Jacky Chan as China's soft power force - Ben Cavender

Ben Cavender

Gaining soft power is not an exclusive issue for China’s government. Jacky Chan and Wanda might be equally important for how the world sees China, says branding expert Ben Cavender to the South China Morning Post.

The South China Morning Post:

… it’s clear China is trying to exert a lot more intangible soft power force on the world,” said Ben Cavender of China Market Research Group. “With (President Donald) Trump coming into power, it’s created a massive opportunity for China to sort of rebrand itself.” 

Building up China’s entertainment industry can also support other sectors, from retail to advertising, which is a crucial move as the government works to maneuver an economic growth transition away from manufacturing and exports. 

“It used to be very difficult for China’s movie industry to go abroad,” Chan said. “Now, China has the capital and the ability to start purchasing foreign companies … this kind of cooperation will lead us to learn more, and allow us to spread Chinese culture overseas to help more people understand China.” 

Chan says he’s happy to use his influence to introduce China to the world, and that falls in line with next steps for his new animation. There are plans to roll out internationally, and eventually make a feature film over the next few years. 

But he has become so ubiquitous — showing up on commercials for everything from shampoo to energy drinks — that consumers sometimes feel “he’s in it for a paycheck because [it seems] he doesn’t care about the product,” Cavender said.

More in the South China Morning Post.

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The future of religion in China - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Journalist Ian Johnson documented in this book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao how an estimated 350 million Chinese citizens found solace in religion, despite a ambiguous governments. In TimesOut Shanghai he tells how he feels that movement will develop in the future.

TimesOut Shanghai:

How do you think religion will develop in China? 

'They’re definitely all going to exist in the future, but I think they’ll appeal to different people. Big urban churches, like the one in Chengdu I describe in the book, appeal largely to white collar people in big cities, who are less interested in traditional culture and feel Christianity is more modern. But many other people are eagerly embracing traditional Chinese culture. This might be people who go fasting for a weekend with monks, or go to temples and read Buddhist mantras, or practice calligraphy. On one hand, this can be just seen as a hobby, but often there are religious statues, incense – some kind of a spiritual meaning and ritual, even if it’s not explicitly religious. But there is no interreligious dialogue in China. There are a lot of areas where religions could co-operate and it could be helpful, but people remain siloed in their religions. Christians don’t know anything about Buddhists, Buddhists don’t know anything about Christians, and nobody knows anything about Islam.' 

You met so many fascinating people throughout the book. Who made the biggest impression? 

'I think it’s the Beijing pilgrims who go to the Miaofengshan temple every year. More than 80 pilgrim associations from Beijing attend – groups you would just never think existed. They are really devoted people. They were typical in the sense that they really believed in actions – don’t spend a lot of time talking about it, just go and do charitable things, acts of faith. In a lot of Chinese cities, you don’t see any sign of religion. It’s not like European cities with big churches; in China you have to really look, and then you find all these people with their own faith and rituals just beneath the surface.'

More in TimesOut Shanghai.

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Lotus: a mirror of China's society - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Sarah Mellors reviews for the LA Review of Books Zhang Lijia's Lotus: A Novel. The novel is a telling story of how China's society works, she says, and both main characters Lotus and Bing illustrate many issues: rural-urban divide, economic development without political liberalization, the post-Mao moral vacuum and money worshiping, and the tension between so-called traditional Chinese values and modern concerns.

LA Review of Books:

Within the hierarchy of Chinese prostitutes, Lotus is close to the bottom, working in a massage parlor that also offers erotic services. For most sex workers, the best they can hope for is a permanent position as an ernai (literally, second tit), a mistress whose housing and daily expenses are covered long term by a wealthy male patron. Though ernai rarely become wives, they can enjoy otherwise unattainable degrees of financial security and live in luxury. 

Yet, when multiple businessmen demand that Lotus become their ernai, she declines their offers. Instead, she falls for Bing, a photographer educated at Tsinghua University (one of China’s top schools) who is 16 years her senior, and who left his job in business to pursue a passion project of documenting the lives of Shenzhen’s sex workers. Through interactions among Lotus, Bing, and other characters, the book chronicles the changes in China since the period of reform and opening up that Deng Xiaoping initiated in 1978. 

