For a long time, working around the clock – from 9 to 9, six days a week known as the 996-rule – was common in China’s startup working culture. But those times are changing, says SOSV managing director William Bao Bean, a leading voice in China’s startup scene to the BBC. “China has moved from a society that was told what to do, to one that is doing what it wants to, and that’s also a millennial thing,” he says.Read More →

China’s financial authorities might be wary of Bitcoins and other digital currencies, but the country is embracing the underlying blockchain technology. Self-driving cars, agriculture, retail and other industries use the deep pockets of the government to introduce the new technology.
At the China Speakers Bureau, we offer a range of speakers who can help you to make sense out of this new direction China is taking, leading the way for global innovation.Read More →

Chinese brands like Alibaba, WeChat and JD.com still face the perception they deliver inferior products when going global, says business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The War for China’s Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order. They mainly focus on Chinese consumers who know better, but the barrier exists for global expansion, he tells the South China Morning Post.Read More →

WeChat, Tencent’s mobile platform, is now reaching 900 million users in China, and in four year time it has become an indispensable tool for anybody living in the country, says WeChat expert Matthew Brennan at InTheBlack. “WeChat is not a social media. Think of it as an operating system for your life in China’,” says Brennan.Read More →

Gender discrimination is commonplace in China, out of line with international agreements and practices. Author Zhang Lijia asks Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma, and other tech companies like Tencent, and the government, to end rampant discrimination against women on the work floor, for the New York Times.Read More →

Rupert Hoogewerf – chief researcher and founder of the Hurun China Rich List – is a busy man. Every three days, a new unicorn – a company valued over 1 billion US dollar and unlisted – emerges in China, shows his latest report. “If model, talent and capital are all in place, start-ups can move very fast,” said Rupert Hoogewerf to the Global Times.Read More →

When Tencent started during the 2014 CCTV New Year show to promote giving red envelopes online, few realized it was the successful kick-off what is now known as WeChat Pay, says WeChat expert Matthew Brennan to the JingDaily. Some luxury brands did not like the concept though: “The idea of a discount communicates value and is generally not an incentive that luxury brands want to be associated with.”Read More →

Private companies in China can only survive when they team up with Tencent or Alibaba, creating a business scene that is unprecedented, says business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The War for China’s Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order  to the South China Morning Post. “They basically have a gun to your head and you have to choose which of the two companies you want to work with.”Read More →

Cash was king, not so long ago in China. But as wealth and the middle class increased, mobile payments had an advantage, says business analyst Ben Cavender. Because other payment tools like cards did not have a solid footprint, eager smartphone users adopted mobile payments quickly, he tells That’s Magazine. But: “Realistically, I don’t think cash will go away entirely, but it will certainly be relegated to a less important role.”Read More →

Startups are mostly at the mercy of quasi-monopolies like Facebook, Google, Tencent or Alibaba. William Bao Bean, managing director of Shanghai-based SOSV tells in this elevator talk how his no.1 accelerator helps them to avoid spending money on those giants to get access to an audience, creating a win-win situation.Read More →