More domestic brands appearing on store shelves may indicate that the golden days for foreign brands are slipping away. “Made in China” was once considered a sign of cheapness and low-quality, but the belief now has changed. Chinese consumers now think that Chinese brands are equal to, or even exceed, foreign brands. As buyer confidence grows and domestic quality improves, what can multinational brands do to regain ascendancy?
In Search of the “China Way”: An Interview with Peter Cappelli
China is now home to many of the world’s largest and most dynamic private companies. But apart from a few exceptions such as Alibaba’s Jack Ma, little is known outside China about the intrepid entrepreneurs who built these business empires, often against astonishing odds. Professor Peter Cappelli at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and author of Fortune Makers: The Leaders Creating China’s Great Global Companies, is trying to change that.
Blocking Bitcoin: Why China’s Cryptocurrency Ban Could be Here to Stay
China has banned borderless cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, but it is a move the country may come to regret. Until recently, China was the world’s largest market for virtual currency and digital currencies trading and China’s ban on Bitcoin came abruptly. Some experts think Beijing’s intention is to regulate the market, not hobble it—but the crackdown may last for a while. The future for cryptocurrencies in China is unclear, because the Chinese government is also backing the underlying blockchain technology. Will cryptocurrencies come to light again?
How China’s Menswear Brand HLA Became so Successful
Over the past five years, the business model of China’s clothing industry has been unraveling. For decades, China’s vast apparel industry competed mainly on price. But with labor, land and raw materials costs rising, environmental regulations tightening and competition becoming ever fiercer, even many of China’s best-known brands have struggled. There has been one exception: HLA. The Jiangsu Province-based menswear label has grown stronger even as competitors shuttered hundreds of outlets. In this interview, Li Lode, Professor of Operations Management at CKGSB and Professor Emeritus at Yale University, explains how HLA’s success has been made possible by smart strategic decisions.
Selling With Selfies: How China’s Social Media Stars Get Rich?
Becoming a movie star isn’t attractive anymore. For many young netizens in China, online stardom is the ultimate dream, not only because online celebrities now earn even more than A-list movie stars, but also they are able to influence hundreds and thousands of people just by go livestreaming, sharing beauty tips and fashion trends and posting their own selfies. Consumer brands and clients are chasing after these online celebrities. Reports say the online celebrity economy by some calculations is worth more than the country’s domestic film industry. How to become an online star? How do they make money? What’s behind the rise of “wanghong culture”?
Patrick Horgan of Rolls-Royce: Powering into the Future
Few in the expat business community can rival Patrick Horgan’s depth and range of experience in the Chinese market. Since first coming to China as a volunteer in 1989, Horgan’s career has spanned business, diplomacy and cultural relations. Since 2011, he has been Regional Director of Northeast Asia for Rolls-Royce. As he tells CKGSB Knowledge, he believes China’s development ambitions make this an exciting time to be at the British manufacturing giant. China now has about 2,800 aircraft while in the US the number is 7,000 and there is a massive opportunity for international air framers and engine providers.
East or West? Some European Countries are Trying Hard to Balance
Central and Eastern Europe faces a tough balancing act as it looks toward China for investment and growth. Launched first in 2012, the “16+1” Cooperation Framework includes 16 countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. As a key part of the Chinese transcontinental economic and geopolitical vision, the heavily invested “16+1” becomes a perfect solution to some Central and Eastern Europe countries facing economic crisis. This closer tie with China, however, has made EU rattled. How to balance the relationship with EU and China becomes a head-scratching problem for many.
Does China Face a Family-Owned Business Succession Crisis?
The first wave of Chinese entrepreneurs are now in their 70s and 80s and it’s time to hand over the family business to their children. But in many cases it may not happen. With greater opportunities and a more international worldview, the younger generation has their own plans. Will this lead China to a business succession crisis?
Jordan Mechner: VR Won’t Replace Games
Few people have had the opportunity to watch the rise of video games as an economic and cultural force as closely as Jordan Mechner, who began making video games while in high school in the 1970s. He had his first hit, Karateka, in 1984 while he was still in college, and later went on to create the Prince of Persia franchise, which to date has sold over 20 million copies. In a wide-ranging interview over Skype from his office in Montpellier, France, Mechner, who is also a successful screenwriter and graphic novelist, talked about the evolution of game design and where games might head next.
Bytedance: China’s BuzzFeed with Brains?
Few people outside China will have heard of Bytedance, the Beijing-based software startup that creates fiendishly addictive content apps using world-leading artificial intelligence technology. However, more than 200 million people in China—or over one in four of the country’s mobile users—use Bytedance’s products every day, and now the company has ambitions to hook the rest of the world on its apps too. Huge traffic brings customized contents to Bytedance users, which is the magic code for its success. But copyright lawsuits and competition from the BAT companies are just two of the challenges Bytedance faces.
What Defines China’s Business Future? Data, Smart Systems, and Sharing.
