Bloomberg

Busy baristas at a Starbucks outlet in Beijing.

For proof that coffee is taking off in China, look no further than Chinese consumers’ reaction to recent price increases at Starbucks Corp.

The Seattle-based coffee chain said earlier this week that all coffee drink prices would increase by two yuan, or about $0.32. That bumps up the cost of a small latte – or “tall” latte, in Starbucks’s lingo — to 27 yuan, or $4.20. A large mocha is now 34 yuan, or $5.40. The increases add to prices that are already higher than what similar coffee drinkers pay in the U.S.

Starbucks fans in China turned to the Internet to complain, helping to make the Chinese term for Starbucks, “Xing Ba Ke,” one of the top trending terms on China’s biggest search engine, Baidu.com. They flooded Twitter-like microblogging sites with emoticons of sobbing faces, complaining about what at least one called the “pain.”

“In the past, a larger size cost two more kuai and now it costs three. It’s so painful,” said one user of the Sina Weibo microblogging site, using the Chinese slang term of the yuan, China’s currency. “Where are the price control authorities this time?” a user in Beijing complained, referring to instances last year in which Chinese economic bodies, aiming to prevent unrest due to high inflation, prevented food companies from passing on higher prices to consumers

“We understand this has an impact on our consumers,” said Caren Li, a spokeswoman for Starbucks, adding that the company needs to keep up with China’s rising operational costs, including higher wages for laborers, increasing commodity costs and rising real estate prices.

The public reaction signals the growth of a product that many were skeptical would take off in China, a country with thousands of years of tea culture, said Krista Pederson, a consultant at Shanghai-based WGP Investment Consulting. “What started out as a drink for the few is turning into a mass-market product in China,” Ms. Pederson said.

China’s coffee market, including fresh and instant, is booming. Sales climbed to 6.25 billion yuan in 2011, up 20% from a year earlier and 92% from 2006, according to market research firm Euromonitor International.

To be sure, coffee consumption in China is still tiny compared to other countries. On average, the Chinese consumer drinks three cups of coffee per year, according to data from Swiss food giant Nestle SA.

But the thirst is there and coffee companies have been expanding rapidly to meet the new demand. Starbucks, which now has 550 stores in China, plans to have 1,500 by 2015. Nestle is rolling out more upscale Nespresso stores and in select markets it has recently launched an ad campaign, featuring popular blogger Han Han, to hype up its instant coffee products sold in grocery stores.

Many have been willing to pay the price because coffee has been positioned as an upscale in China. “To carry around a Starbucks cup or to meet in a Costa Coffee is to mark yourself as having status,” said Ms. Pederson. Costa is a coffee chain owned by U.K.-based Whitbread PLC.

Most of the stores charge their Chinese consumers around 50% to 75% more for a cup of coffee than the average U.S consumer would pay in the U.S. A small cup at Starbucks in Beijing is now $3. Customers in smaller cities pay around 30 cents less, Ms. Li said.

But now that coffee is becoming a daily drink for many, the price increases come as a blow, consumers say.

“The prices are overwhelming! The kingdom’s people are now under such great pressure!!,” a Beijing-based Weibo user named YiziluoDevil wrote.

Starbucks doesn’t break out its performance in China. In China and Asia Pacific it said revenue for the quarter end Jan. 1 grew 38% to $166.9 million, while operating income grew 26% to $57.8 million.

–Laurie Burkitt; follow Laurie on Twitter @lburkitt

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Customers use computers at an internet cafe in Hami, northwest China’s Xinjiang region. China now has more than 500 million people on the Internet and nearly half use weibo, microblogs similar to Twitter.

Twitter sent its digital street cred tumbling on Thursday night when it announced that it would being selectively censoring content as a way to enter countries with “different ideas” about freedom of expression. Though Twitter has never made promises along the lines of Google’s “Don’t Be Evil,” the move nevertheless comes as a surprise for a company that took pride in helping grease the wheels of last year’s Arab Spring uprisings.

In China, where Twitter is blocked but still accessible to those with the technical know-how to skirt the country’s Web filters, the revelation seems to have hit particularly hard.

Among the first to comment on the announcement was Wen Yunchao, one of many Chinese dissidents who’ve embraced Twitter as an uncensored alternative to China’s own heavily managed microblogging services:

Oh no! @Twitter says going to start censoring tweets in certain countries. Pls RT!act.demandprogress.org/act/twitter_ce… 通过 @demandprogress

— 北风 (@wenyunchao) January 27, 2012

It didn’t take long for speculation to spread that Twitter had announced the change because it planned to make a play for the China market. A number of Chinese users promptly declared their intention boycott the service. Among those leveling the boycott threat was activist artist Ai Weiwei, who wrote in a characteristically pithy post, “If Twitter starts censoring, I’ll stop tweeting”:

推若审查，我即停推。 RT @wenyunchao: @aiww 商人在商言商，道这东东，能像谷歌那样最好，不能也不能强求。 — 艾未未Ai Weiwei (@aiww) January 27, 2012

But how likely is it that Twitter’s proposed changes are aimed at earning access to the world’s largest population of Internet users?

“Unlikely” says the answer from Beijing- based investor and Internet watcher Bill Bishop.

As Mr. Bishop notes, a large part of the speculation that Twitter might be getting ready to kow-tow to China’s censors stems from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s visit to Shanghai earlier this month, during which he complained about not being able to read his tweets. That trip came almost exactly a year after the founder of another social-media site banned in China, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, visited Beijing amid talk of trying to tap the Chinese market.

But for all the salivating over China’s potential in board rooms across Silicon Valley, Mr. Bishop says Twitter would have to be “incredibly naive” to think they could wedge their way into the country.

“It would be stupidity,” he says. “One, I don’t think the government would go for it. And two, the market is already saturated.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The key issue, Mr. Bishop says, is whether or not the government would be able to trust Twitter. One sign that Twitter isn’t likely to do what it takes to earn that trust is its plan to partner with Chilling Effects, an Internet freedom advocacy website, to publish government take-down notices — a problematic strategy in a country where banned keywords are treated like state secrets.

Even if Twitter were somehow able to get in Beijing’s good graces, Mr. Bishop says, it would have almost no shot at competing with home-grown “weibo” microblogging products from Sina and Tencent that are already well-established and offer more features. “Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo are better products,” he says. “Twitter’s only competitive advantage here is freedom of speech. Once you start censoring, what do you have left to offer?”

Indeed, Mr. Dorsey himself quashed the idea of Twitter being able to break into China in an interview in Hong Kong in October in which he said his company “just can’t compete” in China “and that’s not up to us to change.”

