Photo Credit - Steve Webel
China. Even in this day and age, sensitive information rarely leaks out of the Great Internet Firewall.
Fortunately for Western pundits, China toots its horn every six months with the release of a half yearly report on Chinese internet development. The July 2008 edition was recently released in English, but to save you from reading through 27 pages of dry research and occasional Engrish, SEOmoz has summarized the report for you.
Here are the top three facts that China wants you to know about the internet:
1. China has the most internet users in the world- "...by the end of June 2008, the amount of netizens in China had reached 253 million, surpassing that in the United States to be the first place in the world."
2. China has the most broadband users in the world
- "This report, the 22nd Statistical Report on the Internet Development in China, also indicates the number of broadband users has reached 214 million, which also tops the world."
3. China has the most cc-TLD domain names in the world
Source for charts: CNNIC, Nielsen Netratings, ITU
- "...by the time of July 22, the number of CN domain names, which was 12.18 million, had exceeded .de, the country-code Top Level Domain for Germany, thus becoming the largest country code Top-Level Domain names in the world."
4. China's internet penetration rate continues to grow and grow and grow...
- US internet usage has hovered around a 70% penetration rate in the last five years, while Chinese internet penetration has jumped from 7% to almost 20% in the same time period.
- Translation: China could plausibly reach a similar penetration rate to the US within 20 years.
- What impact would a single nation of almost one billion Internet users have on internet activities such as blogging, creating videos or online commercial transactions (i.e., buying stuff)? How much additional user generated content would Chinese users unleash on the world wide web? What Western companies are ready to take advantage of this flood of internet usage?
source: Pew Internet May 2008, CNNIC July 2008
- IM usage is more popular than email and using search engines in China
- 195 million Chinese (an incredible 77.2% of Chinese internet users) have used an instant messaging service in the last 6 months, compared to just 40.0% of US internet users who have _ever_ used IM
- Once online, 39.7% of Chinese internet users cite IM as the very first thing they do, more than any other internet activity
QQ client (look familiar?)
- Tencent's QQ program is the leading IM program with 77% market share
- Who? A bit more about QQ from their website:
- QQ has 342 million active user accounts
- QQ has 42 million peak concurrent users
- QQ has 26.1 million paying internet subscribers & 13.4 million paying mobile subscribers - wow, an IM program with 40 million paying subscribers (envious, MSN and Yahoo?)
- QQ.com is one of the biggest websites in the world, ranking in the top 3 web properties in China, alongside Baidu and Sina
- China has 601 million mobile phone users according to the latest government report
- From January 2008 to June 2008, there were 53.3 million new mobile phone users
- One carrier, China Mobile, has over 414 million mobile subscribers, ranked #1 in the world
- However, bad news: only 12% of these users have accessed the Internet. Because of the lack of proper 3G network (none of the Chinese telcos have a 3G license), an estimated 73 million had accessed the internet from a mobile phone
- Good news - the Chinese government plans to issue 3G licenses to the major telcos within the next 6 months, which means...
- A potential bonanza for phone manufacturers around the world as someone has to come good with 601 million new 3G handsets (the sheer size of the Chinese market will be beneficial for all as economies of scale ensure global prices for 3G handsets/accessories will fall)
- Think you know how to game social networks? Try going head-to-head with the "Fifty Cent Party" - an estimated 280,000 strong army of government-trained social networkers
- The Far East Economic Review says the Fifty Cent party has one objective - "To safeguard the interests of the Communist Party by infiltrating and policing a rapidly growing Chinese Internet"
- According to the Feer.com's source, high authority Chinese websites are forced to have their own in-house team of government goons patrolling content for political correctness... ouch!
- According to this fool.com article, 93 cities in China have more than 1 million population, compared to just 9 in the US
- Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau (and sometimes Guangdong and Shenzhen) are usually referred to as China's Tier I cities.
- Tier I cities are already saturated by foreign companies and foreign direct investment in just about every market you could think of...
- Which is where Tier II cities come in - boasting huge populations, transport hubs and booming economies, most Tier IIs fly under the radar despite having lower barriers to foreign entry. For example, Chongqing is a Tier II municipality with a whopping 32 million residents and more than 3 million internet users
- Check out the big 30 Tier II and Tier III cities showcased in this April 2007 China's 30 Rising Urban Stars
- Not sexism, as Chinese women are as likely as their male counterparts to go online - the internet gender ratio corresponds almost exactly with China's actual gender imbalance of 53% Male, 47% Female
- Included the above chart because I'm stumped, pretty sure the disparity has nothing to do with the infamous One Child policy (it was introduced in 1979), so what's going on with the over 50s?