Zhang’s lens zooms in and out, balancing Lotus and Bing’s personal lives with critiques of the sociopolitical climate as a whole. Lotus and Bing’s continual search for meaning and a sense of self beyond the quest for money mirrors the crisis of an entire generation of Chinese. Bing, highly educated and significantly older than Lotus, is representative of the generation of idealistic intellectuals who peacefully protested against government authoritarianism in 1989. Lotus, a generation younger, encounters a similar existential crisis but from the perspective of a poor migrant worker seeking to reconcile the hedonism of the city with her conservative rural upbringing and Buddhist faith. 

As in the LGBTQ novel Beijing Comrades, which I reviewed for this publication a year ago, readers of Lotus will encounter a vast array of topics related to modern China, including the growing rural-urban divide, economic development without political liberalization, the post-Mao moral vacuum and money worshiping, and the tension between so-called traditional Chinese values and modern concerns. These themes are effortlessly integrated into Lotus’s coming-of-age story. Against this backdrop, Zhang emphasizes the fortitude of her protagonist as much as Lotus’s vulnerability and suffering. The book highlights the ways in which sex work can lead to upward mobility for young women as well as abuse and social stigma. Well researched and deftly written, Lotus is at times cutting and raw, at other points delicate and poetic.

More in the LA Review of Books.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Hooked on the opium of the people - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

An estimated 350 million Chinese are hooked to different religions, looking for a way to deal with the lack of morality of their current society. The Spectator reviews positively Ian Johnson's book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, and describes a major change in China's cultural fabric.

The Spectator:

China has moved from zero tolerance of worship to more than 350 million believers in Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity and Islam. In an era in which religion was expected by many to become extinct, this is a stunning development. It has happened in a country where the policies of the regime range from grudging tolerance to heavy-handed oppression. We need to understand the explosion of religious faith in China. Ian Johnson’s excellent book explains it. 

He depicts a nation in deep moral crisis, quoting a 2014 official opinion poll in which 88 per cent of respondents agreed that society was suffering from ‘a social disease of moral decay and lack of trust’; and he cites a bestselling novelist who writes of ‘a tide of lust and greed’ surging from every corner of his home city, Chengdu. A Communist Party communiqué laments that ‘in a number of areas, morals are defeated, sincerity is lacking’. 

Referring to the party’s promotion of moral exemplars, a blogger tells Johnson: ‘Everything they teach you is fake.’ A Christian publisher says: ‘People can’t believe how corrupt society has become.’ In a society once ruled more by ethics than laws, in which religion and community cohesion were inseparable, people regret ‘the absence of a moral compass’. 

In this crisis, Johnson shows that people are turning to religions in search of moral clarity, truth and a meaning to their lives. At a spiritual level, like believers everywhere, they have an impulse to believe in God. At a social level, especially in Christian ‘house churches’, unregulated by the state, and self-governing, they find mutual trust and shared values, communities which combine faith and action. An estimated quarter of the lawyers active in the ‘rights defence’ movement of the early 21st century were Christians.

More in the Spectator.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.
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How to push ahead with private hospitals - Jeffrey Towson

Jeffrey Towson

Medical reform in China has been lagging, and private hospitals hardly play a role, because patients to not trust them, and medical staff does not want to leave state-funded career. Beida business professor Jeffrey Towson explains on his weblog what could be a road to reform, with the help of investment bankers.

Jeffrey Towson:

I argue the shortest path to this situation is to merge 200 existing small public hospitals under a large and well-run commercial SOE. Hence my argument for investment bankers. 

We let the M&A bankers start rolling up smaller public hospitals into 5-10 big SOE hospital chains. Pull 100-200 small state-owned (and not particularly well-run) hospitals together under one well-managed commercially-focused SOE (there are several). And then let that group knit the hospital mix together into a functioning and modern chain. 

One SOE that comes to mind for this type of SOE consolidation strategy is China Resources. They have done exactly this in other sectors (beer, retail). This approach would also create a clear role for private money in public hospitals: to finance the deals, provide incentives and upgrade facilities. Nobody is going to invest private money in today’s small, stand-alone SOE hospitals. But a larger the SOE M&A roll-up could attract private capital. 

And my biggest argument for this approach is it doesn’t require fighting or replacing the entire existing system. Private hospitals and insurance can then develop slowly in parallel.

More at Jeffrey Towson's weblog.