In developing the ability to censor tweets by region, Twitter more likely has different markets in mind. The only countries mentioned by name in the blog post announcing the new policy were France and Germany, both of which, the post notes, ban pro-Nazi content. How to handle that ban is a dilemma that Yahoo, Google and Facebook have all struggled with in Germany.

Mr. Dorsey visited Germany earlier this week to announce his desire to hire a team there.

Twitter’s announcement also acknowledges there are some countries with severe restrictions on speech where the company simply cannot exist.

That’s not to say Twitter’s latest move won’t have an impact on China. Implausible as it may be for the company to establish itself in the country, Mr. Bishop notes, its embrace of content filtering could aid Beijing in making the argument that the Internet is a space in need of censorship.

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter @joshchin.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Customers use computers at an internet cafe in Hami, northwest China’s Xinjiang region. China now has more than 500 million people on the Internet and nearly half use weibo, microblogs similar to Twitter.

Twitter sent its digital street cred tumbling on Thursday night when it announced that it would being selectively censoring content as a way to enter countries with “different ideas” about freedom of expression. Though Twitter has never made promises along the lines of Google’s “Don’t Be Evil,” the move nevertheless comes as a surprise for a company that took pride in helping grease the wheels of last year’s Arab Spring uprisings.

In China, where Twitter is blocked but still accessible to those with the technical know-how to skirt the country’s Web filters, the revelation seems to have hit particularly hard.

Among the first to comment on the announcement was Wen Yunchao, one of many Chinese dissidents who’ve embraced Twitter as an uncensored alternative to China’s own heavily managed microblogging services:

Oh no! @Twitter says going to start censoring tweets in certain countries. Pls RT!act.demandprogress.org/act/twitter_ce… 通过 @demandprogress

— 北风 (@wenyunchao) January 27, 2012

It didn’t take long for speculation to spread that Twitter had announced the change because it planned to make a play for the China market. A number of Chinese users promptly declared their intention boycott the service. Among those leveling the boycott threat was activist artist Ai Weiwei, who wrote in a characteristically pithy post, “If Twitter starts censoring, I’ll stop tweeting”:

推若审查，我即停推。 RT @wenyunchao: @aiww 商人在商言商，道这东东，能像谷歌那样最好，不能也不能强求。 — 艾未未Ai Weiwei (@aiww) January 27, 2012

But how likely is it that Twitter’s proposed changes are aimed at earning access to the world’s largest population of Internet users?

“Unlikely” says the answer from Beijing- based investor and Internet watcher Bill Bishop.

As Mr. Bishop notes, a large part of the speculation that Twitter might be getting ready to kow-tow to China’s censors stems from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s visit to Shanghai earlier this month, during which he complained about not being able to read his tweets. That trip came almost exactly a year after the founder of another social-media site banned in China, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, visited Beijing amid talk of trying to tap the Chinese market.

But for all the salivating over China’s potential in board rooms across Silicon Valley, Mr. Bishop says Twitter would have to be “incredibly naive” to think they could wedge their way into the country.

“It would be stupidity,” he says. “One, I don’t think the government would go for it. And two, the market is already saturated.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The key issue, Mr. Bishop says, is whether or not the government would be able to trust Twitter. One sign that Twitter isn’t likely to do what it takes to earn that trust is its plan to partner with Chilling Effects, an Internet freedom advocacy website, to publish government take-down notices — a problematic strategy in a country where banned keywords are treated like state secrets.

Even if Twitter were somehow able to get in Beijing’s good graces, Mr. Bishop says, it would have almost no shot at competing with home-grown “weibo” microblogging products from Sina and Tencent that are already well-established and offer more features. “Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo are better products,” he says. “Twitter’s only competitive advantage here is freedom of speech. Once you start censoring, what do you have left to offer?”

Indeed, Mr. Dorsey himself quashed the idea of Twitter being able to break into China in an interview in Hong Kong in October in which he said his company “just can’t compete” in China “and that’s not up to us to change.”

In developing the ability to censor tweets by region, Twitter more likely has different markets in mind. The only countries mentioned by name in the blog post announcing the new policy were France and Germany, both of which, the post notes, ban pro-Nazi content. How to handle that ban is a dilemma that Yahoo, Google and Facebook have all struggled with in Germany.

Mr. Dorsey visited Germany earlier this week to announce his desire to hire a team there.

Twitter’s announcement also acknowledges there are some countries with severe restrictions on speech where the company simply cannot exist.

That’s not to say Twitter’s latest move won’t have an impact on China. Implausible as it may be for the company to establish itself in the country, Mr. Bishop notes, its embrace of content filtering could aid Beijing in making the argument that the Internet is a space in need of censorship.

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter @joshchin.

The Chinese economy many have slowed at the end of last year but the slowdown wasn’t as sharp as expected. This is good news for the global economy and the euro. Andrew Peaple and Martin Essex explain why growth is better than aiding a bailout fund.

Associated Press

Men may soon see something different when entering a public restroom in parts of China: women.

A local political adviser in China’s coastal Fujian province has filed a motion to transform the region’s mens’ restrooms into unisex ones, according to a report from state-run China Daily.

The goal is to solve a major bathroom inequality issue in which a lack of female restrooms has left women waiting in long lines while men whiz in and out of their restrooms with ease, China Daily reported.

Gan Duanrong, the head of the women’s federation in the Fujian city of Quanzhou, submitted the movement to overhaul male restrooms to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference last week, the report said.

A lack of potty parity has increasingly plagued China in recent years, as the number of women involved in everyday society has bulged over time, the report cited Ms. Gan as saying. “It is different from the past when women tended to stay at home. Now, more and more women engage in public activities, which makes the lack of ladies’ rooms a pressing issue,” she told the newspaper.

The male-to-female toilet disparity is problematic worldwide, as men’s facilities are typically equipped with urinals in addition to toilets, increasing their capacity to handle traffic. The U.S. is still struggling with the issue. U.S. lawmakers introduced two years ago the “Restroom Gender Parity in Federal Buildings Act,” a bill aimed to create an equal number of restroom facilities, including urinals and toilets, for both genders in federal buildings. But Congress has not voted on the bill since its introduction.

China has stepped up efforts in recent years to improve and expand public restrooms in general. In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the city committed around $40 million to upgrade most of its then-3,700-plus public commodes. The city of Chongqing opened in 2007 the world’s largest public restroom, a four-story porcelain palace with 1,000 toilets and urinals.

While the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has for the past several decades vowed to improve the ratio of female to male facilities, females still find themselves waiting in long lines. As part of the 12th five-year plan, the ministry renewed its commitment to increasing restroom facilities for females.

Some universities in China, such as the Communication University of China in Beijing, are already addressing the issue and have started convertING male restrooms to accommodate the ladies, as higher education has become more female-dominated, according to the state-run Global Times.

