UFI Asia Seminar announced

UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, has announced its first Asia Seminar, to be held in Hong Kong 21 - 22 February. More information on this at BSG's Corporate BLOG or directly from UFI.

German publishers in India

Back in June, we noted that the German publishers association VDZ was planning to visit India. Now, we read from ContentSutra.com that they are there. Currently in Delhi, they have reportedly met:

• India Today
• Outlook
• CyberMedia
• McMillan Publishing
• Delhi Press
• Business World

Today they move on to Mumbai to meet:

• Indian Express Business Publication Division
• NextGen Publishing
• Infomedia India
• Indian Book Distributer (IBD)

I imagine they will find themselves enthralled by the opportunity and overwhelmed by the challenges.

Tanka poetry and B2B media

A bit of a stretch this one, but I was pleased to see Paul Conley back in action with an intriguing post and it has an Asian connection. When he said "Time for a change, time for a break" a couple of weeks back, I was worried that his postings would dry up.

Paul's post notes:

In a lovely and unexpected development, young people in Japan have taken to sending Tanka text messages via cellphone. The Tanka craze is the latest example of consumers creating new forms of media from new types of technology. I'm always delighted by such things..and often amazed by the speed at which they arrive.

It sometimes takes me a moment or two to decipher the messages that my teenage kids and my younger staff send me, but Paul is right: the current generation is communicating more in writing than for some while. It may not be traditional. It is sometimes odd. But it beats grunting.

Indian Express IPO

Exchange4Media reports that the Indian Express group's IPO plans continue to move forward. The group, which includes newspapers and business publishing activities "was close to finalising a merchant banker and aimed at coming out with the initial public offering by the end of the financial year" according to the news site, quoting Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief, Indian Express.

Timing of the IPO is still somewhat uncertain although the company says it will be before the end of this financial year. The report ends with a note that the group "is coming out with a host of new general and special magazines by the year-end and holding a summit as part of its ‘India Empowered’ campaign in the third week of October".

EC21 upgrade

Meanwhile, changes over at EC21, the Korean-based Asian sourcing site which sits at #6 in our latest ranking of Asia's top B2B web sites. The site which, along with Global Sources, is the only non-Chinese site in the top 10, has added a variety of new features in a major redesign which became active today.

At the end of September, EC21.com was ranked #929 in the Alexa.com rankings and, by our estimates, generates an audience of around 447,000 regular users. That places it just behind Global Sources (626,000) and ahead of zdnet.com.cn (407,000).

Global Sources focus on transactions

An interesting press release from Global Sources which suggests that they are stepping up their focus on integrating transactions into their sourcing services. This has been on the agenda for everybody in the business since the heady days of 1998 but has taken a long time to take hold in the Asian exports sector.

The company is now talking of two channels, having earlier announced a link-up with eBay:

The first channel is part of Global Sources' strategic alliance with eBay,
which allows eBay PowerSellers around the world to buy direct from China
suppliers through auctions listed under the eBay user ID GlobalSourcesDirect.
The second is through its online store, which offers fixed-price sales at
http://www.GlobalSourcesDirect.com.

Google also in hot water

The big international players sometimes give the impression that they are competing for 1st prize in the China Internet kowtow contest. In imperial times, visitors to the Emperor had to prostrate themselves in front of the great man and press their foreheads to the floor three times to signify their complete subservience to the ultimate power.

Several reports, including this one from the BBC report on protests about Google's apparent insistence on towing the Zhongnanhai line on Taiwan as a renegade province. A search on Google Maps for the word Taiwan, reveals a map of the island and the phrase "Taiwan, Province on China". Hong Kong's South China Morning Post today reports "The search engine once revised the description after a protest from a pro-independence group, but changed it back just days later, apparently under pressure from the mainland".

As any publisher experienced in China will tell you, the Taiwan issue touches on the rawest of nerves in both the mainland and Taiwan. There are, however, generally-accepted alternatives which (while resented a bit on both sides) are deemed mutually acceptable for most media. "Taiwan", all by itself, is OK for all but the extremist and the sycophants. "The Republic of China" is not OK (in the mainland) while Taiwan Province offends many in Taiwan.

And make sure Taiwan appears on any maps you publish of China: my first visit to Beijing in 1985 was memorable for a two hour lecture from our publishing partners of the day on the one China issue because our cover artist (in a very stylised map of China - also a bad idea) had omitted the island. Much has changed in China over 20 years, but sensitivities on Taiwan have not. That doesn't mean, though, that we need to knuckle under to whatever we think Beijing might want us to do.