- Q: What does China Mobile have in common with Google, GE, Microsoft, Coca~Cola?
- A: They represent the top 5 brands in the world, as measured by the dollar value of their brand
- From the way this dragon has risen from its slumber, it may not be long before the first Chinese superbrand goes global - in 2007 four of the world's 100 most powerful brands were from China (five if you include HSBC bank)
So there you have it folks, 10 things you should know about China. I hoped SEOmoz has helped lift the red curtain enough to unveil the potential in the East.
What do you think are the big opportunities for online marketers in China?
If nothing else, the first question I'll be asking of our next generation of entrepreneurs is, 你会说中文吗?
This is tremendous stuff, Lucas. Really impressive to see all this data laid out so clearly and thorougly. Every day I feel more and more persuaded that China is going to be the economic center of the world in the next few decades, and those of us who can catch up with the market there will be well served to do so.
BTW - Are there any data sources on Chinese e-commerce or online spending?
There's the research the state-run CNNIC does, showing an ever increasing number of online shoppers (25% of all netizens have shopped online in the past 6 months), however, the spending power of the average Chinese online consumer is relatively low - 74% of netizens make less than 3000 yuan a month (Under $USD300 a month)
China is pretty much the economic centre of the world Rand. Turn over most goods in your average store and they'll be stamped with Made In China. If they could build any faster or get their hands on more oil, they'd already be well ahead of the rest of us financially just due to their size.
I read somewhere that China traditionally produced 1/5th of the worlds good. It's their turn to do it again and they'll be swimming in cash.
As to Sean's opinion above. I agree with you. Having lived in a few countries and one communist one, I can safely say that most of our opinions of other places are "sever mischaracterizations".
I can't speak to internal national e-commerce, but monetizing the online Chinese consumer, though not impossible, has been a hard slough for years, for western sites, especially considering the sheer size of the traffic.
Hey - really good research there!
When working for the British tourist board we obviously did quite a bit of work looking at China - and some interesting things came to light.
1) If you have a chinese language site google decides to send every chinese query to it regardless of location (thus chinese in UK ended up at it)
2) Research - we ran several big surveys in china on our sites - whilst the ones in USA, UK, Italy, Australia, Spain all completed quickly - China took 2 months to edge up - they just didnt like completing surveys! (Whether thats because of the firewalls/fear/dislike of answering a govt. bodies questions - we dont know)
3) A lot of people concentrated on how china was the new power model - and maybe its heading there, but it isnt there yet.
oh and a little snapshot of a tiny bit of the research we did is here
and here and here and oh theres a load of it.
I'll have a look at the web survey results to see if theyre good to go up.
If that's tiny, I'd love to see your 'normal' research. There's an incredible wealth of Chinese and British information (great design too) in those surveys.
With regards to the surveys, if you have a marketing budget you could spend some $ to buy advertising space on one of the big Chinese portals - most have a travel section and Chinese find these portals much more trustworthy than a foreign site!
Looking forward to the web survey results if you can get them!
Excellent post and as you said to begin your article "Here is what the Chinese government wants you to know about their Internet"
Throwing the evil word of Communism out we still know the Chineese government is extremely secretive and watchful. But we also know that the Chineese upper and middle class combined is larger than the entire population of the US-----so take your pill with a grain of salt!
Thank you Shor. I have no doubt whatsoever about the power of where China is going. What I have no clue about is really what it means for us (as English-speakers, as Brits, as SEOs) or what I should be doing about it...
Shor,
Really enjoyed seeing something so unique on the blog. It is difficult to be completely unique and still fall under the SEO topic umbrella. It is also interesting to note that we share the same blogging style.
While researching various topics online, I studied data allegedly showing the most popular/visited sites and blogs in the world. Why do you think none of these popular sites are saturated with Chinese content (yet)?
Do you think it is the Chinese firewall preventing foreign prominence or is it a problem with western technology not being able to parse the Chinese language? Or is it something else entirely?
I studied data allegedly showing the most popular/visited sites and blogs in the world
Most popular sites are defined by 'Western' measurement companies.