The China Daily said Ms. Gan’s Fujian movement is sparking some controversy in the region, as many people feel uncomfortable with the idea of unisex bathrooms.

Her critics should be thankful they’re not students at Northwestern Polytechnical University, which has taken co-ed sanitation a step further than the loo, according to a separate report from the China Daily. A bathhouse in the university allows student lovers to shower together in private rooms.

– Laurie Burkitt. Follow her on Twitter @lburkitt

News:

* Economists expecting a 10-quarter low in GDP growth numbers due out Tuesday (Bloomberg)

* Baidu builds an international operations center (PC World)

* China retail: too many malls, not enough shoppers (FT)

* Booking battle online as China tries to go home for the holidays (Bloomberg)

Analysis and Commentary:

* Zbigniew Brzezinski, ““Jimmy Carter’s Kissinger,” is not fond of Obama’s thinking on China (Slate)

* Nationalism no longer: Beijing University’s Hu Yong identifies three Chinese Internet trends in 2011 (China Media Project)

* Why the recent dip in China’s foreign exchange reserves isn’t all about hot money (FT’s Alphaville)

Just Because:

* All you ever wanted to know (and probably a lot more) about China’s serial killers (Danwei)

WSJ Assistant Managing Editor John Bussey visits Mean Street to discuss growing tensions with Iran, namely U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner urging Chinese officials to reduce Iranian oil imports. Photo: Reuters.

Bloomberg News

People stand in line outside an Apple Inc. store in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011.

Chinese writers are getting more aggressive about combating piracy of their work.

A Beijing court has accepted a lawsuit filed against Apple by the Zuo Jia Wei Quan Lian Meng, an authors’ group that alleges that hundreds of applications in the U.S. company’s App Store offer unauthorized downloads of books, group spokesman Bei Zhicheng said Tuesday.

The group, whose name translates to the Union for the Protection of the Rights of Writers, represents dozens of Chinese writers and publishers in lodging complaints over copyright violations.

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court last week accepted the lawsuit, which demands compensation from Apple of 11.9 million yuan ($1.9 million), and covers roughly three dozen books by nine different authors, including well-known writers Han Han and Li Chengpeng, Mr. Bei said.

Calls to the Beijing court went unanswered on Tuesday. But the state-run China Daily cited a court official as saying the court had accepted the lawsuit.

Apple declined to comment. The company’s agreement with developers who list applications in its App Store includes a requirement for those developers not to violate, misappropriate or infringe copyrights. But individual in-app downloads, such as specific books or other files offered through applications, aren’t approved by Apple.

The Chinese writers’ group argues it is Apple’s responsibility in China to prevent pirated content from appearing in the apps. “China’s law says that as long as you receive some of the money, you have to take responsibility for reviewing [items sold in the store],” Mr. Bei said.

Mr. Bei said the group plans a second lawsuit against Apple on behalf of writers not named in the current suit, plus another lawsuit against Chinese search giant Baidu. The group has previously sparred with Baidu over a document-sharing service called Wenku, where users were uploading books without permission.

Baidu declined to comment on the group’s lawsuit threat. The Chinese search engine operator last year took down nearly three million documents on Wenku after writers and publishers complained and said it would shut the service down if it can’t resolve its copyright disagreement with writers.

“China’s government also wants to protect intellectual property rights, but some things about its legislation are relatively lagging, such as compensation amounts being relatively low. So we hope to push forward improvements in legislation using lawsuits,” Mr. Bei said.

– Owen Fletcher. Follow him on Twitter @owenfletcher

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Pop-up victims? Computer users at a cafe in Beijing.

If the frequent use of intrusive ads on Chinese websites has ever caused you to grimace, gripe or growl, then the government here has a message for you: They feel your pain.

And, they’re not going to do much about it.

China’s relevant regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, on Saturday issued rules meant to create a healthier environment for Internet companies and for users of their services. Among the new rules: No maliciously blocking users from accessing services offered by other Internet companies, no tricking users into downloading software, and no suspending services to them without a good reason.

Not among the rules: a ban on pop-up ads. But the new regulations do make a small concession to users on pop-up ads—and an unusual explanation of why the ministry didn’t do more.

“Pop-up ad windows are an issue to which users have a strong reaction,” Li Guobin, a ministry inspector, said in a question-and-answer statement issued along with the new rules.

But, he continues: “Since the free (services) model in China’s Internet services industry is built on subsidies from ad revenue, if pop-up ad windows were totally banned, it would change the industry’s current business model, in the end hurting the interests of users and affecting the industry’s development.”

The statement doesn’t say why companies couldn’t just use a different kind of ad.

Not all Chinese websites have pop-up ads. For instance, the website of Baidu, China’s top search engine, has a spare design similar to Google’s.

But there are plenty of Chinese news, online-game and even government websites that use relatively intrusive ads: pop-up windows, videos that automatically play in a corner, vertical banners glued to both sides of the website, horizontal banners that drop down to consume the screen for several seconds, and floating boxes that drift across the screen, bounce off its edges and sometimes can’t be closed.

The new rules do deal a blow to pop-up ads. While they are still allowed, companies will be required to provide an “obvious” way to close them.

Pop-up ads thus seem to be a necessary evil, in the MIIT’s book. Users, take note: You still need a browser with a pop-up blocker.

–Owen Fletcher; follow him on Twitter @owenfletcher

ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

For Chinese people, 2011 was a year of little sleep and a lot of anxiety, particularly over food.

Such, at least, is the picture suggested in the 2011 edition of Baidu Internet Hotspot, Chinese search giant Baidu’s answer to Google’s year-end “Zeitgeist” summary of web searches.

Baidu searches aren’t a perfect reflection of Chinese sentiment. Of the country’s population of 1.3 billion, regular search engine users still number only around 400 million, according a report released this week by the government-backed China Internet Network Information Center (pdf). And unlike Google, Baidu is known to censor politically sensitive searches.

But with Baidu accounting for four out of every five searches on the Chinese mainland according to third-party estimates, the company’s year-end summary nevertheless offers fascinating insight into lives of many who call the world’s second-largest economy home.

Some of the best insights in this year’s summary come, not from the standard rundown of top search terms, but from a series of specialized topic lists.

Those who imagine China as a nation of relentless robot workers, for example, might be surprised by Baidu’s list of the top 10 “urbanite dreams,” where “sleeping in” came in fifth behind “travel the world” (3) and “lose weight” (1).

Similar signs that Chinese people are tiring of the rat race appear in the company’s list of top dream jobs, dominated by leisurely pursuits like wedding planner (1), Internet writer (2) and, yes, mattress tester (4).

