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Thought for quite a while before i penned this post. It will actually be easier if not for that Chinese firewall that oprevented my blogging as I had so much to write about during the trip. Now, I simply have so much thoughts floating ard I dunno what to write.
Since the internet is about democratization, and i blogged about democracy twice in my previous 3 posts, i thought i should walk the talk.

So I will be writing down several key topics I learnt about during this trip and let you guys, my dear readers decide what you want to read. I will choose the top 2 or 3 and write in detail about them. I cant promise what i write about will be great stuff but you have my word i will do my best. Having some specific topics actually helps narrow my scope and sharpen my limited memory abilities on the most interesting issues to you.

(in no order of importance)

1. The spirit of private enterprise in Zhejiang Province, a province neglected by the CCP of CHina since PRC's founding because of its proximity to Taiwan. How did this province rise from perennial under-investment by the Central Govt to become an economic hothouse today? Btw, CHiang Kai SHek is a Zhejiang native (Ningbo City if i am not mistaken)
2. My experience in Yiwu City - reputedly the world's Walmart for traders and distributors all over the world. This place is only a friggin 1100 square kilometres. Here, you can buy anything and everything, from socks, shoes, bags, clothes, electronics, TVs, key chains, pens, yougettheidea … I spent a day there and only explored 2 (out of a dozen) sections of 1 megamall there.
3. The entrepreneurial infrastructure in Zhejiang province. VCs, incubators, equity plans et al…
4. The role of government in enterprise and my own experiences socializing with them
5. Opportunities for young, entrepreneurial Singaporeans like myself in Zhejiang province. We are way behind the Taiwanese, Hongkongers, Koreans, Japanese in cracking this market.
6. Tourist attractions in Hangzhou
7. What the hell is this small Hangzhou city and why the hell should I pay attention to it? P.s. THey are building a maglev train from Shanghai to Hangzhou, now ponder why they care spending billions of US$ linking these 2 cities..

Thats about it. Comments and votes from you guys please.. =)

Will the days of centrally-planned marketing campaigns that views you (the customer), as a target board ready for bombardment by million-dollar ad campaigns end? Where tons of brochures, pamphlets and other marketing crap all seek to brainwash u into thinking Company X's new product is the best thing since sliced bread.. 

Apple's iPod leads a new wave of marketing, one that seeks to place the customer back into the saddle/ dominant role of the firm-customer relationship again.  A new way which is called a more pull-based marketing that depends more on the customer reaching out and asking for a good because he/ sghe really desires it and has a perceived need. Well, some brainwashing might still eb responsible for the "perceived need", but in pull-based marketing, the influence of the marketer is more subtle and sophisticated, i might say. I am a sucker for Apple products. Keep ur new 7th-generation iPod under wraps and that immense shroud of secrecy for months and chances are i will still buy it. =)

 An excerpt from this article:

This leads to the third, most important and least obvious of the iPod's trumps: the power of 'pull'. Most companies distribute their product by 'push'. They estimate demand, build according to the estimate and then sell ('push') what they have built. This is essentially business as central planning, and it works little better at company than at country level - hence the need for advertising and promotional price-cuts to reconcile sales with estimates, extra features to help sell the product and, finally, huge computer power to keep track of all the product variations, sales estimates and production plans.When, as with iTunes, the product is 'pulled' by the customer, on the other hand, the engines required for 'push' are redundant. It's like using gravity instead of fighting against it. Pull inherently uses fewer resources; tells managers directly what consumers want; and above all delivers on customers' own terms.

In their book The Support Economy, Shoshana Zuboff and Jim Maxmin charge that the rising tide of consumer discontent amid material plenty is the result of companies failing to change along with their customers. People are no longer grateful for what companies give them; they want what they want, in the form they decide. Part of the iPod's phenomenal success is that as one of the first of a new breed of products to put customers on equal terms with producers, it begins to respond to this need.

Survived mild typhoon-esque conditions in Hangzhou and a near-typhoon in Hongkong while I was returning this morning during a stopover in HK.
Back in SIngapore after an almost 2 week enforced hiatus due to the blocking of Wordpress and Blogspot platforms in CHina.  I found a solution to circumvent it though but just didn;t have the time to wait for the slow broadband connection in my hotel to upload or write anything. Alas, missed blogging abt several enlightening moments during my trip. SHould try to do some major recollection if possible now that I am back. Stay tuned, folks.. 

