I'm back from an incredible trip to Beijing. This city is simply huge and extraordinarily fast-moving. Some surprising aspects for a first-time visitor:- Primarily you see the middle class - even if there are also many rich and many poor people. But I had the impression that most of the Beijing denizens are driving middle class cars and go shopping to H&M and Nike (or Li Ning, the local version).
- China isn't at all appearing as the authoritarian state one might expect. It's the complete opposite to Singapore. Beijing is just chaos. Everything seems to be allowed here. However, the society is prospering and currently doing significantly better than other countries. What's the secret of success? The confucian value system?
At the Foreign Correspondents Club of China I met some people from the regional Media space. The event was supposed to offer career transition ideas for journalists. Ironically, most of the attendees were quite happy with their current job, even if a very pessimistic view prevailed. Insecurity and a lack of ideas on how to respond to the structural changes in the Media were widely dominating. The PR industry was named as a possible exit for journalists who still prefer to get paid for their writing.
Fortunately, a New Media expert was also attending and lightening up the scene with his fresh ideas. I talked with Benjamin Joffe, a strategy consultant who counts among his clients Microsoft, Orange and China Mobile. Benjamin told me that the Media companies in the US and Europe are still not fully aware about the potential of the Asian markets. When he visited Facebook in Silicon Valley, they didn't know that the Chinese online community Tencent QQ quadrupels the number of registrated Facebook users. Revenue margins of these platforms are impressive too. The data of Benjamin's company +8* reveals China as the number one market for internet and mobile usage, with a still very low penetration rate.
On the other side, John Bishop works as a rather traditional reporter for the China Economic Review. This is a monthly magazine, published in Hong Kong and covering Business, Finance and Economics issues in China. I don't have any data on this but my gut instinct is telling me that demand for good-written stories on China will keep rising and that there will be a market for this type of information. And it will also provide income to journalists and other Media professionals.
Photo: CCTV building in Beijing, middle class cars