While sleep appears to have featured heavily in the fantasies of Baidu users this year, food quality ranked among the top issues keeping them up at night.

“Food safety” finished fifth on the company’s list of top search terms and first on its list of top health concerns. So deep was the concern that Baidu decided to devote an entire list to food safety problems. Plasticizers took the top spot, followed by lean meat powder and recycled cooking oil, otherwise known as gutter (or ditch) oil. (A CRT favorite, glow-in-the-dark pork, failed to make it into the top 10)

This year “was a year in which social trust came into question,” Baidu said in a press release announcing this year’s search summary, noting not only food fears but also widespread concerns over transportation safety stemming from this year’s deadly high-speed train crash in Wenzhou.

The Wenzhou crash, arguably the biggest domestic story of the year in China, finished second on Baidu’s list of top trending topics, nudged out of No. 1 spot by Steve Jobs’s death. (Two family-related topics – “naked marriage” and “Singles Day” – finished third and fourth on the list respectively.)

Meanwhile, a list of comparable list of trending topics in Google’s “Zeitgeist” report for China reveals as much about Google’s remaining devotees in the country as it does about the interests of Chinese Internet users. Apple’s iPad2, Google’s Android mobile software, the popular messaging service QQ and mobile messaging service Weixin all finished in the top 10 – further evidence that Chinese people who still use Google’s uncensored Chinese-language service tend to be those tech-savvy enough to get around China’s Great Firewall.

Select lists from the Baidu summary are partially translated below. More translations and explanations are also available at the company’s English-language blog Baidu Beat.

Top search terms:

1) Tiangong 1 (China’s space lab)

2) Steve Jobs

3) Gadhafi

4) Earthquake

5) Food safety

Top trending topics:

1) Steve Jobs death

2) High-speed train collision

3) Naked marriage

4) Singles’ Day

5) Red Cross

Top dream jobs:

1) Wedding planner

2) Internet writer

3) Internet wage laborer

4) Mattress tester

5) Personal finance planner

Top urban dreams:

1) Lose weight

2) Buy a house

3) Travel the world

4) Find a reliable person to marry

5) Sleep in

Top dream travel destinations:

1) Maldives

2) Shangri-La

3) Dubai

4) Tibet

5) Hoh Xil

Top “how-tos”:

1) How do I deal with a boyfriend exhibiting violent tendencies?

2) What should I do if I’ve consumed ditch oil?

3) How to repair broken porcelain?

4) What do I do if my brother is taken in by a pyramid scheme?

5) What do I do about sleepless nights?

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter @joshchin

Bloomberg News

Baidu’s efforts to make nice with copyright owners may be starting to pay off.

The U.S. Trade Representative, or USTR, has removed Chinese search giant Baidu from its name-and-shame list of “notorious” markets for piracy, and praised the company for resolving its years-long battle with the music industry through an agreement to post links to licensed music tracks from major record labels.

Baidu’s removal from the list highlights how Chinese Internet companies are increasingly becoming the partners, rather than the enemies, of copyright owners seeking to distribute content in China.

Chinese online video websites including Youku and Tudou were also once accused of providing unauthorized streaming of television shows and movies, but now license much of this content and provide it legally and even carry on intellectual property battles among themselves. Baidu also has an online video venture called Qiyi, which allows users to watch high-definition licensed content.

In some cases, the websites have become the only channel for the content owners to distribute their content in China because of government restrictions on foreign content in theaters and on television.

This year’s list “highlights positive developments,” the office said in a statement. “USTR applauds Chinese site Baidu, one of the world’s most visited sites and previously identified as an example of a site linking to infringing content, for entering into a licensing agreement with U.S. and other rights holders in the recording industry.”

Remaining on the list from China are Alibaba Group Holding’s online shopping brand Taobao, which USTR said carries listings of “pirated and counterfeit goods” despite Taobao’s “significant efforts to address the problem.” Sohu.com’s search unit Sogou was listed for providing links to unlicensed music, while Beijing’s Silk Market and the China Small Commodities Market in Yiwu were listed as offline sources for infringing consumer goods.

Alibaba Group spokesman John Spelich said in a statement that the company’s consumer-to-consumer website Taobao Marketplace and business-to-consumer website Taobao Mall “stand firmly in favor of protecting customers and sellers, as well as the IPR rights of brand owners.” He noted that brands including Coach, Ray-Ban, Procter & Gamble and Uniqlo list their products on Taobao.

– Loretta Chao. Follow her on Twitter @lorettac

MillwardBrown

Baidu, China’s 6th most valuable brand according to MillwardBrown.

China's Top 20 Brands in 2011

View Slideshow

 

A list of the top 20 most valuable brands in China as determined by MillwardBrown in the 2011 edition of "BrandZ Most Value Chinese Brands."

Outside of China, the majority of consumers can’t name a single Chinese brand.

According to research from agency Millward Brown and media company WPP on the top 50 most valuable Chinese brands, 83% of consumers beyond China’s borders couldn’t recall a Chinese brand or company.

That message is significant, given that China wants badly to create its own global brands, said Adrian Gonzalez, head of Greater China at Millward Brown. Chinese companies like appliance maker Haier and computer electronics company Lenovo that aspire to global household names will need to better distinguish themselves to become more recognizable to the world’s consumers, Mr. Gonzalez said.

At home, it’s a different story.

The brand study, which analyzed financial information of listed companies’ brands and paired it with data from a survey of 35,000 consumers, reveals that value of Chinese brands has grown by to $325 billion in the past year, up 16% from a year earlier.

The top Chinese brands–ranging from banks and telecommunications to fashion and food companies– are not only competitive in pricing, but are resonating and connecting emotionally with Chinese shoppers, the study said. Chinese companies are also narrowing the wide gap they once had with multi-national counterparts, which had for years built better trust and service for Chinese consumers.

Dairy giant Mengniu (18) and its rival Yi Li (22) have proven themselves, even after having been implicated in a 2008 scandal in which the chemical melamine added to milk caused the death of an infant and illnesses in 300,000 others, to be on par with foreign competitors, such as Swiss food company Nestle SA, and are offering products of similar quality, Mr. Gonzalez said. Technology companies, such as Sina (25) and Baidu (6), are creating new programs and products specific to Chinese needs.

Sina, which operates China’s most popular Weibo microblogging service, saw its brand value increase 244% compared with last year, according to the report.

“We’re seeing in many cases now that foreign companies feel the best way to succeed in China now is through acquiring a Chinese company,” Mr. Gonzalez said, adding that a decade ago that was not the case.

Results of the study reveal another shift occurring within China: a fall of the country’s state-owned enterprises. While China Mobile, the top Chinese brand, and state-owned banks still dominate the Chinese brand landscape, seven of the 14 brands on the list that lost ground with consumers were state-owned. China Mobile held on to its No. 1 ranking from last year but dropped 4% in value in 2011. Bank of China (4) fell 17%.

