At least one person doesn't agree with me

Following my post yesterday about the declining value of China trade along with Alibaba and Global Sources shares, I note with interest that the boys from Hangzhou are fighting back. Alibaba CEO David Wei is putting on a more than brave face and proposing that "the United States subprime mortgage crisis won't hurt growth at Alibaba.com - and may even help small and medium e-commerce firms win more deals".

The article goes on to quote him saying "the US slowdown is mainly affecting large buyers and suppliers, so in this regard, small and medium players will have more opportunities". Really? That is just the opposite of what I have been hearing with the smaller players being knocked for six while the larger ones are better able to restructure their supply chains. But what do I know. 

A comment on yesterday's post over on Plaxo's Pulse social networking site asked whether the value of the US$ was also having an impact on this equation. You'd have to say that it is. On that point, David Wei and I appear to agree as he is advising "Chinese exporters to capture business potential in markets such as Japan, India and Russia to offset the impact caused by the weaker US dollar". Quite right.

Are these three things connected?

1. The BBC says: China's trade surplus unexpectedly fell in February, suggesting the US slowdown is hitting demand for Chinese goods.
   
2. Global Sources share price is $11.28, a hair above its 52 week low of $10.61.
   
3. Alibaba.com's share price is HK$17.18, again a hair above its all time low of $16.34.
   

Surely no coincidence.

Mind you, at the same the Hong Kong Trade Development Council is reporting record crowds for its March jewellery show. That event may be less dependent on the US market or non-Asian buyers than others, but it will be worth keeping a very close watch on the upcoming trade fairs to get a clear sense of how the economic downturn is biting. They can be a very efficient barometer.

Leading with online into niches

In the interview I did with Thomas Crampton last week, we talked about how specialist publishers are leading into a number of Asian markets with online strategies. From this they can build into events and, maybe (although not necessarily), print products. It's a topic I've talked about before here.

Tom's latest posting picks up on the same theme in an interview with Justin Randles, the founding publisher of the very impressive Marketing title. He has taken almost the flip opposite strategy to the long-established Media magazine based in Hong kong and part of the Haymarket stable. Their online strategy was, for a long time, the nervous halfway house of the established print publisher and they appear as a result to have left a large enough gap open for Randles to establish a credible new competitor.

Google too "clever" for it's own good

I am sitting in Hong Kong. Therefore, I must be Chinese. That appears to be Google's logic as I look at the following screens in their Adsense system. Duhh!


Of course, lots of the people sitting in Hong Kong are Chinese and can read this. But, many are not; it's an international city. Give us a language option boys. I'll be happy to click through your screen once I can read it. Heck this may be the first time I've actually wanted to read one of those terms and conditions screens!!

Gentlemen, please adjust your trusses

Not being an engineer, the word truss makes me think more of Victorian undergarments designed to alleviate the worst effects of a hernia than exhibition centres. I stand corrected, however, by this press release from the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre accompanied by one of managing director Cliff Wallace's always-striking photos. It shows the second of the two huge roof beams now in place for the HKCEC's Phase 2.5 extension work now under way.

Together, these trusses apparently weigh more than 3,000 tonnes...hernia inducing stuff. I'll bet they're glad the builders didn't drop them. There's water down below, not to mention a few toes.

Tarsus in Wuhan

I'll bet you didn't know that Anthony and Cleopatra are supposed to have met in the Turkish city of Tarsus. Wikipedia is a wonderful thing, isn't it.

Well, that's apropos of nothing other than my interest in Tarsus plc and its latest announcement. The company has invested Rmb12 million (US$1.688 million...and rising) for 50% of a company called Hubei Hope Exhibitions based in Wuhan. The press release speaks of 27 fairs, 50,000 square metres, seven offices and 150 employees.

This fits very nicely with two things we've been talking about recently:

1. The growing importance of China's regions in the development of B2B in Asia. Remember, Hubei alone has 60 million people - more than all but a few countries in the rest of Asia. We discussed this in a panel at the recent UFI Open Seminar in Asia and everybody was talking about their focus on moving out to the regions.
   
