I cannot tell you how many times we have had to explain to people why we do not have a Chinese language version of our China Law Blog, but each time the explanation is the same. Our blog posts are written for Western businesses already in or doing business with China, or looking to do the same; most of it would not be of interest to Chinese readers.
Much of a blog’s effectiveness as a communication medium has to do with tone and layout, both of which tend to get lost in translation. Chinese netizens do not experience the Internet in the same way English-language netizens do. On the other hand, a Chinese-language blog built specifically for a Chinese audience makes sense because information is contextualized within a familiar context. For more on this, check out this article by David Wolf, entitled, “The Internet Does Not Rise Above Nations and Cultures” this AmCham podcast by Jeremy Goldkorn, this post by Bill Bishop, this article on a talk by Kaiser Kuo or this CNN article, with ample quotes by Sam Flemming. Or just about anything else written by any of these five people, all of whom have their hands on the pulse of China’s Internet (how’s that for using a very physical cliché to describe a very digital world?).
The big topic used to be on how and when differences between China’s Internet and that in places like the United States would eventually fade, but now people seem much more interested in dealing with China’s existing internet reality. A couple of readers (both of whom have copious knowledge on China’s internet) passed along a post on Kai Lukoff’s always enlightening TechRice blog, with the suggestion we do something with it here.
The post is entitled, “China’s Early Stage Ecosystem,” and it, in turn, contains an excellent and in-depth slide-show is by Chris Evdemon, General Manager of Incubation Programs at InnovationWork. If you are interested in China’s Internet (and who isn’t?), this slide-show is a must see.
The first half of Chris’s presentation is chock full of great statistics on China’s Internet and mobile technology usage. Slide 29, for example, includes a great breakdown of Internet users by age, showing that 83% of Chinese netizens are below the age of thirty. Slide 28 does a great job of illustrating how different segments of China’s population utilize mobile phones, showing that a majority of mobile phone users are still blue collar workers who depend solely on basic text and voice messaging services for their livelihoods and their entertainment. Chris also shows that the other largest group, young white collar Chinese, are much more interested in cheap games and music than in sophisticated e-mail applications.
In the second half of his slideshow, Chris uses a similar array of charts and figures to survey China’s angel and venture capital landscape, focusing in on the need for more investment during early stage company development (slide 52 provides a good wrap up of this discussion). On slide 36 Chris highlights three business types available to foreign start-ups wishing to have a go of it in China – Joint Ventures, WFOEs, and representative offices (ROs). If you want more information on these three structures, go here for WFOEs, here for JVs and here for ROs.
Check out Chris’s presentation and let us know what you think. Where is China’s internet going and what role, if any, will foreigners play in its direction?