There are only a few measurement companies that have access to Chinese data (eg. comscore/nielsen have Chinese surveys) and fewer still that can provide a robust measurement service.
Why do you think none of these popular sites are saturated with Chinese content (yet)?
Chinese prefer localized sites to popular Western sites due to (duh) the Chinese language but also because:
1. Content is catered to Chinese consumption patterns - as high % users of music downloads/streaming, online gaming and IM, you'll see that Chinese portals tend to heavily promote this style of content
2. Content trust - the trustworthiness of content is comparatively low for Chinese compared to Western users. In fact there appears to be Chinese trend towards the 'rise of a skeptic'. IMO this means Chinese internet users are much more likely to trust content and produce content for high authority local sites like Tudou or the QQ network.
An excellent article, it's very important to keep an eye on the Chinese market; especially with the way the world economies are going.
I wouldn't class HSBC (the world's largest bank) as Chinese though, as it was formed by a Scot during the British occupation of Hong Kong. HSBC moved their world headquarters and incorporation to England before the Chinese took back control of HK. Apparently HSBC has more monetary assets than borrowings, making it one of the most stable places to put your hard-earned dollars.
Hehe Rob, I agree HSBC shouldn't be classified as a Chinese corporation but it sure feels like one (especially whenever I walk into a branch in Sydney, Singapore or Hong Kong and everyone is Chinese or speaking Chinese!)
Ni hao!
NI HAO ,hehe
you can say chiness ?
I can say Chinese , :-D
If you're interested in China you should also read this article from Search Engine Land:
https://searchengineland.com/report-from-the-field-search-in-china-2008-14802.php
I deal with Baidu for PPC marketing and like the article states, they don't really understand conversion goals. I had a few keywords that were performing really poorly but my Account Manager said "we should keep them for visibility purposes".
Yeah, in general the Chinese are in the early stages of search marketing adoption and education.
Btw, fixed your URL to be clickable!
Apparently the Chinese citizenry likes their treatment enough not to change the current regime. So that being said I have no qualms with dealing in that governments system.
The post is filled with some good data that certainly gives one a look at a potentially huge market. Despite the average salaries one must remember that there are pockets of great wealth and high incomes in China as well. A few years back one of my most profitable business ventures was selling high end IBM and Toshiba laptops to Chinese through a company in Hong Kong.
Those are a lot of potential customers, if only I could speak Chinese :(
I wonder if the heavy texting should be considered internet usage, at least as I think of it. My kids text in preference of phone calls. If you adjusted the Chinese internet usage down for texting, I wonder what the penetration (access) rates would be. Similarly, if the broadband access is available to support phone texting, that paints a very different picture of the opportunities for Internet applications in China.
This is not a criticism of what I think is a superb article, and I thank you for it.
Sounds like it would be beneficial to have a sister company in Japan down the road to support SEO efforts. I did a quick search and found that there are companies in existence to do this. It would be great to find one that is reliable to provide (a) great insight into the Chinese market and (b) reliable translations (in Taiwan some time ago the Pepsi tagline "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" was translated as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the grave").
Very informative post. Keep an eye on the fact that Chinese in general are tech addict, thus very keen on using mobile phone and the mobile browsing is a major issue. They are very keen on socializing, and the chinese way of living to some extent reflect today's web trend : networking, trust, recommendation, chatting, are rooted in the chinese culture.
But remember that China is a difficult market in general, what's functioning in the West may be useless in China, so before rushing into the Giant internet market, melt yourself into China and adapt your recipe.
One thing I'd like to add to those interested in optimizing to the Chinese surfer is that if your site is more display based, like flikr, translation of text really doesn't mean much in terms of conversions, one way or the other. Having images that have universal meaning can go a long way for this type of traffic. It's more UI than SEO, but I thought I'd put it out there.
Agreed, images are the universal language, hence the many images in the post! Also agree, designing UI for accessibility is a part of SEO.
Excellent post. Tons of great information here. Will definitely be passing the permalink around to this!
Makes me wish I either 1) took that Mandarin class I thought about taking, or 2) was a 3g cell phone manufacturer! :)
Will be very interesting to see how their culture evolves over the next couple of years and what kind of opportunities there are for non-Chinese businesses.
Kudos to all of the hard work that obviously went into this post!