Not really blogging about the trip yet. But its been an enriching first peek at HongKong's economy and culture. Since pictures speak a thousand words, i thought it best to throw a few of my pics here.

Looking picture perfect from the top.

KInda reminds me of those mockups made by architecture firms. Except this pic above is real.

Famous Hongkong human jams. Too many pple, too litlle space. THis one's taken in Mongkok.

HongKong is a marketer's paradise and also hellhole. TOo much advertising opportunities and also too little potential for mindshare and penetration. With so much advertising messages on neon signs, billboards, or sales booths like above, Hongkongers must be really apathetic to all this marketing hogwash thrown at them from all angles and layers of the business community.

Hongkong is not all economic and dollars and cents, unlike Singapore. They have a conscience, some call it political, i call it social. And they offer an outlet of expression for that, in broad daylight with thousands of Hongkongers thronging the streets. This pic above is a protest against the cash-for-human organs scheme and also alludes to some Falungong persecution by the CHinese government. In fact, this garned the most attention due to the dramatization of the whole message with a living human posing as a corpse.

Who can forget FalunGong? The million-member politico-religious movement that is the subject of crackdown within CHina and the source of Hu Jintao's and George Bush's embarrassment during the former's visit to the White House? In the more democratic SAR of Hongkong, we see glimpses of freedom of speech practised by pple with a social conscience.

Here's some truth about marketing from Futurelab, its a response to Guy Kawasaki's lies which is profile below. I am summarizing the points that I really like.

Simplicity rules!

Advertising and feature overload is making consumers “tune out” (now even proven by neurologists). Real marketers respect this and focus their messages on the essence of what they’re trying to say, simply deleting all the rest. They also avoid countering marketing immunity by bigger doses of promotion, yet focus on timing their message only at the most relevant moment (ironically saving a bundle of budget in the process).

Trust customers as much as you expect them to trust you.

In the social media space reputations can be made or broken in the blink of an eye, and there’s nothing a brand can do about it. Real marketers see this and proactively open up their treasure box to their community of users. They publicly own up to mistakes and involve consumers in creating promotions and even products. Above all, real marketers understand that love for a brand starts with trust, and to earn trust you first have give it.

There’s nothing wrong with hard work

For some, marketing is a profession which is 90% about coming up with ideas and then farming out the “doing” to agencies. Real marketers see this differently. They implement rigorous processes to ensure initiatives get executed on-time, on-budget and with maximum financial impact on the business. They go along on sales calls, not to talk about their latest campaign, yet to listen, learn and help the account manager get the business. In short, they roll up their sleeves and work.

CLick here for the whole article.

And on to the top lies from "whistle-blower" Guy Kawasaki: Love the definition of "viral" and totally agree with the Microsoft "innoculation". Dun those guys EVER GET IT???

4. "We're confident that our product is extremely viral." Steve Jurvetson best defined virality as "the involuntary adoption of a product." The key word is involuntary–for example, in the early days of instant messaging, ICQ was a viral product because if you wanted to instant message, you had no choice but to install ICQ. Any decent product can generate word of mouth advertising, but very few products are truly viral.Anti-example: Have you ever wanted to post a comment to an MSN-hosted blog only to be confronted with the message that you have to sign in with a Microsoft .NET Passport? That's not virality–that's innoculation.

9. "This is how we are going to position the product." This is a lie of naivete that indicates a lack of real-worldliness and experience. You might try to position your product in a certain way, but ultimately customers, not you, position your product. You take your best shot and then you see how customers react–if, frankly, they react at all. But, at the end of the day, you're hardly in total control of positioning.

"Our product is so unique that it has no competition." (Maura Welch). It has no competition for two possible reasons: (a) You're clueless and don't know how to use Google; (b) there's no market for it so no one else is dumb enough to do the same thing.

I included the last point cos this is a common lie many business plans presenters or entrepreneurs refuse to believe. I included it so i can remind myself again. There's no more ideas thats new in this world. Idea generation is dead, but idea conceptualization and execution can be innovated upon.

Headed to the heart of the Asian Economy with NUS delegations.

Will be visiting Hongkong for 5 days and touring several universities (HK University and City University of HK), Bloomberg HK, Singtel HK, HK Monetary Authority, maybe Disneyland and Ocean Park too but to sit through conferences and presentations opposed to enjoying rides, taking pics and other touristy stuff..

