By Joab Jackson, IDG News Service
During a New York panel discussion on social media and digital activism held Monday, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei secured a promise from Twitter creator Jack Dorsey that his company will offer a Chinese version of its social networking service.
Though Dorsey quickly qualified his response by noting that it may be some time yet before the service will be available for the country, due to technical and legal hurdles.
The exchange took place at the Paley Center in New York, in a session sponsored by …

ChinaTravelTrends.com, new interactive platform for China outbound tourism, launched in Berlin, with backing of PATA

Chinese affluent citizens increasingly like to travel abroad, but distrust official information.
With more than 50 million outbound travellers expected to leave China in 2010, the Chinese outbound market is attracting more and more attention of destinations around the world.
As part of the ITB Convention 2010, a workshop organised by the German-based COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute and the Chinese company Dragon Trail, presented Social Media Marketing as the most …

China’s online travel booking users in 2009 reached 30.24 million, increasing 77.9 percent from the previous year, according to a report released recently by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
Ctrip, the one-stop China travel service, also says its number of members has reached 30 million.
Online travel booking in 2009 saw rapid development and has become a highlight of the tourism market. According to statistics released by the CNNIC, online travel booking users in 2009 increased 77.9 percent to reach 13.24 million. The growth rate is second only to online payment …

Social networks were once the domain of the young and tech-savvy. Not anymore, as Facebook reports a huge growth in older users last year. Also in China has the 35+ user base of doubled year over year.
Picture a social network user. Once upon a time it was easy – they were pimply teens huddled in messy bedrooms. Or young professionals organising their social lives. These days, however, they’re becoming far harder to categorise.
Last year Facebook reported huge growth in the 25 to 54 age group. After a feverish year of …

The state-owned newspaper The Global Times has run a particularly open article about the extensive controls on the internet within China and their effect on users and Internet companies. If you’re pressed for time to read the whole thing, DigiCha posts some choice quotes.

Douban, a Chinese social networking service website, received $10 million in venture capital from its second round of fundraising on January 25, after raising $2 million in 2006. Photo: CFP
He couldn’t take it anymore.
When Hong Kong writer and poet Liao Weitang found his online photo album had …

Preference Of Wealthy Mainland Tourists For Upscale Malls, Luxury Outlets Hits Department Stores Hard
Chinese luxury shoppers typically prefer upscale shopping malls to all-in-one department stores, as Shanghai’s Plaza 66 attests (Image via Flickr)

Last week, Jing Daily translated an article about Chinese tourists outspending Japanese 2-to-1 at a number of famous South Korean department stores. According to that article, visitors from mainland China now account for more sales than ever at some of Seoul’s most fashionable and expensive stores, and it’s not unknown for one-day tourists to drop hundreds of thousands …

Cissy Ding says she finally gave in at the start of the year and joined China’s social networking bandwagon, setting up an account on local micro-blogging service Weibo.
“If I hadn’t gotten started, I would have felt totally lame, and out of touch,” says Ding, an editor at a women’s magazine.
China’s domestic social media sites like Weibo are booming thanks to their better knowledge of the world’s largest Internet market — and the censorship stifling foreign rivals like Facebook, Twitter, and Google-owned YouTube.
The 384 million people now online in China, where …

China says at minimum 70 million people will visit the Shanghai World Expo this year; local government authorities are dangling whopping numbers like 100 million.
That’s an average of more than 380,400 people descending on the site on each of the expo’s 184 days, starting May 1. Around 20 million tickets have been sold, organizers say, and to underscore their confidence in demand they are sticking to plans for gradually increasing the cost of daily admission, now “benchmarked” at 160 yuan, or $23.50.
The government even suggests some visitors might prefer to …

In case you’ve missed it, China’s irrepressible shanzhai enthusiasts have been at it again, using imitation to pay tribute to Google.
Since Google’s Jan. 12 announcement that it might withdraw from the Chinese market, two knockoff Web sites have appeared in China bearing an intentionally uncanny resemblance to Google sites.
Goojje.com, a spoof of Google’s Chinese site, was reportedly founded by a female college student in Guangdong and put together by a group of about 20 people around the country, according to Chinese media. Its Chinese name (谷姐, whose Mandarin …

China’s online tourism market is booming as an increasingly wealthy middle class travels for pleasure and the use of credit cards and the Internet soars, analysts say.
As millions of people pack their bags for Lunar New Year holidays, the busiest travel period of the year, many will have booked their trips home online, according to Chinese Internet research and consulting firm iResearch.
Revenue from online flight, hotel and package tour bookings will hit 4.75 billion yuan (695.8 million US dollars) in 2010, up 27 percent from last year, iResearch says, with …