Jeffrey Towson is the co-author of The One Hour China Book (2017 Edition): Two Peking University Professors Explain All of China Business in Six Short Stories

Jeffrey Towson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau.  Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.
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China: going fully cashless - Ben Cavender

Ben Cavender

China might have invented the paper money, it is most likely also the first one to go fully cashless, says retail analyst Ben Cavender to Motherboard. "People basically run their lives through smartphones in China."

Motherboard:

Last month China Tech Insights released a report after polling Chinese WeChat users, that again underlined the rise of mobile payments. It found that in 2015, 65 percent of users spent less than 500 yuan ($73) a month through WeChat Pay, but in 2016 the figure had dropped to under 40 percent. Forty-five percent of users said they used WeChat Pay because they didn't carry cash, with around 60 and 55 percent saying they used it because it was "fast" and "easy" respectively. 

"People basically run their lives through smartphones in China," said Ben Cavender, senior analyst at Shanghai-based China Market Research Group. "If you compare the US to China in terms of how people access the internet, China is much more heavily slanted toward smartphones. People are already spending so much time on their smartphones; it's logical for them to have the tools they need in one place."

More in Motherboard.

Ben Cavender is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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China's search for global power - Howard French

Howard French

Howard French, author of Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power explains at the Pulitzer Center how China is searching for power at an international stage, and how the global power might change its relationship with Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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What to do when you fail in China - Jeffrey Towson

Jeffrey Towson

Carlsberg and Ford are two Western companies who were on they way down in China, but managed to renew themselves. Beida Business professor Jeffrey Towson uses on his website their examples to explain what companies can do to change their China operation for the better to draw some important lessons. (With a sidestep to Nanjing Fiat)

Jeffrey Towson:

Lesson 1: You don’t necessarily need to get to China early to win. 

Ford only really started producing cars in China in significant numbers in 2005 (61,000 sold in 2005). This was way behind General Motors, which established its joint venture with SAIC in 1997. And it was decades after Volkswagen launched its China joint venture in 1984. 

Being early is an advantage for sure. But in some businesses, it is never too late go after the China market. 

Lesson #2: You don’t need to start off in first tier cities. 

Ford did not partner with a major automotive group in a coastal first tier city. It did not go to Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen / Guangzhou. It went to Chongqing, far inland. 

While I have not seen Ford’s sales breakdown by region, it would not be surprising to see the company doing particularly well in the inland markets. Like Carlsberg, going deeper inland and perhaps avoiding the more entrenched competition in the coastal cities, was a good strategy. 

The other factor here is that an inland headquarters has the advantage of lower labor costs. Manufacturers are increasingly moving inland to avoid rising labor costs on the coast. 

Lesson 3: Market share can shift fairly quickly in China 

General Motors’ auto sales increased to about 3.9 million in China in 2016. That is up from 3.6 million in 2015. Volkswagen is in the same sales range. There is definitely some market stability at the front of the pack. 

However, market share in the middle shifts quickly. In the past years, Ford has surpassed Toyota and its two joint-venture partners which sold 917,500 cars (a 9% increase). Ford also passed Honda’s China volume at 756,000 cars (a 26% increase). So market share can move quickly in the middle.

More in Jeffrey Towson's weblog. Here is part one.

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Franchising is key for Yum! in China - Jeffrey Towson

Jeffrey Towson

Yum! China has been spun-off and needs a solid strategy to grow in China. Franchising is such a key strategy, writes Beida business professor Jeffrey Towson on his weblog. " This is exactly what 3G Capital has done since acquiring Burger King."

Jeffrey Towson:

Most of the China outlets are owned. Franchising new outlets would accelerate growth. While Yum’s +7,000 China outlets is a lot, it is not overwhelming for China. You could have a lot more. Franchising would get you there faster. 

But franchising decreases operational control. That has big implications in general. And this is a particular concern in a country rife with food safety issues. 

Another idea is to just franchise the existing outlets. That would really move the needle financially. It would free up a lot of capital, get the employees off the payroll and spike the return on equity. 

Note: This is exactly what 3G Capital has done since acquiring Burger King. They shifted the existing units to franchises and have more than doubled their earnings in a few years. However, I believe the China Burger King franchise is still under a master franchise agreement with Cartesian Capital in New York. So this is mostly a non-China story. Anyways, I wouldn’t be surprised if the activists bring up ... franchising repeatedly.

More at Jeffrey Towson's weblog.

