In the Hutong
Learning the meaning of "Wu Ti Tou Di"
1049 hrs.
While finishing my presentation on e-Commerce for Marcom Beijing, Twitter alerted me to two outstanding blog posts that are of the stop-and-think variety, and I wanted to call them out.
First is Paul Denlinger's essay "Has China Embraced an Outdated Version of Corporate Capitalism?" in his always-entertaining, often-provoking ChinaVortex. What Paul is really asking, I think, is whether the form of corporate caplitalism China has embraced, which I would argue served China well for the first three decades, is now outdated, and dangerously so. Paul is a contrarian, to say the least, but his thoughts here demand consideration.
Second is Kevin Lee's superb "What the Media Won't Tell You About China's Youth" on his genYchina blog. The media in the west, with a few notable exceptions, tend to focus on those aspects of Chinese youth that best reflect either the fears or preconceptions of their audiences. (This is understandable: as I have said here before, mainstream media are, for the most part, in the business of catering to their audiences, not challenging them.) Kevin sets some of those misconceptions straight in a forthright piece in his blog, an article that should be required reading among marketers in China.
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