Next up is to Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, for a 2 week immersion in their local entrepreneurial climate. No detailed schedule yet but it looks to be lots of networking sessions, seminars by local professors at the local college (Zhejiang University)

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Hangzhou,

As one of the most renowned and prosperous cities in China for much of the last 1,000 years, Hangzhou is also well-known for its beautiful natural scenery, with the West Lake (Xī Hú, 西湖) as the most noteworthy location. The GDP per capita was (ca. US$4620), ranked no. 8 among 659 Chinese cities. The 2005 overall rank of Hangzhou among all the Chinese cities is No.5. In 2004, Forbes magazine ranked Hangzhou the number 1 city in China for business.
Hangzhou appears in the Chinese saying

Born in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou, die in Liuzhou.

Sister City: Boston, Massachusetts

(which is a prosperous touristic and cultural destination in the U.S., as Hangzhou is in China)

Great, I am visiting the "Boston" of China. It was a borefest in the real Boston when i visited, at least there was Cambridge the college town that was the saving grace. I can only hope the contrary is true in Hangzhou.

Wil try to blog more about my trips. This is my 2nd time to CHina, after my 2002 trip to the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou. A pity I am lacking cash, or I would have embarked on a week-long hiatus in the mountains of Tibet in a sojourn for spiritual enlightenment. Ah well, perhaps next trip to China eh?

BEST and most rational blog of reason and sensibility in the maddening, emotionally-charged climate of our nation this election period.

For the past nine days or so, many Singaporeans have been touched by the feel of freedom. They hold on so tightly to this breath of free air with the desperate fatalism that it will be lost again. For another four or five years. They know it will be lost, but they hold on tightly. They hold on to a photograph, a photograph cruelly rejected by the media and cast out into cyberspace. A photograph which headlines a foreign newspaper. A photograph that shows I am not alone. That there are so many beside me, there are so many like me, there are so many who feel like me. And for these 14 days of freedom, the loneliness and alienation of four years dissolves, as we feel kinship with the fellow Singaporean beside. They deny you the photograph because they do not want you you to feel kinship during this brief time of freedom.

But tonight, tonight is the last night of freedom. Tonight tonight. We re-enter solitiude and alienation. That intoxicating beacon of light standing atop the muddy field will cease tonight.

The freedom we feel will be lost. Democracy in Singapore will go back into storage tonight, tonight.

Potong Pasir, Hougang, Aljunied, Chua Chu Kang, Ang Mo Kio, Yishun, East Coast, Tampines, voters, Singaporeans, my dear readers, its time to step out. Believe in me as I believe in you. Tonight tonight. Step out. Just to feel that freedom. Feel democracy. Feel History calling out to you. And remember this feeling. Remember until the next time freedom comes. When democracy is dusted and brought out to Singaporeans. Tonight tonight. We step out.

Read the full article here.

Microsoft's stock plunged below the $25 psychological barrier after their recent release of a record Q3 result for revenues. This is due   increased spending including a project on grid computing (read here) that smacks of a copycat approach to Google's strategies.

So here's a rumor on CNET, WSJ, CNN that to beat Google, MSFT is thinking of buying a stake in Yahoo, or selling MSN to them.

Lets look at March 2006 Comscore rankings of the search engines.

The proposed Yahoo- MSFT move sounds like desperation to me. Yes, the new alliance will give both the content portals a shot in the arm, if search is included, (which is likely from the proposed deal), then they get 41% share, comparable against Google's. Ad networks will surely have to be combined as well in order to leverage off the combined content portals and this will give the new "YahooSoft" portal an unassailable lead in terms of web traffic. But this move doesn't sound likely as it means Microsoft will be sending a signal that its past year of innovation efforts in search and creating its online ad network were futile and it decided to find the shortcut by pairing with Yahoo in order to catch Google fast.

Then again, "Yahoosoft" will seriously undermine Google's efforts at becoming a portal with its Google Ig project. It will accelerate their need to depend on AOL for content and web property to plant its ads now that its search market share no longer forms an advantage over the independent Yahoo or Microsoft engines.

And this will only mean one winner at the end of it all. Time Warner, which had previously seemingly written off hopes of its AOL units a year ago, gets a relatively lower but significant payback for its failed AOL acquisition for reinvesting into new web media properties or consolidating its other business units to fend off criticism from Carl Icahn.

Other Links here: Ars Technica ,