“Government protectionism is starting to wear thin,” the study said – a marked contrast with the study’s 2010 results.

Don’t expect the fall to transfer beyond state-companies, the study’s authors said. If there’s any wake up call to foreign brands—even outside of China— it’s that Chinese brands are on the rise.

To see a list of the top 20 Chinese brands and how much they’re worth, click on the slideshow tab above.

– Laurie Burkitt. Follow her on Twitter @lburkitt

European Pressphoto Agency

A list of what The Wall Street Journal’s reporters in China are reading and watching online. (NOTE: WSJ has not verified items in the ‘News’ section and doesn’t vouch for their accuracy.)

News:

* An Australian businessmen gets 13 years in Guangzhou jail (The Age)

* Undercover at a Chinese tiger bone wine auction: “It’s really good stuff” (Guardian)

* Set for life: Why Chinese youth are clamoring for shot at civil service (Global Times)

* China’s tweeting cops (FT)

* Beijing’s lung cancer rate is up 60% in 10 years while smoking rate has stayed even. (China Daily)

Analysis and Commentary:

Environmental consultant Steven Andrews breaks down the dangers of Beijing’s hazardous “blue” skies (China Dialogue)

* China’s aircraft carrier program dissected, in great detail, by Andrew Erickson and crew (Naval War College Review)

* Tank Man and Pepper Spray Cop: Jeff Wasserstrom on what happens when memes collide (Miller-McCune)

Just Because:

* The ups and downs of Brother Radish (Baidu Beat)

Reuters

Opium poppies, not as bad as Internet rumors?

The Chinese government is stepping up efforts to get Internet users to say no to rumors.

A state-media anti-Internet rumor blitz appears to be the latest development in Beijing’s campaign against harmful information on the Internet, with the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily and the state-run Xinhua news agency running multiple pieces that draw colorful parallels between rumors and drugs.

People on the Internet can “irresponsibly and unscrupulously produce and spread rumors,” the People’s Daily in a commentary published late last week (in Chinese). “Such ‘Internet psychological drugs’ are very easily addictive, and make people want to know more and learn more while reading,” it said, adding that it is as harmful as “Internet pornography, gambling and drugs.”

The harsh language follows repeated calls for Chinese websites to put an end to the spread of rumors, including visits by top-level officials to the offices of search company Baidu, instant-messaging and online games operator Tencent, Web portal and microblog operator Sina and online video company Youku, among other top Internet firms. Last month, Chinese Internet executives were summoned to an off-site policy training meeting, after which they pledged to boost efforts to curb “harmful” online content.

“Internet rumors are highly destructive and harmful,” said a piece that was published on Nov. 28 on the People’s Daily website. “It is widely acknowledged that drugs could make people addicted, anaesthetize their nerves, and mess up their physical functions, which will further destroy family units, disturb society as a whole and trigger crime.”

“Doesn’t this mean that Internet rumors are a type of malignant tumor which harms the Internet’s image while eroding social values?” it said, adding that the government would take a “zero tolerance” attitude toward rumors.

Xinhua Online ran the first in a series of commentaries on the subject on the same day, saying Internet rumors are “highly poisonous” – worse, even, than heroin and cocaine. They are “just like beautiful poppy flowers, which are always under pretty disguise, and make people deeply poisoned.”

A second piece in the Xinhua series said Internet rumors would “befuddle people’s vision and hearing, confuse their minds while intoxicating their nerves, and are indeed societal drugs.”

The language about drugs and drug dealing are reminiscent of crackdowns from an earlier era, Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based Chinese Internet expert, wrote in a blog post on Sunday. That “may be a sign of an impending harsh crackdown on those who spread Internet rumors” amid “concern about social stability, especially in the worsening economic environment, and increasing conservatism in the run-up to the leadership change at the 2012 18th Party Congress,” he wrote.

Officials have yet to suggest specific punishments or further regulation of Chinese Internet companies, which must adhere to government censorship rules in order to keep operational licenses. But their actions clearly indicate that that Beijing is watching the companies and their websites more closely.

– Loretta Chao and Yoli Zhang

Reuters

The logo for Sina’s Weibo microblogging service.

A list of what The Wall Street Journal’s reporters in China are reading and watching online. (NOTE: WSJ has not verified items in the ‘News’ section and doesn’t vouch for their accuracy.)

News:

* Sina Corp. dropped 5.4% in U.S. trading following rumors that short-seller Muddy Waters LLC would target it. Muddy Waters denied them. Observers said they stemmed from an opinion piece on Chinese Internet companies on the WSJ’s Chinese-language website, though it didn’t say Muddy Waters planned to target Sina. Shares of Sina have already been under pressure amid increasing investor skepticism of Chinese Internet stocks. (CWSJ/Business Insider/Forbes)

* Chinese police question Ai Weiwei’s wife (Guardian)

* The ordination of a Vatican-approved bishop could be in question due to the expected presence of an ex-communicated bishop. (Shanghaiist)

* China’s first aircraft carrier makes its second run. (China.org.cn)

Commentary:

* America is back in the Pacific and will uphold the rules – Tom Donilon (Financial Times)

* Is it China’s turn to pivot? How China needs to make nice with its neighbors. (The Diplomat)

Just Because:

* Bad passwords with Chinese characteristics (Penn Olson)

* Why “metal underwear” was a popular search term on Tuesday. (Baidu Beat)

Reuters

Rescuers pull a body out of a school bus after it collided with a truck at a traffic accident site in Yulinzi township of Zhengning county, Gansu province, November 16, 2011. Nineteen people, including 17 preschoolers and two adults, died in the head-on collision between the two vehicles.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promised that the country would take measures to improve school bus safety on Sunday, a day after China saw its second major school bus accident in November and amid widespread public mockery of the country’s recent donation of school buses to Macedonia.

“School buses should be safe mobile campuses for students,” the premier said at a national meeting on women’s and children’s affairs, according to the state-run China Daily. “Society should bear in mind that children should be the first to enjoy all kinds of social welfare and the last ones to suffer from any disaster.”

School buses have become a hotly debated topic in China since the deaths of 21 people, including 19 pre-school students, in a head-on collision between a coal truck and a school-owned minibus in rural Gansu province earlier this month. The nine-seat minivan was carrying 64 people at the time of the accident, according to local media reports.

The second accident, in which a school bus in the northern province of Liaoning rolled over on Friday, left 35 people injured, according to China Daily.

The Liaoning accident was the second-most searched item on Chinese search site Baidu Monday afternoon, while the Gansu crash has consistently ranked among the site’s most searched topics since it happened on Nov. 16.