I know this gets more polotical but i have to answer! (sorry randfish) So Sean you think that you treat workers/immigrants better in the USA?
Also regarding communism I dont think so the USA is far away from that, as we have seen the last few weeks its becoming a USSA! :)
I believe there are some great e-commerce opportunites in China for the next 2-5 years!
Lucas,
Great post with some good insights. One though would be, what can the US / EU do? or more to the point what should they do? What strategies should current leaders, mainly US, be taking to either partner or establish a presences in China? Adding the political complexities into the mix, western centric corporations will continue to struggle unless effective paths to success are achieved.
Westen dominant under performers within China:
eBay
Google
Yahoo
MSN
Will China want greater control on the "gun powder" this century?
I think so!
Great article! Thanks Shor for sharing. It was actually forwarded by my colleague in UK. I am a local Chinese working in Shanghai. e-marketing is new area for me to promote the company I work for.
Currently, PPC & SEO is popular in China, in particular Adwords as SEO is considered more "techy". After talking with some local agents of PPC, I do feel they are not professional enough. They are very sales oriented rather than think in the shoes of the client. It is a fact that a large number of companies in China is ignorant of PPC. No wonder they do not care a lot about conversion. The online market needs to be educated in China.
How big is the online market in China? I work in travel industry and did a bit research last year for my boss. "In 2005, the total online travel transaction in China totaled to about USD 2.5 billion, whereas the total transaction in travel hit USD 96 billion." In Europe and US, the proportion of online travel market is about 12% and 30% of overall travel market correspondingly, so I do believe there is huge space to grow in China.
It is true the market in China is sophisticated. See those examples, Baidu vs. Google, QQ vs. MSN, Taobao vs. eBay, even kaixinwang, a local SNS beats Facebook. Localization in China really matters.
One thing that isn't addressed is credit card penetration. Yes there are a ton of people in China all hopping on the Internet but that doesn't mean they all are customers. I do a lot of affiliate marketing and China is actually a country that I intentionally redirect so they don't suck up all my server's bandwidth.
Until they have more money to spend and they develop a payment mechanism let them play behind their great firewal and stay off my server. :)
Excellent post Shor! Politics aside, everyone should be aware of what is happening in China as it affects us all.
One thing to keep in mind, in spite of the large number of internet users in China, the markets are much more fragmented than they are in the US. For example in the US someone from the state of Washington would react to a marketing message generally speaking in the same way as someone from Florida.
However in China, the people in Bejing are far different from those in Shanghai or Guangzhou. IMHO China will never have the penetration rate of the US but then again every per centage point equals 13 million people so it doesn't really matter.
Great post. Hopefully the more of this insightful and relevant information about China that makes it in front of people's eyes, the fewer ignorant anti-China remarks we will see, and the more understanding.
Brilliant article. I am working on a bit of SEO for a Chinese business at the moment, so an insite into their online activities was very timely.
thanks
The Chinese are developing a whole unique Internet culture as well as business models. It's pretty tough to get there on your own without a solid understanding of the market, the culture and the mindset of the people. The eBay case is an example. Despite massive investment and efforts, it still falls short of the Chinese taobao whose CEO once remarked that a shark is no match for a crocodile once it enters the river.
Even some small things may surprise the unprepared. Take a look at www.yahoo.com and cn.yahoo.com or www.msn.com and cn.msn.com. Don't their Chinese conterparts make you dizzy? Well, that's how they like it.
Great stuff! I've been exploring Chinese SEO just recently. Translated a page on a site (not perfectly or with conversion in mind - just for SEO experimentation). A few inbound links using mandarin and hey presto! First page in google.cn - Early doors but clearly do-able!
Thanks shor very informative article, complemented with the comments section, specially comments made by Sean, gives us a broader, more realistic perspective of the Online Chinesse Market.
Super post on an emerging super power (on all aspects).
Very heavy article with lots of good research. Lot's of implications. I do have trouble getting the communism/capitalism and open and free internet/government sensoring thing!
My daughter was able to go with a diplomatic group.
I agree with Rand. As shocking as it may seem right now, you simply cannot discount the people and resources of the Chinese.
Awesome post Shor. An Incredible amount of detail. Thanks
Shor
Great article, loads of great information and facts.
From a personal point of view, I think China is going from strength to strength and definitely one to watch.