A marketer’s guide to the world of Chinese networking.
Over the past few years, brand presence on Chinese SNS has largely been limited to passive and static advertising and the occasional branded widget. But recently, brands have been pursuing more creative and interactive ways to engage SNS users by upping the level of brand-consumer interactivity. These efforts range from curated BBS discussion forums to interactive contests within the confines of a particular SNS. Compared to other online markets, branded efforts on local Chinese SNS are still in an embryonic stage, however. …

In the last quarter of 2009, a number of significant public speeches were made about Internet of Things in China. It started on August 7, when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made a speech in the city of Wuxi calling for the rapid development of Internet of Things technologies. It included this equation: Internet + Internet of Things = Wisdom of the Earth. Wen Jiabo followed up with a speech on November 3 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in which he encouraged breakthroughs in key technologies …

Expatriate salaries and packages in Mainland China have been more or less stagnant in the past 10 years, but are today still higher than in most South-East Asian countries, or other typical countries where expatriates are needed. – René J.M. Schillings, Managing Director of TOP Hoteliers – Hospitality Executive Search.
As the first hospitality recruitment company with offices in the PR China (since 2004), and recruiting for nearly all hotel brands in all cities in China, from Harbin to Hainan, Schillings can clearly see trends over the past 5 years, and …

SHANGHAI (AdAgeChina.com) — Blogging has become a national obsession in China, with over 50 million Chinese regularly contributing to local blog sites. A handful of these sites are written in English, and provide a fascinating perspective on a country that is changing quickly. Below, we’ve identified 25 blogs that can serve as a great resource for marketers in China.
1. Access Asia (www.accessasia.co.uk), a U.K.-based company providing market intelligence about Greater China, publishes a snarky weekly update reflecting relevant business, economic and political issues.
Recent post: The Great Proletarian Outdoors Revolution! Well …

Observations Suggest Brands That Court Younger Customers Digitally Might Come Out Ahead
New department stores like Lane Crawford in Beijing have increased the number of luxury brands available to potential buyers in Beijing
While many luxury brands are counting on ostensibly luxury- and brand-mad Chinese consumers to bring in steady profits for the foreseeable future, industry insiders — or research groups — with feet on the ground know that Chinese consumers are far from a uniform group. As luxury expert Patricia Pao, of the Pao Principle in New York, recently wrote, contrary …

Are you scared of the Made in China label? So am I. So are most Chinese. One of the top concerns Chinese consumers have is product safety, according to the findings from 5,000 interviews in 15 cities that my firm, the China Market Research Group, recently conducted. Chinese fear safety problems that wouldn’t cross Americans’ minds when shopping–clothing doused in toxic dye, condoms lubricated with vegetable oil, watermelons injected with dirty water to make them heavier.
Quality control is a serious problem in China. You’ve heard the horror stories about Chinese …

After a 4 percent drop in 2009, travel bookings in China will grow by 5 percent in 2010, projects a new PhoCusWright report, “Emerging Online Travel Marketplace in China.”
The same report predicts that travel will expand to become a $65 billion industry by 2011, and that 20 percent of that market would be online.
Where opportunities lie in that growth, and what kinds of companies might be positioned to seize them was one topic of discussion at the recent China Travel Distribution Summit, hosted by China Travel Daily at the OCT …

Despite delays to direct flights, Hawaii’s service industry already has been getting acquainted with the Chinese
Hainan Airlines, China’s largest private carrier, seems to be on Hawaii time when it comes to introducing direct service to the islands; however, members of the state’s hospitality sector are ready for the influx of visitors that direct service could bring.

GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Wang Qian, left, and his bride, Wang Li Qiang, were among 20 couples from the Tianjin region of China who made their way down the aisle at the Sheraton …

The fast pace of change in social media tools and the travel market in China are combining to inspire a search for the best way to reach China’s increasingly affluent, increasingly independent travelers. The future of social media’s role in China’s travel market was a hot topic at the recent China Travel Distribution Summit at the OCT Interlaken Resort in Shenzhen. Online travel agencies like Ctrip and Elong, as well as hotels, airlines, and travel meta search sites—all kinds of companies effected by online travel research and booking—are looking for …

I was tinkering with some statistics last night, considering that strange idea of the Insularity of the Chinese Internet that we’ve been discussing lately. The expression itself is odd, because “internet” and “insularity” form an oxymoron, but you hardly notice these things when you live here. They are normal routine in the land of  socialist market economy.
Whatever we make of the phrase, the fact is that it comes up every time, whether we are speaking of language, media or politics,  all seems to point in that direction.  The pictures below …