“In recent days, a series of big accidents involving school buses has led to bitter hatred among the people. These accidents have also made me uneasy,” Agence France-Presse quoted Mr. Wen as saying, citing a transcript of his remarks posted on government websites. “School bus safety must become a focal point of every region and every government department.”

Mr. Wen urged the central government to “rapidly” develop new safety regulations for school buses and pledged to help local government with procuring safe buses for school-age children, China Daily said.

That fact that Mr. Wen felt compelled to comment on the accidents can be read as a measure of the central government’s concern over the issue. The premier, often referred to in China as “Grandpa Wen,” is widely considered to be the most popular of China’s top leaders and is frequently trotted out to utter soothing words when public anger threatens to boil over.

Frustration over the state of Chinese school buses appears to have been made worse by a statement posted Friday on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying China had donated a number of brand new buses to Macedonia to help improve the study environment for Macedonian students.

The statement, which appears to have been removed from the ministry’s website, was accompanied by photos of three shining yellow buses decorated with the Chinese and Macedonian flags. A statement posted on the website of the Macedonian government confirmed the donation, putting the number of buses at 23.

The revelation has produced hundreds of thousands of comments on the popular Sina Weibo microblogging platform, most of them negative.

“Your own children are crushed to death and you give safe school buses to foreigners,” wrote one Weibo user going by the handle Ancient Moon. “I don’t even know how to respond.”

“Can this sort of thing be considered treason?” asked another user writing under the handle Catherine_wangshihong.

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter @joshchin

Associated Press

Is winter coming for the Chinese economy?

A list of what The Wall Street Journal’s reporters in China are reading and watching online. (NOTE: WSJ has not verified items in the ‘News’ section and doesn’t vouch for their accuracy.)

News:

* Training government spokespeople how not to screw up during an emergency (Xinhua)

* A warning from a prominent legal scholar on expanding state power (Caixin)

* Turbulence for China’s high-flying females (Economist)

* Time enough to rebalance? Maybe not (Reuters)

* Rare earth prices falling. Could China lose control? (Minor Metals)

Commentary:

* Tsinghua economics professor Patrick Chovanec on what “Game of Thrones” can tell you about China’s economy.

*Patty Waldmeir offers a harrowing tale of tourism with Chinese characteristics (FT)

Just Because:

* China University of Geosciences job ad: Love for Libras but Virgos and Scorpios need not apply.

Yao Ming this week started the next phase of his post-retirement career, beginning classes at Jiaotong University in Shanghai.

The 31-year-old Chinese basketball star, who retired as a player in July after eight injury-plagued years with the Houston Rockets and five years with his hometown Shanghai Sharks, had been vague about the path ahead for him.

But with the start of the Chinese Basketball Association’s season less than two weeks away (English translation of the schedule here at Jon Pastuszek’s stellar niubball.com blog), the owner of the Shanghai Sharks has decided that owning a team, running a nonprofit organization, flying on China’s maiden Airbus A380 journey and taking a stand against the consumption of shark fin just don’t keep him busy enough.

Mr. Yao enrolled at Jiaotong University’s Antai Economics and Management College, taking courses in mathematics, English and Chinese history on his first day.

His agent, Zhang Mingji, had told state media in September that Mr. Yao would focus more on private classes so as not to disturb other students. But the lure of collegiate life was too much to keep him away entirely.

“I chose Jiaotong University instead of private tutors, because I want to feel the atmosphere on campus,” Mr. Yao said Monday, according to state media.

He may come to regret that choice, as state media reported a scene at a lecture Mr. Yao attended Monday when students tried to get his autograph.

Li Detian, a math student and basketball player at Jiaotong University, told state media that he was looking forward to Mr. Yao’s unique contribution to campus life: “I hope Yao can play for our university team, or at least come to teach us some techniques.”

–Miguel Gonzalez Jr.

Detlef Schneider

Lang Lang

Lang Lang is a rock star. Not in the typical sense – meaning, you’re not going to see him double billed with U2 or Coldplay anytime soon (but never say never). No, it’s the persona of the Chinese pianist that’s really rock star in stature. Unlike many of his pianist peers, it is Lang Lang’s connection not just with his music but with his audience that gives him that Jagger-like prominence. While he doesn’t strut with the sexual bravado of the aforementioned Rolling Stone, his enthusiasm and passion is what captivates his audience – much like his hero, Liszt. A little background: After first hearing Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in a Tom and Jerry cartoon at the age of 3, Lang Lang realized his purpose. Now approaching 30, Liszt is still a big part of his life – so much so, he’s dedicated virtually an entire CD to his idol aptly entitled “Lizst: My Piano Hero.”

This weekend, Lang Lang performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Gustavo Dudamel – and guess what? Liszt was not on the menu – at least, on paper. “Bach, Schubert and Chopin are already a program which I think fits very well, and it was already planned even before I did the recording,” the artist said before the show. “But don’t worry, we will have Liszt for the encore… Liszt, and more Liszt!”

More on this from Speakeasy

Reuters

Is Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan (above) more powerful than U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (below)?

How do you rank power brokers in a political system where major decisions are typically made by consensus and behind closed doors?

That’s one of a number of questions raised by China’s showing on the latest Forbes’s list of the world’s most powerful people, recently unveiled on the magazine’s website.

A counterpart to Forbes’s annual ranking of the world’s wealthiest people, the power list attempts to identify the individuals “that matter” based on (among other things) the number of people and amount of financial resources they have power over. Despite rumors of its impending demise, the U.S. thoroughly dominates this year’s list, accounting for 26 of the 70 spots.

China comes in second with seven people making the list, up from six last year, though the country’s most powerful man, president Hu Jintao, has been knocked out of the top spot he held last year. Mr. Hu now ranks No. 3, behind Barack Obama and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a fall the magazine attributes to China’s impending leadership transfer.

While there’s plenty to say about where Mr. Hu should rank vis-à-vis Messrs. Obama and Putin, the arguably more noteworthy ranking is that of Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan, whom Forbes lists as the world’s 15th most powerful person, one spot ahead of Hillary Clinton.

On the surface, ranking Mr. Zhou ahead of the U.S. Secretary of State makes a certain amount of sense. After all, he’s the head of a bank that boasts more than $3.2 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves and is estimated to own a whopping $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasurys.

But unlike his U.S. counterpart, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke (No. 8 on the list), Mr. Zhou does not determine his own country’s monetary policy. That power resides with the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, China’s highest decision-making body, which issues orders on the basis of internal debates. The details of those talks are almost never disclosed.

In this system, analysts say, Mr. Zhou’s role is akin to that of an economic adviser – a position not exactly on par with Ms. Clinton’s.