Jeffrey Towson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need hi at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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China's search for happiness - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Most of China has left poverty behind, but people are still not happy. The search for moral values is now taking over the desire among China's citizens, says author Ian Johnson of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in PRI. How turning to religion can change the country.

PRI:

“As one guy who told me, 'We used to think we were unhappy because we were poor. Now, we’re no longer poor, but we’re still unhappy,'” says Ian Johnson, a long time correspondent in China, most recently writing for The New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and author of the new book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. 

If it’s tempting to pull out the old saying "money can’t buy happiness," many Chinese are more interested these days in figuring out what can. And so, a search for meaning has intensified in recent decades, as the descendents of those who once revered Mao Zedong and the Communist Party, and Chinese emperors before that, now embrace new centers of meaning, and new communities that share their values... 

“A lot of it is driven by this feeling that there are no shared values in Chinese society anymore,” says Johnson. “People constantly talk in social media –—and this is uncensored (by the Chinese government), it’s OK to talk about it — this lack of minimum moral standards in society, that anything goes, as long as you don’t get caught.” 

Another driver, Johnson says, is a desire for community in a society that has rapidly urbanized, with rural Chinese moving to new cities, and old urban-dwellers losing their neighborhoods to demolition and construction of new developments. 

The Communist Party officially recognizes five religions — Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam, and tries to control each under the umbrella of the state, forbidding most ties with foreign centers of power, such as the Vatican. The party has long been wary of competing parallel power structures, including "house churches," gatherings of Protestant Chinese who seek to practice their faith outside of the strictures of Communist Party rules. Many such adherents still remember and respect Watchman Nee...

Turning to religion or spiritual practice is one way Chinese are now looking for meaning, but, as in the past in China, what starts with finding a new moral center, can lead to a yearning to shape new relationships and rules in society. China is still finding its moral compass and its direction, some 40 years after Mao’s death, and what started as a search for meaning may yet lead to more sweeping societal change. It’s a prospect that makes the Communist Party nervous, and keeps it vigilant. 

“I think all religions have an over-arching idea of justice and righteousness, and heaven, ‘tian,’ that ‘s above all else,” Johnson says. “It helps create among people that it’s not the government that gives us rights and laws. It comes from something higher. And I think that’s the change that could come to China in the future.”

More in PRI.

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Drug scandals will dwarf China's food scandals - Jeffrey Towson

Jeffrey Towson

Beida business professor Jeffrey Towson gives on his weblog reasons why China's drug scandals will be larger than any of its past food scandals. Morbidity is larger. Drug scandals are harder to detect and the profitability of the fake drug industry is higher. More troublesome: the industry is going global.

Jeffrey Towson:

#4 Unlike most food scandals, drug scandals are a global problem. 

If you are taking a pill in the US, part of it probably came from China. Over 80% of the world’s active pharmaceutical ingredients are now made in China and India (but mostly in China). So these drug problems have global reach. 

The most famous example of this was the 2008 Heparin scandal. Tainted Heparin from China ended up killing over 240 Americans. As a result, 34 China facilities (via Baxter International) were banned from exporting. 

And it gets more complicated. A lot of these quality problems are actually in the chemistry, as opposed to just in the final drug or in the active pharmaceutical ingredient. In 2012, police in China detained +60 people who were making chromium-tainted gel capsules with industrial waste. The police seized over 77 million gel capsules and shut down 80 production lines. Think about those numbers for a moment. 77M capsules and 80 production lines. 

But the biggest “global” aspect of this problem is likely in other developing economies. Fake drugs are everywhere in SE Asia and Africa. And many are coming from China. The morbidity and mortality resulting from this is hard to overstate. For example, the Wellcome Trust estimated that one-third of the malaria drugs in Uganda may be fake or substandard. 

Final Point: Pharmaceuticals in China are going to grow. But absent improvements, drug scandals could also become much bigger as well. 

Healthcare spending today in China is about 6% of GDP, up from 4-5% a few years ago. It is likely on its way to 12-13%. And China’s pharmaceutical market, already big at $108B (2015), is growing along with this. All of this is good news. It follows naturally from growing domestic demand (aging + increasing wealth + more chronic disease) and a continued movement of pharmaceutical production to China. 

So this is a big market that is growing fast and developing in sophistication. But it logically follows that any future quality problems will also be larger in scale. That is worrisome.

More at Jeffrey Towson's weblog.