Forget e-commerce. In today’s China, the smartest businesses are moving the digital revolution into the offline world as the boundaries between online and offline become increasingly blurred. The integration of information technology into our daily lives is allowing companies to apply advanced big data techniques to transform a range of industries previously considered relatively impervious to digital disruption. For businesses across nearly every sector, the key to future success now lies in three areas: data, smart systems and the sharing economy.
Why US-China Trade Tensions Could Be Here to Stay
As Donald Trump signed the memorandum proposing the introduction of tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports on March 22, 2018, the president of the United States quipped, “This is the first of many.” He didn’t go back on his words. No one seems to be a winner, but the trade war goes on and the entire world is paying close attention. Although both sides express willingness to have talks, can the trade war be stopped? What’s the future for US-China relations?
Competing to Innovate in the Pearl River Delta Region
Cities across China are making huge investments in order to transform themselves into world-class innovation hubs. So far, the Pearl River Delta Greater region, led by Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, is the most promising area. Connected by high-speed railways and land bridges, barriers between Hong Kong and mainland have been removed. With Hong Kong as the financial hub, Shenzhen as the innovation center and Guangzhou as the long-term trade harbor, China’s “Greater Bay Area” is taking shape. Will the regional integration create a new innovation engine that China urgently needs?
Ready, Player One? The Videogame Industry Advances to the Next Level
In the early seventies, mechanical pinball games still dominated the arcades, as they had since the Great Depression. Then in 1972, Allan Alcorn, a 24-year-old designer in Sunnyvale, CA, developed a two-dimensional electronic table tennis game and installed it in a local bar. Pong was an unexpected hit at Andy Capp’s Tavern, and soon became so popular that it spawned an entirely new entertainment medium, the videogame. As Devin Griffith put it in his 2013 history of the videogame, Virtual Ascendance, “[t]hree vertical lines and a bouncing square of light. That’s all it took to change the world.” Flash forward 45 years and annual videogame revenue now exceeds $100 billion.
Chinese Toys: Play With a Purpose
Chinese parents today are willing to spend more than their parents’ generation were to make their children smile. Retail sales of toys and games in China leaped over 250% between 2011 and 2016, making the toy market very appealing. Today, playtime in China is more about learning than fun and games—Chinese parents think play should be constructive, making educational toys more popular than traditional ones. Meanwhile, seizing kids’ playtime is also a key to winning the toy market, and that’s why toy brands are attempting to combine their products with a learning center.
Learning from the Rust Belt: How to Revive Northeast China
China’s once-mighty industrial heartland in the Northeast, or Dongbei, has fallen on hard times in recent years. Could the key to its revival lie in the American Rust Belt experience? As happened in the US Rust Belt, firms in Dongbei, almost all state-owned, started to struggle in the 1980s. They have been in decline ever since, leaving local governments with a cluster of problems, including heavy industry pollution and high debt levels, which would be instantly recognizable to policymakers in Gary, Indiana, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now that its counterparts in the West have now largely transcended the phase, what can Dongbei learn from the American rust belt’s experience?
The Real Cost of Air Pollution in China
We all know that air pollution is bad for our health. But what is often overlooked is that high pollution levels also cause significant harm to our economic well being. Brian Viard, Associate Professor of Strategy and Economics at CKGSB, has been researching the economic effects of pollution for much of the past few years. His team has found persuasive evidence that the costs of air pollution are greater and more wide-ranging than most people realize. In this interview with CKGSB Knowledge, he explains how tackling the pollution crisis could actually make the Chinese economy more productive.
The Uprising of China Fintech
China’s financial sector used to be famous for its poor service and imperviousness to innovation. Even today, when customers go to make a transaction at one of the country’s big state-run banks, they often take a bag of snacks with them—they know they’re in for a long wait. But things are changing fast in the Middle Kingdom. A new generation of digital finance firms is taking the country—and the global markets—by storm in everything from digital payments and micro-lending to insurance and wealth management. How will China’s lumbering state-run banks react? Will tightening regulation nip this revolution in the bud?
Ioana Kraft on European Dreams and Chinese Realities
Ioana Kraft began her career in international law, and moved to China 14 years ago. Since 2009, she has been the General Manager of the European Union Chamber of Commerce’s Shanghai chapter, working tirelessly to promote the interests of European businesses operating in eastern China. In this interview, she discusses the challenges and opportunities European businesses face in China.
Should China Worry About the Finances of Its Rising Middle Class?
As the Chinese economy shifts from exports and investment toward domestic consumption, the country is counting on the middle class to drive consumption levels higher. A good reason to be optimistic is that the growing middle class club, with more millennials, is getting more comfortable with borrowing. Yet it is also a worrying phenomenon because the amount of consumer debt keeps climbing. Meanwhile, the red-hot property market has always been a heavy burden on Chinese households and has been getting even heavier in recent years. Will China’s middle class be derailed? Should we worry about the finances of Chinese middle class?
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