The way the Standing Committee and the rest of the Chinese government do business means similar doubts can be raised about virtually any of the Chinese people who appear on the list, possibly even premier Wen Jiabao (No. 14), whose many public calls for political reform this year have produced little in the way of visible reform.

It’s an issue that Michael Noer, one of the Forbes editors responsible for putting together the power list, acknowledges is problematic.

“Power is measured in very different ways in different systems,” Mr. Noer told China Real Time after the rankings were released late last week. “[Ranking the most powerful people] is really hard to do…The Chinese in particular have been difficult.”

To compile the rankings, Mr. Noer said, he and another editor started with a list of 230 initial candidates, which they whittled down to 104. They then asked Forbes’s editors around the world to give each candidate a numerical score based on a handful of criteria.

The difficulty in determining who controls what in China had “complicated” the rankings process, Mr. Noer said, but he argued that the list still offered insights into the nature of power in China.

“China has more government officials on the list than any other country and almost all of the people on the China list come from government,” he said, adding most of the Chinese people who appeared on the magazine’s rich list this year were also candidates for the power list.

The only mainland Chinese person to be ranked on the power list who doesn’t come from government is Baidu founder and CEO Robin Li (No. 42). Hong Kong shipping magnate Li Ka-shing also makes the list (No. 44).

“I think that’s an indication that the state is still very much in charge, even if it’s somewhat murky how that power is exercised,” Mr. Noer said.

Nor is does that seem likely to change in the near future with Xi Jinping, the likely successor to Hu Jintao, sliding in at No. 69 this year.

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter @joshchin

Google’s John Lagerling, Director of Global Partnerships, Android at Google, wouldn’t give any insight as to when the company’s application store, Android Market might be launched in China (currently, Android phones shipped officially here have application stores from handset makers or third parties pre-installed instead). When asked at Disrupt whether Google is making an effort to launch Android Market in China, he would only say the company is always working with its partners, without elaborating.

Wang Hua, founder and managing partner of Innovation Works, said he believes the right move for Google would be to launch a standard for third-party application stores instead of launching its own store.

Ultimately, speakers on the panel agreed that there aren’t many people making money on Android in the world’s largest mobile market by number of subscribers, but that things may change as advertisements in applications are rolled out, and cheaper tablets (1,000 yuan or less) begin to sell in China in 2012.

Meanwhile, the former head of Google’s China operations, Kai-Fu Lee, spoke about whether Chinese companies would be able to compete in the U.S., an old question given new relevance as some speculate that China’s Alibaba Group is a candidate to participate in a takeover of Yahoo. “The U.S. is a tough market for Chinese companies to go to,” he said. “The two markets are extremely different.” But some larger companies can do well in other developing markets, he said, such as in Southeast Asia, then “gradually Russia, Eastern Europe, South America and Africa”–something Google competitor Baidu has been trying with recent launches of products in Arabic, Thai and Vietnamese.

The issue for Chinese companies, Mr. Lee said, is that the local market is “so large, it’s so easy and natural to focus energy on China.” When asked about U.S. companies trying their luck in China, he said big companies are “so successful in the U.S., Europe and sometime Japan it’s hard to imagine why China should be different.” But he said he hopes past failures will show that China is “large enough” to do things differently and that companies should find someone to trust to run their businesses here and power a local team because “it’s a really scrappy marketplace.”

On the sidelines of the conference, Pony Ma, CEO of Chinese Internet giant Tencent, said his company is developing new ways to oversee content on its Tencent Weibo microblog service as it faces demands from China’s government and from society to prevent the spread of rumors online. He added that the oversight will be “beneficial” in the long term. “This isn’t just a government demand, I think society also has this demand,” he said.

The campaign to squash rumors online has been watched closely by investors and analysts, many of whom worry that the government’s regulation efforts could strangle fast-growing microblogging services from Tencent and rival Sina.

– Loretta Chao and Owen Fletcher

Read Full Post

Reuters

Will China’s Internet regulators force the country’s rambunctious microbloggers to write under their real names?

For months, observers of the Chinese Internet have been waiting to see what measures Beijing’s guardians of public order might take to rein in the country’s increasingly lively microblogging services, seen by many as providing a freewheeling alternative to the stodgy and heavily censored official press.

Speculation has only increased since one of China’s top propaganda officials called for more regulation of microblogging at a social media seminar last week, just days before Communist Party leaders were scheduled to meet in Beijing to discuss cultural reforms.

Now, with those meetings over, the state-run Beijing Daily has published a stridently worded editorial calling for a major change in the way China’s microblogging services work (in Chinese). Blogger Catherine Yeung has translated the crucial passage:

A basic measure to safeguard the integrity of the microblogging service is to establish a real-name system, whereby bloggers are required to show their real identity when they openly publish information or express their opinion. This encourages them to be responsible for themselves as well as for society. It is the only way to eradicate those who are hiding in a dark corner in disguise while they are brewing rumors and “firing illegal guns.”

How credible is the threat?

China’s Internet regulators have proposed using real-name registration to fight the “firing of illegal guns” in the past, though they’ve rarely followed through. Popular opposition and the difficulty of implementing an effective system for verifying users’ identities have generally made the effort more trouble than its worth.

In the case of Sina Corp.’s popular microblogging service Weibo – which boasts more than 200 million registered accounts – the onerous logistics and the possibility of a massive backlash would seem to make real-name registration a non-starter.

But the government has seemed sufficiently rattled by the disruptive power of microblogging to consider taking drastic measures. And the fact that the editorial was widely republished online, including on the websites of both the official Xinhua news agency and the Communist Party newspaper Guangming Daily, suggests the real-name registration idea could have high-level support.

Microbloggers themselves appeared to be taking the editorial in stride Tuesday, with some arguing that a real-name registration system would at least force Beijing’s army of paid pro-government commenters to reveal their true identities. Others noted with a certain ironic glee that the authors of the Beijing Times editorial, like many Chinese editorial writers, had chosen to use pseudonyms.

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter @joshchin.

Youku

The drivers of the van that hit the little girl have been arrested.

Video footage showing a 2-year-old girl in the southern Chinese city of Foshan being hit twice by vehicles while more than a dozen passersby did nothing to help has touched off of a painful round of soul-searching in the country and revived a long-running debate about the wisdom of helping strangers.

Taken from surveillance cameras set up in a Foshan market, the chilling images show the child, identified in local media reports as Yueyue, wandering alone into the street where she is hit and run over by a white minivan.

After pausing briefly, the van drives off, leaving Yueyue lying in the street. The footage then shows several people passing by without stopping to help the girl until, a few minutes later, she is hit by a second vehicle. Still more people walk past her without stopping — the final tally is 18, according to local media — until, finally, an elderly garbage collector drags her out of harms way and calls for help.