Hong Kong correspondents hit out at Yahoo

The members of Hong Kong's reknowned Foreign Correspondents' Club have hit out at Yahoo's involvement with the imprisonment of Chinese journalist Shi Tao with letters sent to founder Jerry Yang and the head of marketing in Hong Kong, Pauline Wong.

The letter to Yang goes as follows:

Mr. Jerry Yang

Co-Founder,
Chief Yahoo and Director

Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California 94089

United States of America

Dear Mr. Yang.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong, is deeply distressed by Yahoo’s compliance with requests from unknown mainland authorities to hand over information regarding the personal emails of our professional colleague, journalist Shi Tao, and we wish to express our displeasure in the strongest terms.

We note with dissatisfaction Yahoo’s attempted explanation, offered through your good offices, that it “must comply with the laws, regulations and customs” of the nation where it does business. This attempt to seek cover beneath compliance with the rule of law is as unworthy as it is unpersuasive, and in no way addresses the questions of professional ethics and corporate conscience that should arise whenever a request for the provision of personal information is made. Yahoo’s effort at self-justification actually worsens matters; not only is no particular law nor regulation cited, but the suggestion that something as indefinable as “customs” is a legitimate basis for becoming a willing accomplice to authoritarian action makes a mockery of Yahoo’s already feeble effort to appear law-abiding.

Handing over information regarding personal data to a government is not an act that Yahoo, or any responsible Internet Service Provider (ISP), should ever engage in without such material having being sought with a proper judicial warrant issued in the jurisdiction where you are legally domiciled. It is certainly not what Yahoo would do in the United States. Moreover, your firm is registered in Hong Kong, a common law jurisdiction where laws, such as the Personal (Data) Privacy Ordinance, clearly spell out the protections to privacy. If it is Yahoo’s desire to abide by local laws, the FCC suggests that it begin by complying with the laws in force where it is licensed to do business.

If it is Yahoo’s position, however, that the laws, regulations and customs of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region are inferior to those of mainland China, then it should state so clearly. That way, people will understand what Yahoo’s view is on One Country-Two Systems relationship, and can select an ISP accordingly. We should add here that a number of our members, representing media organizations from around the world, are already discussing among themselves whether a boycott of Yahoo ought to be organized. Some have already given up their personal Yahoo addresses.

Indeed, if there are political pressures – beyond corporate competition and cupidity – that have driven Yahoo into an action that appears to be a surrender of conscience, then Yahoo – as well as any other ISP’s faced with the same threat – should step forward and make that fact known.

Accordingly, the FCC sincerely extends to executives of Yahoo an invitation to explain any difficulties directly to our members. We would be happy to schedule a speaking engagement. If you are willing to take up this offer, and we hope that you are, please let us know as soon as possible so that appropriate arrangements can be made.

Sincerely,

Ilaria Maria Sala, President

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong

Francis Moriarty, Chairman

FCC Press Freedom Committee

China stock top performers

China Stock Blog produces a weekly listing of the performance of the shares it tracks. Top 10 last week were:

1. CDC Corporation (CHINA) +12.7%
2. Tom Online (TOMO) +10.8%
3. KongZhong (KONG) +9.4%
4. Yanzhou Coal Mining (YZC) +9.1%
5. NetEase (NTES) +8.7%
6. Hurray! (HRAY) +8.4%
7. Focus Media (FMCN) +7.0%
8. Sinopec (SNP) +6.0%
9. eLong (LONG) +5.0%
10. Sina (SINA) +4.7%

Of these, by my count, at least five of the 10 are media-related while eLong is an online travel site.

Of those which fell (5 last week), Baidu was the worst performer, down 19.1%. The rest of the list look more like 'old school' tech stocks although 51Job, an online recruitment site, is obviously feeling the pressure from a number of serious competitors:

Shanda Interactive (SNDA) -0.2%
51Job (JOBS) -0.4%
Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMI) -7.8%
China Techfaith Wireless (CNTF) -9.5%
Baidu (BIDU) -19.1%

They'll never make it in time

Our suspicions that India's B2B print sector will never make it anywhere close to critical mass before being commercially overwhelmed by much more effective online alternatives are fuelled by news that Google is gearing up its Adwords operation in the sub-continent. It looks as though a sales push with real, live sales people may be at the heart of the launch strategy.

ContentSutra posts an Indiatimes article which reports "Search giant Google has started visiting Indian campuses to recruit staff for their fledgling sales office in Hyderabad...Google is ramping up their sales operations in India and is finally looking at the country as a market...".