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Journalist China
Business news from China By Doug Young.
Doug Young, journalist, has lived and worked in China for 20 years, much of that as a journalist, writing about publicly listed Chinese companies.
He is based in Shanghai where, in addition to his role as editor of Young’s China Business Blog, he teaches financial journalism at Fudan University, one of China’s top journalism programs.
He contributes regularly to a wide range of publications in both China and the west, including Forbes, CNN, Seeking Alpha and Reuters, as well as Asia-based publications including the South China Morning Post, Global Times, Shanghai Daily and Shanghai Observer
China’s crowded field of smartphone makers is quickly splitting into 2 camps as companies step out of their overheated home market in search of new growth opportunities. One group of larger, better-funded players like Huawei, ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063) and Lenovo (HKEx: 992) are choosing bigger, trickier markets like Western Europe and India, where campaigns can be costly but potential rewards are bigger. The second group consists of younger more entrepreneurial firms that are eying smaller emerging markets. The latest member of that group is Oppo Electronics, which is hinting at a launch in Singapore.
Meantime, Li Guoqing, the talkative co-founder of fading e-commerce pioneer Dangdang (NYSE: DANG), spent much of the past week regaling followers with laments about his own shortcomings as a father. I found Li’s series of posts about his sputtering relationship with his son both interesting and revealing. The musings, which sound almost desperate at times, hint that perhaps Li’s attention is shifting to a neglected personal life as his business empire that was one of China’s earliest e-commerce players shows rapid signs of aging. Read Full Post…
Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) WeChat has grown so quickly over the last 2 years that it was almost inevitable that the popular mobile messaging service would come under fire from China’s state-run media or Beijing regulators. The service briefly clashed with the telecoms regulator last year during a high-profile spat with leading telco China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL), and now WeChat is coming under fire from leading broadcaster CCTV for becoming a hotbed for rumor mongering and fraudulent advertisements. Read Full Post…
China Telecom (HKEx: 728; NYSE: CHA) is quickly becoming a company to watch, with new signals indicating it will soon receive a 4G license for its FDD-LTE technology as it searches for private partners to co-develop new services. These 2 news bits actually come from separate sources, but they collectively show that China Telecom could be poised to gain some market share over its larger and more bureaucratic rivals China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) and China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU). Regular readers will know that I’m relatively bullish on China Mobile and China Telecom, though I’m far less enthusiastic about the schizophrenic Unicom. Read Full Post…
After years of lurking around the periphery of China and visits by its top executives to the country, social networking (SNS) giant Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) is preparing to dip its toe into the massive market with plans to open a sales office in Beijing. That move raises the bigger question of whether the world’s biggest SNS company is planning to open a China-based service anytime soon, which has always been part of its long-term strategy. The answer is that Facebook will almost certainly use the new Beijing office to work towards a formal China site, though such an effort could take at least a year to yield results. Read Full Post…
Leading budget hotel operator Home Inns (Nasdaq: HMIN) has just released its latest results that show continuing weakness at the China lodge, as operators take a double hit from the nation’s slowing economy and a building boom that has led to overcapacity. Home Inns’ latest results continue a trend from last month, when China Lodging (Nasdaq: HTHT), operator of the Hanting chain of budget hotels, announced similar preliminary results that point to a period of pressure on the sector that is likely to last for the rest of this year and quite possibly linger into the first half of 2015. Read Full Post…
Wireless carrier China Telecom (HKEx: 728; NYSE: CHA) was in the headlines last week with its launch of a financial product similar to savings accounts, becoming the latest in a long string of companies to enter an area dominated for decades by state-run banks. At the same time, separate reports said the central bank was nearing a plan to introduce its first major regulation of these new products, in another widely expected move. Read Full Post…
The recent wave of labor unrest at big multinational factories has taken a step into China’s heartland, with word that hundreds of workers at a Shanghai plant operated by toilet giant Toto (Tokyo: 5332) went on strike last week. But the unrest was reportedly short lived, with the strike lasting just 3 days before the workers agreed to go return to their jobs. The strike and its rapid resolution reflects growing boldness among workers to demand better working conditions, which looks worrisome not only to employers but also to Chinese officials obsessed with maintaining public order. Read Full Post…
Just when it looked like the New York market for Chinese IPOs was running out of steam, we’re seeing new positive signs with the modestly successful trading debut of online travel site Tuniu (Nasdaq: TOUR) and the setting of a relatively upbeat price range for JD.com, China’s second largest e-commerce firm. Both signals continue a current trend of softening sentiment in the market, as investors tire of giving billions of dollars in new money to Chinese Internet firms. But they also show there may still be some life left in the market, leading me to return to a prediction I made early this year that the current IPO window could last through the end of June. Read Full Post…
You know that things are bad when leading online video site Youku Tudou (NYSE: YOKU) doesn’t issue a press release trumpeting its recent receipt of simultaneous broadcast rights for the highly hyped return of the US television series “24”. That’s my conclusion after having to read about this relatively big win for Youku in the news headlines rather than a company press release. In fact, Youku Tudou may deliberately want to downplay this latest triumph to avoid attracting Beijing censors who have recently started banning some popular US television series from online video sites. Read Full Post…
Observers who were overwhelmed by Chinese banks’ fund-raising frenzy after the global financial crisis should get ready for something much bigger, with word that Agricultural Bank of China (HKEx: 1288; Shanghai: 601288) is planning to raise a massive $12.8 billion as a new round of money-raising kicks off. China’s banks are notorious for lending in line with directives from Beijing, with the result that they often make poor decisions based on political rather than commercial factors. That reality means that most major Chinese lenders are now sitting on mountains of questionable loans, and the situation could get much worse as the nation’s real estate bubble shows early signs of finally getting ready to burst. Read Full Post…
We’ll end the week with a couple of smartphone news bits, including reports that Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is in talks to start a China-based recycling program and new data that show TCL’s (HKEx: 2618; Shenzhen: 000100) smartphone sales nearly tripled in the first 4 months of the year. Of the 2 news bits, Apple’s is most interesting not only because of its big name, but also because it shows the company is finally taking steps to boost its image as a good corporate citizen in China. TCL’s story looks interesting because it’s one of the few Chinese handset makers that derives the bulk of its smartphone revenue from overseas, which looks like a safer strategy due to the current state of overheated competition in the domestic market. Read Full Post…