Jeffrey Towson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Foreign involvement: the red line in China's spiritual revival - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Staying away from foreign involvement is key in the massive religious revival China is going through, author Ian Johnson of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao tells NPR. Religion is condoned as long as the new movements stick to a few unwritten rules in its sensitive relations with the Communist Party.

NPR:

President Xi Jinping has called on China's citizens to continue to be "unyielding Marxist atheists." He insists that the country's 85 million Communist Party members remain atheists. But increasingly, he's loosening the restrictions on religious organizations. These days, Chinese authorities even subsidize some religious practice under the guise of backing what the government calls "traditional culture." 

Johnson writes about the myriad ways religions of all sorts are practiced today in China. He describes walking in an elaborate Buddhist-inspired funeral procession in the Beijing neighborhood called the Temple of the Tolling Bell. He delves into the small sect, Eastern Lightning, a cultlike group that will remind some readers of Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual practice. Eastern Lightning dared to attack China's Communist Party. 

"They feel it's them against what they call the 'Great Red Dragon,' which is the Communist Party," Johnson says. "They operate illegally, and they almost try to hijack church congregations. They sometimes resort to violence; and their very secretive nature, their proclivity for violence, in some ways, this also reflects how the Communist Party runs China," Johnson says. 

The "red line" for the faithful is foreign involvement. 

"If people are part of a religion that has a strong foreign component, if they're getting money from abroad, if they're getting training, this is a problem for the government," Johnson notes. 

But ultimately, all religions are global. And that may increasingly pose a problem for Chinese authorities. 

"It's a double-edged sword for the government," Johnson concludes. "They think religion can maybe provide some stability in a society that is racing forward and doesn't have a center of gravity. ... But religion creates values that are above any government values, ideas of justice, of righteousness, of truth and these are things can come back to haunt the party."

More (including a radio interview) at NPR.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Sex workers in China: between market economy and filial piety - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Twelve year it took author Zhang Lijia of Lotus: A Novel to write her book on prostitution in China. She sits down with Josh Chin of the Wall Street Journal to discuss how women are caught between the country's market economy en filial piety.

The Wall Street Journal:

The book took 12 years to complete, which suggests you’ve been thinking about this topic for a while. How has it affected your view of sex in China?

I think the market economy has undermined gender equality because women have shouldered most of the burden as China made the transition from the planned economy. In factories, women are the first to go. In the factory I worked for, all women above 45 years of age were laid off. One year I saw a woman I’d worked with selling newspapers in the street. Without government intervention, women have fewer choices.

In the novel, Lotus talks a lot about helping her brother go to college and dreams about one day returning to her village as the triumphant filial daughter. Is it common that women in China turn to sex work to help relatives?

Almost all the women I know provide financial help to their families. Of course, there’s the filial piety thing. But it also makes them feel less guilty, and gives them more power within the family. One woman told me her brother ended up in jail for some reason, so she worked as a prostitute to finance his wife and children. When the brother got out, he wanted to take his daughter out of school, but the woman said, ‘No, I pay for her. She stays in school.’ So, for some there’s empowerment.

A lot of people might assume sex workers are cynical about relationships, and yet there’s a love story at the heart of your novel. Is that a literary device, or does it have a basis in reality?

What’s interesting is that a lot of the women kept boyfriends. Of course, we all long for love, but they were more passionate about it, because they were dealing in this fake intimacy every day and were really longing for genuine affection.

More in the Wall Street Journal.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Now Didi comes after Uber globally - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean

China's ride hailing app Didi Chuxing just raised over US$5 billion, more than it would need for its China operation. After kicking Uber out of China, Didi might be preparing to go after the US company on a global scale, suggests managing director of the Chinaccelerator William Bao Bean to Bloomberg.

Bloomberg:

Didi's record funding round is said to value the company at more than US$50b and gives it a war chest to ramp up efforts to harness artificial intelligence, build driverless cars, and compete more aggressively in foreign markets. 

The cash infusion coincides with a rough period for Uber, which is facing lawsuits and an image problem, and follows a detente in China after Uber agreed to essentially cede the market to Didi in exchange for a significant stake. 

"The bruising battle with Uber taught [Didi] a lot," said William Bao Bean, a Shanghai-based partner at venture capital fund SOSV. "Now it's battle-hardened, and can buy the best talent in the world to attempt to go big in China, and also go global."... 

Didi has expanded outside its home turf mostly by making investments or forming partnerships with ride-hailing companies such as Grab in Singapore, Ola in India and Lyft in the US. 

