Banking Online

China Knowledge has an interesting article on the development of e-commerce in the PRC. It's a good overview, but one thing in particular caught our eye. This follows on from other recent posts about the development of bank cards in China:

According to a recent survey conducted by the China Financial Certification Authority, about 10% of companies and 20% of private individuals in China’s ten major cities have adopted online banking services; these cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, among others. The survey also showed good growth for the rest of the year, with as much as 35.7% of individuals having the intention to use online banking services over the next one year.

In 2004, the number of Chinese online shoppers stood at 20 million, with nearly half of them adopting online payment systems such as Alibaba’s Alipay, Ebay’s PayPal and credit card methods, among others.

With a growing confidence in online banking and increasing ownership of bank cards, the key impediments to development of really serious e-commerce are rapidly disappearing in China.

How easy to Tradeeasy?

China Stock Blog points us to an interesting piece on B2B web activity in the region and, in particular, developments at Tradeeasy (listed in Hong Kong). The numbers seem small and it appears a bit far-fetched to suggest that they will somehow threaten the Global Sources and Alibaba.com. A lot of people have tried to link Asian suppliers with US buyers directly and, for a large variety of reasons, most haven't been very interested.

Hong Kong Tech Investor on China’s B2B Market - Part 2 (GSOL, EBAY, YHOO, Alibaba): "Two weeks ago Hong Kong technology investor Brent Suen provided an overview of China’s B2B market. In the following article Suen highlights recent accomplishments of one of his investments Tradeeasy (HKSE – 8163) which facilitates trade between China / Hong-Kong suppliers and buyers worldwide. His comments have implications for Global Sources (ticker: GSOL) and Yahoo [...]

(Via China Stock Blog.)

It certainly smacks of 1999-talk all over again. I sat through a lot of meetings debating exactly these issues in 1999/2000. Maybe the world has really changed this time...then again.

Kurdistan Ho!

I think this counts as Asia. It certainly counts as an ambitious project in the current climate.

The World’s Most Dangerous Event?: "Holy heartburn! Rich Westerfield posts an interesting piece today about the Kurdistan DBX Trade Show, which concluded Sunday in the tranquil suburbs of Baghdad. 'We trust that the event's tagline isn't to be taken literally - 'The Ultimate Rebuilding Iraq Trade Show and Conference in Iraq.' Because if it really were the last one, that [...]

(Via expophile.com.)

Bruno Wu shuffles again

Still in Beijing and, with no access to blogspot.com sites, can't link this post properly back to one we did back in May regarding Bruno Wu and his multiple deals with Sun Business Network (formerly Panpac Media) in Singapore. The company bills itself as the "New Name in Business Media in Asia".

It is the new name with less business now as, the company has announced a shifting of assets into the Nasdaq OTCBB-listed SE Global Equities in which Wu has a strong controlling interest through his wife, China TV star Yang Lan's holdings. SE Global is to be re-named Sun New Media Inc.

Check out the IR announcements page to see the welter of corporate manoeuverings from this still fairly small company. The press release says that the latest deal will "unlock value and reward shareholders".

Prizes offered to anybody who can clearly describe all this...

Update: Those earlier posts were Bruno Wu is keeping us on our toes and Bruno Wu continues to interest us.

The copyright challenge

Greetings from Beijing. Lots of interest still in the market from media companies of all shapes and sizes despite Rupert Murdoch telling the world from New York today that things are moving backwards in China and that his businesses have "hit a brick wall" there.

Practical problems do abound even for those with lower profiles than the world's most prominent American with an Australian accent and this CNet piece highlighted on China Digital Times gives a good flavour of how IP abuse still tops the list of worries for many in the media. If content is king and your world is full of lookalike kings, how can you make money?

Web conferencing potential

Thanks for ContentSutra for pointing us towards this Business Standard piece on web conferencing growth in Asia. This is a very significant issue for the potential growth of face-to-face B2B events in large and relatively poor countries like China and India:

Web Conferencing Market To Grow At 44 Per Cent: "Business Standard: The increasing awareness of web conferencing and the availability of broadband networks will fuel the growth of the web conferencing services market at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 44 per cent, according to Alok Shende, director, Frost & Sullivan, a growth consulting company.

Addressing a conference on the Enterprise Convergence, Shende said that small and medium enterprises would soon adopt this service as it is cost effective and time saving. The Asia Pacific market for web conferencing is expected to grow at a CAGR of 27.2 per cent with Japan as the leader.

‘Web conferencing has many advantages like enhancement of coordination among participants and transmission of more information over broadband network as the files used are lighter,’ said Kiran Datar, managing director, Webex Communications."

(Via ContentSutra.)

Crossing the line

The editors of Haymarket's FinanceAsia.com have obviously discovered that there are still lines which cannot be crossed when it comes to reporting on Singapore. It's daily e-newsletter leads today with two formal apologies for what it apparently reported last month about Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government's immensely powerful holding company of which the CEO is the Prime Minister's wife. One of the apologies was to current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, his predecessor Goh Chok Tong and Lee's father and Singapore's founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. The other is to the Board of Temasek.

It used to be considered something of a badge of honour for correspondents in Asia to have been banned from Singapore for offending the government. And it wasn't one of the harder badges to earn. Things appear calmer these days but FinanceAsia's editors clearly stepped across the line of what will bring out Singapore's big guns.

Springer in India

German publisher Springer has announced a substantial expansion of its outsourcing operations in India according to contentsutra.com. The report quotes CEO Derk Haank as saying that staffing in India could rise from its current 25% of the group's 5,000 total to 50%. I imagine they're not having to offer six weeks a year of paid holidays in Chennai.

This isn't the first time this has come up and certainly won't be the last. In July, we reported on Reuters outsourcing editorial to India following a post in June about "fear and trembling in the news room".

CMP Media may be the smart ones in all this with their tie-up with Cybermedia to report on the trend. Presumably, the editors won't be sitting in Long Island, though.

Presumed 90% wrong...

Reality bites for those left holding grossly over-priced baidu.com shares.

Bloomberg reports:

Shares of Baidu.com Inc., China's most-used Internet search engine, plunged as much as 24 percent after analysts from two firms that managed the company's initial public offering said the stock is overpriced.

Based on the opinions of China's Internet CEOs we quoted yesterday, the lads at Goldman must be 90% wrong when they say that baidu's shares are worth more like $27 than the $113 for which they closed yesterday. It still sounds a bit generous to me. Mind you, as Goldman was one of the managers of the IPO, they can't be too down on it can they.

Update: Adding fuel to the fire, China Stock Blog tells us that Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker has initiated coverage of China's internet stocks. "Their top picks include Ctrip (ticker: CTRP), NetEase (ticker: NTES) and Tencent (instant-messaging business traded in Hong Kong). Their top segment pick is online gaming (they expect local players with self development and distribution capacity to emerge as long-term winners)," the post says.

Google blog search works for me

Google's new blog search tool immediately threw up an interesting new site for me: Asia Media Business Monitor. The feed shows up when I add to it My Yahoo but not other readers. This isn't exclusively business media stuff but its good to see other sites focusing purely on Asia and the media industry.

I also like the result that a search for Asia Business Media throws up!