China’s state-run Xihua news agency reported Monday that police had arrested the drivers of both vehicles in connection with the incident, which happened on Oct. 13.

A spokesman at the Guangzhou military hospital where Yueyue was taken for treatment said Monday that she is in a coma. He refuted local media reports saying she was brain dead but acknowledged that she had suffered severe brain trauma.

A copy of the Southern Television Guangdong report on the Chinese video site Youku has been viewed more than 1.8 million times and drawn nearly 12,000 comments since it was posted Saturday.

The story was among the top five most-searched on Chinese search engine Baidu throughout the day Monday. It was also the most-discussed topic on Twitter-like microblogging site Sina Weibo, attracting more than 4 million comments by Monday evening.

Much of the online reaction in China has focused — as it would in probably any country — on the driver of the first vehicle, whom many said should be made to suffer the same fate as Yueyue.

But much of the debate, and most of the vitriol, has been reserved for the passersby who saw a little girl lying wounded in the street and refused to help her.

“The two drivers are guilty and so are the first 18 people who walked by,” argued a Youku user writing under the name Moyao. “Why doesn’t the country establish a law to punish those who refuse to lift a finger to help people in mortal danger? …When morality holds no sway over cold-hearted Chinese people, what else can we do but turn to the law?”

The sentiment was much the same on Sina Weibo, which set up a “Please end the cold-heartedness” hashtag (in Chinese) to organize discussion of the incident. “How has society come to this?” read one post published under the hashtag by Weibo user Lu Yili. “As the economy moves forward, humanity retreats.”

This is not the first time the failure of people to help a stranger in need has led to a bout of introspective commentary on the Chinese Internet. On Friday, the same day Southern TV aired the Yueyue footage, the rescue by a foreign tourist of a Chinese woman who had jumped into Hangzhou’s West Lake in an apparent suicide attempt produced a similar outpouring. Why, many commenters wondered, was a foreigner willing to help the woman while Chinese tourists appeared to content just to stand on the shore and watch?

The apathy of the Chinese crowd is a phenomenon observed often, by foreigners and Chinese alike, in the recent years — an inevitable consequence, some say, of the country’s single-minded pursuit of economic growth.

But in dissecting the Yueyue incident, many commenters have pointed to another explanation: China’s lack of a Good Samaritan law to protect those who help strangers in need.

The potential consequences for those well-intentioned Chinese who chose to get involved was illustrated earlier this year by a bus driver who had stopped to help an 81-year-old woman he’d found lying injured on the ground only to have her tell police it was he who had knocked her over.

That episode, and others like it, have clearly been on the minds of many commenters in the case of the young girl.

“This is a social problem, not a problem of individuals,” wrote Weibo user AoB-9527. “It’s not cold-heartedness, it’s not being willing to lose out.”

A Youku user writing under the name Xiaodouban520 spelled it out in greater detail: “There are too many cases in which old people fall down, are saved and then turn around and sue the people who saved them… These people walking by didn’t dare help because they were afraid Yueyue’s parents would wrangle with them.”

Which raises the question: Would any of the people who passed the child by have stopped to help had they known there was camera footage to prove their good intentions?

– Josh Chin

Ushi

Ushi.cn sign-in page

US-based marketplace for business expertise Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) has jumped into China’s nascent professional networking space by taking a minority stake in Ushi, one of a handful of social media sites that aims to build itself into the Chinese version of LinkedIn.

GLG’s investment came as part of a recent $3 million financing round for Ushi, which comes on top of $1.5 million the Chinese company raised in an earlier funding drive.

GLG said in a press release Friday that it plans to partner with Ushi in developing it’s main Ushi.cn site as well as Ushi Answers, a new invitation-only Quora-like question and answer site focused on topics related to doing business in China.

Professional networking sites still occupy a relatively small niche in China, where other forms of social media, microblogging in particular, have exploded. The sites have nevertheless begun to attract attention, analysts say, in part because they offer marketers access to the country’s growing white-collar elite.

Launched in 2010 with 100 charter members, Shanghai-based Ushi says its member base now includes more than 50,000 CEO- and CTO-level executives and boasts representatives from more than 85% of China’s venture capital and private equity firms.

While the partnership with GLG may boost Ushi’s chances of eventually becoming the LinkedIn of China, the company faces stiff competition in the world’s largest Internet market, including from LinkedIn itself.

LinkedIn said in June that it had one million members in China, despite not having set up operations in the country. Paris-based professional networking company Viadeo, meanwhile, has managed to attract 6 million users to its Chinese subsidiary Tianji.

Ushi also has to contend with a homegrown competition in Jingwei, a site launched jointly by Nasdaq-listed “Chinese Facebook” Renren and jobs website Zhaopin.

Whether or not Ushi ends up beating the competition, the new partnership stands to benefit GLG in at least one respect: It can now mine the Chinese company’s membership for new experts to add to its own network.

– Josh Chin

Ushi

Ushi.cn sign-in page

US-based marketplace for business expertise Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) has jumped into China’s nascent professional networking space by taking a minority stake in Ushi, one of a handful of social media sites that aims to build itself into the Chinese version of LinkedIn.

GLG’s investment came as part of a recent $3 million financing round for Ushi, which comes on top of $1.5 million the Chinese company raised in an earlier funding drive.

GLG said in a press release Friday that it plans to partner with Ushi in developing it’s main Ushi.cn site as well as Ushi Answers, a new invitation-only Quora-like question and answer site focused on topics related to doing business in China.

Professional networking sites still occupy a relatively small niche in China, where other forms of social media, microblogging in particular, have exploded. The sites have nevertheless begun to attract attention, analysts say, in part because they offer marketers access to the country’s growing white-collar elite.

Launched in 2010 with 100 charter members, Shanghai-based Ushi says its member base now includes more than 50,000 CEO- and CTO-level executives and boasts representatives from more than 85% of China’s venture capital and private equity firms.

While the partnership with GLG may boost Ushi’s chances of eventually becoming the LinkedIn of China, the company faces stiff competition in the world’s largest Internet market, including from LinkedIn itself.

LinkedIn said in June that it had one million members in China, despite not having set up operations in the country. Paris-based professional networking company Viadeo, meanwhile, has managed to attract 6 million users to its Chinese subsidiary Tianji.

Ushi also has to contend with a homegrown competition in Jingwei, a site launched jointly by Nasdaq-listed “Chinese Facebook” Renren and jobs website Zhaopin.

Whether or not Ushi ends up beating the competition, the new partnership stands to benefit GLG in at least one respect: It can now mine the Chinese company’s membership for new experts to add to its own network.

– Josh Chin