I was particularly interested to read the information and facts surrounding social networking and would be interested to find out break down in these stats on how much networking was business related. (which I know is nearing on impossible to find out!) I only ask as I am currently looking into this from a UK perspective.
Shor thats and outstanding research! Thanks a lot to SEOmoz for sharing it with us.
Oh and an interesting thing about chinese use of internet is the military view of it - (not strictly relevant to SEO but it is to general online info)
which is that in the numerous white papers published by various defence colleges and institutes in china they see the internet as a key battleground in any future conflict - due to increasing reliance on it for commerce, industry and defence. Thus the chinese "great firewall" is a world first defensive firewall in that light..
apologies - danny noticed the odd links at the end of my comments - its a firefox plugin - not trying to spam - apologies for that!!
Not a big deal. I removed them from your comments above. Your comments are exactly the same as when you posted them, I just removed the unintentional javascript links.
Thanks for the educational and enlightening post. China definitely represents one of the largest opportunities for telcos and mobile phone companies. The sheer volume is staggering at times.
I'm off to find a local Mandarin class.
True, china is #1 internet country today. Not US, not India.
Jaak, https://seoapplied.blogspot.com/
Great article Shor. Lots of hard work. Looks like all of your links are currently broken.
As for the big opportunities, it's hard to say with a Communist government that restricts trade, fails to appropriately value it's currency and treats their working class like slaves.
Sean - we normally remove political opinion content from the blog, but I just wanted to address the points you made. Having been to China (and having Gillian just arrive back from a long trip there), I can say that there are many many people in China who'd strongly disagree with your assessment and many economists and outsiders who, while they have criticisms, would consider those sentiments to be severe mischaracterizations.
I also think you might be stepping on very tenuous ground in comparing the treatment of the "working class" to that of slavery.
Sorry Rand, but I gave a thumbs down on your response to Sean, I think you call a duck a duck, and not play political football. We are all gown-ups here, I think and he brings up some interesting and actually expandable points to the growing Chinese market share, which I feel is subsidized, not a fair comparison to the US or the EU when it comes to actual costs for doing business.
I think every point that you or sean made can be made to stick to the US or EU or China - thats why its best to look at data and not start talking politics here.
Agreed. This is an SEO blog.
Robbothan -
In the case of a Communist government especially, politics plays a role in the decisions surrounding business, especially where we are talking about internet marketing business with a country that censors the very medium we are discussing.
As for suggesting that my points can be made to stick to the US or EU, please let me know when, exactly, did the US and EU become Communist nations?
It's all about opinion and understanding - see to the people in china they'd think it was normal - afterall the producer of the 2008 olympics launch display said that kind of discipline was only available in china or north korea.As to US and EU - "slave" labour exists in many forms - whether the role of eastern europeans in Britain, Mexicans in California, Somalians in Israel, or the Chinese in Russia, or even call centres and outsourcing to India - its all about being on one end of the spectrum. (oh and Europe's always flirted with communism and marx did think it'd take hold in germany, britain and USA more than russia ;) )
Regarding the politics - its true but they can argue that the role played by "big business" and lobbying in the west is just as bad as that played by the government in their countries. (not defending communism just understanding)
But the true point - your right - politics does play a decision in the market there and its well worth understanding its role, just as understanding the new role of govt in Russia will affect internet life there.
anyhoooo enough politics!
What do you call it when you travel to China to work on construction and your boss holds your passport for you while you work 10+ hour days with little pay and virtually no work conditions? I've seen a couple of undercover documentaries on work conditions in China, never been there myself, but I have to agree with Sean.
And we can't express our views on the comments? I can't even understand how Sean's opinion was a political one...? Maybe's just me.
The same treatment happens here in the US, not just China. I lived in NYC for more than 25 yrs. and have seen these practices first hand. This happens to Central and South American immigrants in the US as well. It's unacceptable no matter where it happens, but does not necessarily point to government complicity.
But I wonder about people coming to China to work on construction. From what I have seen, read, and heard, the last thing China wants is to import anyone, let alone laborors. They continue to focus on making sure their own people have jobs and the one-child policy, as well as others speaks to their conviction to lower the population, not increase it with immigrant workers.
Money is everything I guess from what I read above.
Gillian,
I lived in NY for 25 years as well - and in the heart of Chinatown and Little Italy (Broadway & Canal), for 3 years. I've also seen the "sweat shops" you are referring to.
