’t get hung up on the vocabulary…

Forget the word “racism” or “racist” for a moment. Give them the benefit of the doubt. No one said cross-cultural communications would be easy, and the first thing that comes to your mind may not be the first thing that comes to their minds. More importantly, the vocabulary matters much less than you two understanding each other and what you’re each trying to say.

If you want to have a conversation on the subject (or any contentious subject for that matter), start with these two steps:

1. What is your point? What is the conclusion you’re trying to reach with the person you’re talking with (or to)?
2. What is something both of your can agree upon, a common ground, before moving on?

Both of these are critical in the order they are presented.

For #1, are you trying to get the Chinese person to acknowledge and agree that racial discrimination, racial prejudice, or “racism” exists in China amongst Chinese? Or are you coming across as accusing them of discriminating, being prejudiced, and thus “racists?” There’s a subtle difference there. Set aside your intentions for a moment and consider how the other person might interpret or misinterpret you.

…it doesn’t change the existence of the phenomenon.

That directly leads us to #2. Instead of using the word “racism,” opt instead to simply describe what you’re referring to. Better yet, you can start off with asking the Chinese person to explain their definition of racism to you, having them give you examples. Pass over politically-charged examples and steer towards the obvious and simple ones that, again, both of you can agree on. There’s a good chance those examples will come from the West or from where you’re from. You’re comfortable with that, right? Give examples and then draw parallels. If you can get them to draw the parallels for you, congratulations, you’re a pro.

Here’s an easy starting point: The wisdom of using appearance to judge merit or ability. “Racism,” of course, is a bit more complicated than that, but a few simple and easily identifiable examples can lower the initial walls of defensiveness. Two easy examples:

• Does a person’s CV (resume) picture say everything about their qualifications for a job?
• Will a hot girl necessarily be good in bed? *wink wink nudge nudge*

Agree on the phenomenon first and, if the semantics really matter to you, then discuss the labels (in your respective languages) that one can apply. “Racism” is just a label for a kind of discrimination, and if “racism” doesn’t go over smoothly, “prejudice”,  “bias”, and “that’s just not fair, dammit” work pretty well too.

Have you had a touchy conversation or argument over “racism” in China? Did you get somewhere meaningful in the end? Or were your forced to conclude that the other person was just a hopelessly deluded (or annoyingly self-righteous) idiot?

Post from: CN Reviews

Chinese Racism: Yes, It Exists, But Why Won’t They Admit It?

Happy Labor Day!

I remember I stayed at home (Shanghai) for 7 days watching all the Desperate Housewives episodes last year. LOL. It is not that I don’t want to explore our beautiful western provinces – Yunnan (云南), Sichuan(四川), Tibet (西藏) and Qinghai (青海), I was afraid that the overwhelming crowds would ruin the beautiful natural scenery. Year 2008 is the first year that the eight-year-old “7-day-Golden-Week” is cut to 3 days. Still, I can’t go out to explore the far-away Wild Wild West. What’s worst, my friend from Suzhou told me that a nice hotel in Suzhou is very difficult to book (= more expensive) in the coming few days. So, I guess I will have to stay at home to watch LOST this time (like other Chinese fans of US TV shows).

According to a news report from Qianglong(千龙网), tour bookings are only 50% of what they were in year 2007, especially long distance tours to more remote destinations, such as Hainan (海南) and Lijiang Yunnan (丽江，云南). Self-driving packages are most popular.

So, if you are coming to China, I suggest you schedule your trip to avoid our public holidays. My take is: avoid visiting big cities in 3-day long weekends, and avoid the remote destinations during national holiday and Chinese New Year. Check out the calendar below and bookmark it.

In Summary:

1. We have 11 days public holidays, and minimal 5 days paid leave according to Labor Contract Law.
2. The government wants us to take advantage of the public holidays to drive travel industry, so a holiday usually make a 3-day long weekend. For example, we will have to work in the coming Sunday (May 4) because we are off on Friday (May 2).
3. So, What are these holidays?

• Jan. 1 : New Year Day (元旦)
• Chinese Calendar Jan. 1: Chinese New Year (春节)
• April. 5: Qingming (清明). People usually go to ceremonies to “sweep the tomb” (lit 扫墓) of their ancestors. The act of clean-up the tomb, and bringing some flowers, food and wine to the tomb is to show respect and memory to our passed family members. So you don’t need to say “happy holiday” to your Chinese friends on Qingming.
• May. 1: International Labor’s Day (劳动节). I guess it is a public holiday in all “communist” countries (though it originated from a labor dispute in the United States).
• Chinese Calendar May. 5: Duanwu (端午). It is a day to memorize one of our ancient patriot Quyuan (屈原). People eat a kind of food called zongzi 粽子(sticky rice “cake” wrapped with leaf). That day, dragon boat races are also held.
• Chinese Calendar Aug. 15: Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节). A festival to appreciate the most rounded moon in a year and eat moon cakes.
• Oct. 1: National Day (国庆节). The day Chairman Mao announced that People’s Republic of China was founded in front of Tiananmen Square in 1949.

