Category: China

Piracy and plagarism

The U.S. protest with the World Trade Organization over China’s lax enforcement policy towards the piracy of intellectual property is a reminder that all is not well between the two powers, and that the pernicious issue of copyright and respect for IP lags western expectations. Despite the rise of the Napster Generation, and the bleatings of the anti-DRM contingent, “piracy” is still an issue inside of the U.S. and is not confined to foreign shores. This is not to apologize nor gloss over Chinese, or for that matter Russian blaseness over IP laws, but to point out the problem is not confined to the East.

The crux of the US complaint is the enforcement level for the Chinese is if an offender is apprehended with 500 copies of the pirated work. In theory, in the U.S., a single offense is enough to invoke that big red FBI-Interpol warning that runs at the beginning of every DVD.

Ironic then that Google got pinched here in China for using Sohu.com’s product dictionary for its pinyin input system. Sohu detected the transgression by finding the same errors in Google’s code that Sohu knew existed in its own.

Reminds me of the story that map publishers used to put phantom towns, misspelled streets, and bogus churches on their maps to bag plagiarists.

Anyway, while it is unfortunate the U.S. has had to formally complain about China and IP rights. Let me note that Lenovo spends about $1 billion a year to insure its PCs ship with a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows.

Beijing this week

Sitting in a conference room discussing the forthcoming summer Olympics, amazingly uncrippled by jet lag … a post more appropriate for Twitter, but I’ve all but dropped Twitter as one of the most spectacularly useless toys I’ve played with this year.

I’ll blog on Olympic marketing later — I have the global web strategy and am presenting my plan tomorrow. The challenge is simple: what can an Olympic sponsor do online that users will actually care about and return to?

I think I have an idea.

This is a short trip. Three full days in country, four nights, not a lot of exploration or out of office experiences — unlike last year’s first trip where I spent a lot of time meeting Chinese internet companies.

Beijing bound — blogging may be low this week

I’m off to the airport — and the family isn’t happy to have me missing Easter Sunday with them — but, the Olympics call and a man’s gots to do what a man’s gots to do ….

I know I can get online in my hotel room once I arrive sometime Monday (3 am est, 3 pm local time) and will try to post in the evening if I can find time. Beijing work hours tend to be late night local time so I can answer eastern US time zone emails.

Back on Friday night.

Digital Influence Mapping Project: Hong Kong Bloggers

Digital Influence Mapping Project: Hong Kong Bloggers Pt 1

Ogilvy PR’s John Bell is doing the China thing and blogging some interesting stuff about Chinese blogs. One interesting point is that Hong Kong bloggers sometimes run a mirror inside of the Great Firewall to insure uninterrupted readership within mainland China. Bell writes about the difficulty of identifying influential blogs through western measures such as Technorati. Good stuff.

“We are holding an Asia Pacific regional meeting of our Digital Influence team in the region. This is super-exciting due to the caliber of folks in the region. And the meetings are a lot more fun than they sound. We shared our videos from BlogHer and Vloggercon, as well as our really comprehensive approach to digital influence with each other. There are tremendous insights from each region.”

Andy Kessler: WSJ: Beijing Duck

Andy Kessler: WSJ: Beijing Duck

Andy Kessler gave me the keenest insights in 1994 when Forbes.com was a gleam in our eye. A columnist for Forbes ASAP he is, in my opinion, the best person writing about technology financing and the markets. He takes on China.

“Their stock market could help. China is filled with entrepreneurs who build companies, not buildings. I spent 10 days in China this month meeting with investors. They are smart and hungry but crippled with Enron accounting. On Jan. 1, listed companies must start releasing two sets of numbers — Chinese earnings and then calculated again using international standards. Many will start to show losses. Ouch. China is scared to open up because the first move might be to short the whole damn country. George Soros has been sniffing around, and they won’t let him in. Outsiders need to be licensed as Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor with a quota — currently less than 1% of total capitalization. Doesn’t sound like a market economy to me. The total value of U.S. stocks is 20 times as large for a reason.”

China’s First Global Capitalist – Businessweek on Yang Yuanqing

China’s First Global Capitalist

“What’s it like to work with the Chinese?” is the top question thrown my way the past 11 months. BusinessWeek helps me answer it with a profile of our chairman, Yang Yangqing.

“Yang Yuanqing, 42, chairman of Lenovo Group Ltd., the leading PC company in China, steps into the Ding Hao Electronics Mall and a dizzying scene. Everywhere there are signs, lights, and swarms of shoppers. Strolling from one shop to another to peruse the displays of his company’s devices, Yang, introduced by his handlers, speaks quietly with shopkeepers. But each time he stops, he is immediately surrounded by a scrum of people giddily snapping his picture with tiny digital cameras and camera phones. Yang is a rock-star executive here, a Chinese Bill Gates.”

I’ll post in the future about my impressions of Lenovo’s culture and leadership. I’ve had a few interactions with Yangqing and have found him remarkably thoughtful and decisive — a guy who projects immense patience and attention to execution. He is not a larger-than-life type of manager who plays into the old PC industry’s adoration for what Jim Manzi at Lotus once called the “Cult of Personality.”

Beijing Boyce – drinking guide to Beijing

Beijing Boyce

Just left a comment on my May post about Beijing Nightlife and automatically earns a place in my Beijing expat blogroll as a service to my buddies in BJ who need a guide to the local scene.

“Stay home on Saturday night after a full day of staff training and before a Sunday in the office, or answer an SMS from Eddie O and go out for “just one drink.” I recklessly chose the latter and was soon riding shotgun on a high-speed Sanlitun pub-crawl. Here are the highlights.”

Talk Talk China pulls the plug

Talk Talk China

ImageThief clued me in to the impending end of my favorite China blog — Talk Talk Chine — a nasty, snarky, anonymous slam on life in China from a western pov. On Saturday it goes dark. I’ll miss it. There were moments of high humor from TTC.

“The time has come to say goodbye. In the 1.5 years that TalkTalkChina has been up and running, we’ve had our soapbox to complain – and complain we did. This blog was set up because we just needed to get things off our chest and validate our frustrations. You have helped us do just that!”

MANNinCHINA: North Korea…to go or not to go?

MANNinCHINA: North Korea…to go or not to go?

Michael Mann is living dangerously. A round of golf in North Korea the week they light off a nuclear test? No thanks.

“Over the weekend, a couple of friends here in Beijing told me about a trip to North Korea, planned for the last weekend in October. Basically, it’s a golf/sight-seeing trip with a “business” twist.

“As soon as I heard about it I immediately said “I’m in.” How many chances does one get to go to North Korea? I’m not afraid to go…what’s the worst that could happen? Well, I guess there are plenty of bad things that could happen to a US citizen in North Korea…but what are the chances of them happening?”