Dropping birth figures in China are changing the country’s consumer market profoundly, as singles move upwards in spending patterns, says consumer analyst Ashley Dudarenok, author of Innovation Factory: China’s Digital Playbook For Global Brands at CNN. “We need to start thinking about single living and this new economic model as something that is here to stay,” she said.Read More →
The position of women in China has changed profoundly, says Zhang Lijia, author and expert on China’s cultural change in The Persistent. “Growing up in China, I was told marriage was my destiny. For today’s young women, it’s a choice – and one many are rejecting,” she says.Read More →
Ian Johnson, author of China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future and founder and director of China Unofficial Archives, discusses critical issues facing China at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. “Reclaiming Historical Memory and the Struggle for China’s Future”.Read More →
In China, many citizens looked with admiration at the US, but those days are certainly over, says London-based journalist Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus: A Novel, in an opinion piece at the South China Morning Post. Trump forced educated Chinese to rethink long-held assumptions about democracy, modernity, and the direction of history itself, she argues.Read More →
The demands of China’s consumers have changed profoundly, says marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok, in an interview at CNBC. “People are not just buying things,” she said at CNBC in a phone call. “They’re buying feelings, they’re buying identity, they’re buying a sense of connection.”Read More →
Business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The Split: Finding the Opportunities in China’s Economy in the New World Order, discusses a fundamental difference in the politics of China and the USA concerning the rich. China focuses on the 90% of the population who are not rich, while the US goes for the rich, he says at the Thinkers Forum.Read More →
China’s society is changing fast, and youngsters are adjusting their attitudes on how to organize their lives. Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok looks at those changes for Time. Individualism and self-love are some of the new features. “When traditional markers of success like marriage and homeownership become structurally inaccessible for many, young people are forced to redefine what a ‘good life’ means,” Dudarenok says.Read More →
Social commentator Zhang Lijia, author of “Socialism Is Great!”: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China, used a visit with her daughters to the Nanjing memorial hall to discuss the recent tensions between China and Japan in the South China Morning Post. “In a region where history is unresolved, even forward-looking security policy is dragged into the past. The ghosts of the 1930s still whisper. It is tempting to ask: why can’t Asia reconcile as Europe did,” she asks herself.Read More →
The China Speakers Bureau is happy to announce that Hamburg-based China expert Björn Ognibeni is joining its list of speakers. He has a past in analyzing global digital transformation, with a strong focus on China.Read More →
A silent exodus is taking place, as China’s youngsters migrate from the big cities to cheaper and more relaxed places in the country, like Dali in Yunnan, Chengdu in Sichuan, and Xiamen in Fujian, notes branding expert Ashley Dudarenok in the Jing Daily. What does this mean for the larger brands, she explains.Read More →
China veteran Kaiser Kuo, host of The Sinica Podcast, looks back at how the debate on China has developed in the West over the past forty to fifty years, and here it ended now, in a debate with host Eric Olander of Conversation Changers. The discussion on what China wants says more about the West than about China, he argues.Read More →
Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein reports on the latest research on China’s consumers. While spending might be down for the next months, consumers are not driven by nationalism, he tells CNBC. It is economic anxiety that makes the difference, he says.Read More →