Post from: CN Reviews

China Public Holidays 2008 : Plan Your Trip to/in China

I haven’t completely synthesized all the input he gave us yesterday. I might do that on a follow on post. But I’ve adapted his 20 tips into the best 10 tips I will try to follow here at CN Reviews. I am hoping that we will have some other guest bloggers on CN Reviews, so I hope this inspires some dialog between current and potential CN Reviews bloggers on what we should do here.

Here are the tips:

10 – Nobody cares about you, they care about what you do for them.
9 – Be as simple and succinct as possible.
8 – Pattern your readers by being consistent.
7 – Create a dialog with your readers.
6 – Add one “correct” reader, one at a time.
5 – Blogs need constant promotion, participation, and evangelism.
4 – Make it personal with your own point of view.
3 – Pick a subject matter you are passionate about and/or that you are good at.
2 – Have clear goals for the blog.
1 – Become very good (top 25% in the world) at two things.

And now for more thoughts on these 10 tips.

10 – Nobody cares about you, they care about what you do for them.

This was a bit of harsh truth from Avinash, but I think he is right. People will spend their scarce time reading our blog only if we are doing something for them. Prospective target readers for CN Reviews: (a) people who know both Chinese and Western cultures but more of one than the other, want to learn what they don’t know, and share what they do, (b) people who want to learn more about travel and entrepreneurship in China.

9 – Be as simple and succinct as possible.

Awflasher told us: “don’t make the post too long but make it very readable.” We are not achieving this right now. We should target 250-350 words per post. If the post is longer, then it should have a short summary. We should aim to write at the 6th grade level. We should also embrace Globish, language easily written and read by non-native speakers. Livid also gave us the same tip to keep it short.

8 – Pattern your readers by being consistent.

We’re doing this! When David joined us, we created three specific posts: Monday Metro(pol) which talks about Beijing transportation and infrastructure, CN Reviews Mind The Gap Wednesday which talks about cultural differences from David’s point of view, and an unnamed “Lifestyle” Saturday (or Sunday) post. Min and I have been relatively less consistent.

7 – Create a dialog with your readers.

Yes, but how? What I’m doing is: (a) commenting on the blogs of our readers if I know what their blog is, (b) emailing a quick thank you to people who comment on CN Reviews, (c) trying to ask questions at the end of the post, and (d) doing shorter posts that are focused on getting readers to give us their feedback. But I think comments is one of our most important metrics to drive and to track. I just started experimenting with Twitter and Facebook, which both seem like a good way to create dialog with readers and friends.

6 – Add one “correct” reader, one at a time.

Avinash wrote this in the context of getting Dugg and comparing his Digg traffic to his Yahoo! Groups traffic. Here is his chart:

Lesson: you just don’t want traffic. You want the right readers. I’d love to have a community of bloggers, contributors, and readers who care about bridging China and the West. So for us HaoHaoReport is more important that Digg.

5 – Blogs need constant promotion, participation, and evangelism.

There is no silver bullet. Here’s my short list of ideas: (a) post and link to other bloggers, thus generating a trackback link from their blog; (b) comment on other blogs, (c) build up Twitter as a distribution method, (c) social bookmarking at HaoHaoReport and De.licio.us, (d) occasional posting links on Facebook, (e) write about popular topics that people have set Google Alerts for, e.g. people’s names, (f) emailing commenters to engage in more dialogue. I also like participating in wangjianshuo’s community and ifgogo.com as well.

4 – Make it personal with your own point of view.

Livid gave us some advice: make it more of a journal than an essay. Avinash gave us some other advice: think about writing a book, not a diary. Here’s how I synthesize this: Be sure you can answer the question, “If I had to write a book from the blog, what would the book be about and what is the table of contents?” But then, “Make the book personal, infuse it with your personality and your unique point of view.”

3 – Pick a subject matter you are passionate about and/or that you are good at.

Blogging takes a lot of energy. Everyone is really busy. In the end, you can only really blog about what you care about. Which means you can’t be too theoretical about tips #10 and #6. “Correct” readers mean people who care about what you care about. “What you do for them” is ultimately tied to what you care about most.

2 – Have clear goals for the blog.

Have clear objectives (as stated in words) and clear goals (as stated in numbers or metrics). Well I saved the hardest tips for last. Yes, we are not clear yet what our goals are for the blog. But Avinash’s advice was to focus on one thing first, and then expand from there. He gave his own example of starting with Web Analytics, then moving on the Competitive Intelligence, then to Qualitative Insights…but always under the overall umbrella of Data for Decision Making on the Web.

1 – Become very good (top 25% in the world) at two things.

Well, I’m still figuring out what this is. But I think the direction that Avinash is giving is good.  Thanks Avinash! There was much more that was discussed but I need to digest it further.  Topic for another blog post.

What are your goals? And what are the two things you want to be world class in?

Post from: CN Reviews

Blogging Tips from Avinash Kaushik of Occam’s Razor