For Uber, which is present on every populated continent, India represents its largest overseas market and a pivotal battleground. 

As Didi develops its autonomous driving technology, it could have the capacity to knit together a far-flung global network of allies, focused on developing markets in Asia and the Middle East, Bao Bean said.

More in Bloomberg.

William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Haier's boss surprises his acquired US management - Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer

When Haier took over GE's Appliances, US management feared the future. But the Chinese takeover is very different from the American style, they discovered. Western firms are victim of their traditional viewpoints, tells IMD-professor Bill Fischer, who studied Haier's very different corporate style, to AP.

AP:

Haier has tried to speed up product development by using the internet to ask potential customers for suggestions and feedback, an approach taken by Chinese smartphone brands. The company says a new appliance can go from drawing board to market in as little as one year, down from more than three years. 

CEO's Zhang Ruimin’s management changes “are more impressive than we see anywhere,” said William A. Fischer, a professor at the IMD business school in Switzerland who has followed the company for a decade. He co-wrote the 2013 book “Reinventing Giants: How Chinese Global Competitor Haier Has Changed the Way Big Companies Transform.” 

“He trusts his employees to play more of a leadership role,” Fischer said. 

He said a group of European executives he took to Haier headquarters two years ago refused to believe its decentralized style could work. 

“I was struck by how daring Haier was in their thinking. And the people I was working with were hostages to very traditional ways of working,” said Fischer.

More at AP.

Bill Fischer is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Beijing: the center of spirituality - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Beijing is regaining its position of China's spiritual universe, writes author Ian Johnson of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the New York Times. While much of its past has been destroyed, the city where Johnson lives is now regaining its position of China's spiritual capital. A struggle between commerce, communist and traditional values.

Ian Johnson:

When I first came to Beijing in 1984, the city felt dusty and forgotten, a onetime capital of temples and palaces that Mao had vowed — successfully, it seemed — to transform into a landscape of factories and chimneys. Soot penetrated every windowsill and every layer of clothing, while people rode simple steel bicycles or diesel-belching buses through the windy old streets. 

Then, as now, it was hard to imagine this sprawling city as the sacred center of China’s spiritual universe. But for most of its history, it was exactly that. 

It wasn’t a holy city like Jerusalem, Mecca or Banaras, locations whose very soil was hallowed, making them destinations for pilgrims. Yet Beijing’s streets, walls, temples, gardens and alleys were part of a carefully woven tapestry that reflected the constellations above, geomantic forces below and an invisible overlay of holy mountains and gods. It was a total work of art, epitomizing the political-religious system that ran traditional China for millenniums. It was Chinese belief incarnate.... 

Once in a while, somewhat awkwardly, the Communist state even recreates the old rituals. In March, some friends of mine, retirees who are amateur singers and musicians, were hired as extras for a ceremony on the spring equinox. About 30 of them dressed up in gowns and Qing dynasty-era hats and marched solemnly to the altar. Accompanied by a small orchestra of musicians playing gongs, cymbals and kettle drums, they strode up to a table filled with imitation dead animals laid out for sacrifice. A young man dressed as the emperor then kowtowed and made the ritual offerings, all under the strict guidance of experts from the local cultural affairs bureau who had read accounts of the ancient practices. Later, videos streamed around social media platforms like WeChat, reinforcing the popular idea that the past is returning.

Much more in the New York Times.

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Hot pot: too early for a Western market - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

The successful hot-pot chain HaiDiLao is not only expanding fast in China, but has also set its eyes on foreign markets. That might be too early, judges business analyst Shaun Rein in Bloomberg. Moving into markets with different requirements might be too dangerous, especially outside Asia.

Bloomberg:

It will take time for Western consumers to understand what a hot pot is and flavors might need to be tweaked to broaden their appeal, said Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group in Shanghai. It's difficult for the chain to replicate its Chinese model in the U.S. because of higher labor costs, he said. 

"When you're waiting in line in China, you get a free manicure," he said. "It's cost-prohibitive in the U.S. They might have to adjust their value proposition and, slowly, foreigners will eat their food." 

In any case, there is more than enough opportunity for HaiDiLao in the domestic market, Rein said. 

"They need to expand more in China before they start looking overseas too much," Rein said. "They don't have enough restaurants in China. You often have to wait two or three hours to get into HaiDiLao."

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Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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