2. Recent postings on this blog about the focus of business in China moving away from the three big cities.
   

For those of you who may feel the need of a little help on placing China's provinces on a map, I'm uploading a map with all the provinces marked. Hands up who knew before exactly where the Ningxia Autonomous Region is.

Ouch!

UBM's David Levin tells Reuters (of the RBI magazine portfolio): "We have a strategy built around integrated media so to pick up a block of orphaned print assets is not consistent with what we want to do."

Xinhua vs. the WTO

We have written intermittently about Xinhua's ongoing efforts to maintain monopoly rights in China in the distribution of financial information. When we last wrote about this almost a year ago, I wondered "My recollection is that last year this reached the level of a minor diplomatic spat. I wonder if this solves or it raises the issues all over again?" There are links in that piece will lead you back through the saga if you're interested.

Well, it's obviously not dead. Today's Financial Times reports that "The European Union and US are to launch formal proceedings at the World Trade Organisation over China’s attempt to put the financial information businesses of international news providers under the control of the local rival and regulator, Xinhua news agency". It goes on to note (the highlights are mine) "The move reflects confid­ence in Brussels and Washington that Beijing will find it hard to defend the rules, which prompted fierce complaints when announced and which Xinhua has so far refrained from enforcing against agencies including Reuters, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. The EU and US believe the regulations breach Beijing’s commitment to allowing foreign companies to supply financial information services in China under the terms of its 2001 accession to the WTO".

If Xinhua has indeed refrained from enforcing these rules, why all the fuss now. Surely not a need a in Brussels and Washington to flex their biceps and show how tough they are with China...on what is practically at the moment a non-issue.

Alibaba takes us a step closer to real m-commerce

There's a very interesting post at the China Web 2.0 Review (they often are!). Alibaba's Taobao has launched a WAP version with a limited feature set at wap.taobao.com Interesting enough as a way to expand its reach to those 500+ million mobile phone users, many of whom do not have easy Internet access of their own.

More interesting still is the way in which the sit is served by a mobile interface for Alipay. As Luyi Chen points out in his post, payment for most m-commerce in China so far has been processed by the mobile service providers as part of the consumers' bill. I'd assume that China Mobile won't be too tickled by Alibaba's move to skirt around that with its m-Alipay service. But, however, big and powerful they are, its hard to imagine they can stop it in the long term.

CMP fades away in the US

I have to say that David Levin, United Business Media's CEO, continues to rise in my estimation. Not only is he a mini-rugby coach, but he caught the entire US media watching industry on the hop yesterday when announcing the restructuring of CMP Media there.

There had been some breathless anticipation of the announcement of a new CEO, following Steve Weitzner's departure to Ziff. Nobody had anticipated the break-up of the business into four units, each with a CEO reporting directly to Levin and the dropping of the CMP name....in the US at least. Although the CMP name originated in the Manhasset, LI business acquired by United back in 1999, it will now only live on in the UK with CMP Information and at CMP Asia. I gather there are no plans for now to drop it in the rest of the world.

United also reported solid numbers yesterday. That's good for me. As a former employee, I retain a very small shareholding in the company. The market liked the results and bucked an ugly day in London (the FTSE was down 1.36%) with a 1.13% increase.

UBM says that "CMP Asia delivered another strong performance in 2007 with underlying revenue up 10.7% and underlying operating profits up 11.4%". I'm not sure how currencies are treated in the mystery calculation which is "underlying revenue" but, given that most of CMP Asia's business is basically linked to US dollars and that UBM reports in sterling, it looks as though they've done pretty well.

Update: Some don't like him though. The US bits of UBM (formerly Miller Freeman) have never really felt comfortable with their British CEOs. This Media Wire Daily piece is especially snitty, asking "Is David Levin the cancer that slowly be killing CMP?". The writer concludes "We think we're going to launch a "Fire David Levin" or a "David Levin is bad for B2B" campaign". Ho, Ho. Just graduated from the student newspaper did we? How very amusing.

The first comment puts this genius in his place: "That's an irresponsible headline, If it were me, I'd sue for libel. Also, as somebody with a ground-level view at UBM, I'd say you really haven't done much homework".