There is no comparison to this versus the situation that I am referring to, neither in conditions nor scale. In China, to say it is massive, is an understatement. With all due respect, to state that it doesn't necessarily point to government complicity is naive at best. This is a Communist country we're talking about.
On a final note, China is a fun country to visit. I love Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong as well as many of the outskirt areas I've visited, and the people are wonderful. However, it doesn't change the other facts.
Sean
Rand,
You're welcome to take my commment down if it violates the policy of the blog.
I've been to China for business on 15 separate occasions during the past five years.
1) They are a Communist government - that's a fact
2) They severly restrict trade - that's a fact
3) They fail to appropriately value their currency.
4) Perhaps I should have said - The working class works for slave wages. - although there are slave labor camps.
The company I worked for had 30,000 employees in Shenzhen alone. I've visited the sites where these people work and am all too familiar with the wage scale - and these are the "lucky" ones.
I'm not sure what you were exposed to on your trip, but it's probably fair to say that I have a bit more experience with China.
Nevertheless, it was not my intention to distract from Shor's well-written article. Rather, I was trying to make the point that as large as they are, and as massive as their internet usage is, it does not necessarily translate to opportunity for those outside of China.
I've worked 8 years closely with China in the YangTsé triangle, the working conditions here are better than those in Guandong province. So China is a big country or should I say a mosaic of countries, as well as one unique marketing strategy should not be applicable to the different regions.
Hello Rand,
The biggest mistake one can make is believing one knows China after having "been to China". That turns into costly business decisions. For starters, no one can be truly "fluent" in a culture without being fluent in its language - they are inseperable.
It's obviously great that people have and use a passport though. As I'm sure you'll agree, going to China is very eye-opening (like another planet, not another country) and the U.S. would be much better off if more people travelled outside the country more.
Having lived in China for a few years myself and a couple close relatives who are native to the country, I can say that there is a lot of truth in Sean's impression (more than you might think) and there's also a lot of truth in your impression.
China is changing all the time at a faster pace than we can grasp, but one truth that is still true by any consensual reality: China is a land of extremes and contradictions - arguably more than the U.S.
You will go to some cities and it will be very Westernized...you may even see an almost normal bookstore! There will be extreme wealth. In other areas you will be in the 3rd world and think you went back in time. Poverty is extreme - some people not even having clothes. I realize you can say similar things about the U.S., but the degree of extremes is less comparable. In short, I'd much rather be homeless in abject poverty by U.S. standards than in mainland China.
Some of the factories I visited would be shut down in the U.S. due to slave working conditions and control. The U.S. has this and many other things in their history too of course.
Anyway, I just wanted to make the point that while we MUST generalize to make sense of the world, China is much bigger than the U.S. so generalizations become less meaningful. So when we aren't being specific, anything we say about China will tend to be true in some sense, false in some sense, true and false in some sense, meaningful in some sense, meaningless in some sense, and meaningful and meaningless in some sense.
I am fascinated by China and I've met the best people I've ever met in the world there. I will be going back for a few weeks in November. No one in China is allowed to express anything negative about the government (and if you do so too carelessly, you could easily dissapear one day.) So there's obviously extreme programming to only express the positive. This is a key difference that we take for granted in the U.S.
I believe it's important to see things as they are (but not worse than they are), and only then see things better than they are, which facilititates a goal/vision and moving forward. Again, I LOVE the people I know in China and some of them are literally family. And to state what should be the obvious, they have their share of "arrogant jerks" and "morons" just as we do. I'm just not going to give their government a pass on things that I don't give to the U.S. government either. Our respective cultures have much to learn from each other.
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Frogs.
Thanks Sean, caught those URLs, silly WYSIWYG editor.
All governments have their light and dark in how they grease the gears of the economy, China basically has a much bigger machine than most.
It lumbers along and while certain parts work much slower than others and some parts may fall off the wagon entirely, IMO the machine is moving in the right direction...
China is embracing capitalism, is working hard to meet WTO requirements and FDI is soaring. Yes, one of the biggest risks and stumbling blocks to doing business in China is the bureaucracy itself, but those that can negotiate with (or around) the red tape will enjoy the spoils (and if you miss out, there's always the other BRICs)
Shor,
It looks like your "Top 5 Brands in The World" link may still be broken.
I appreciate your comment.
Sean