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Posts from the ‘Consumer culture’ Category

May 17

The Danwei Bulletin May 16, 2013

AQSIQ: Excessive lead detected in L’Occitane exfoliant

This post is an extract from the Danwei Bulletin, a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media before the information appears in English language reporting and sent to premium subscribers of the FT’s China Confidential and Danwei. Please click here for more information.

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Chinese media last week reported that the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) announced that they had detected excessive amounts of lead in a foreign skin care product: “Almond Delicious Paste”, a skincare exfoliant product sold by the French company L’Occitane en Provence. L’Occitane is a Hong Kong-listed French company. Read more

May 10

Toothpaste Safety Scare Mentions on Weibo

Whitening toothpaste safety scare

This post is an extract from the Danwei Bulletin, a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media before the information appears in English language reporting and sent to premium subscribers of the FT’s China Confidential and Danwei. Please click here for more information.

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On May 2, Modern Life Daily 当代生活报 reported on a study of test results of whitening toothpaste from Guangxi University for Nationalities, located in Nanning. The study found that six brands of whitening toothpaste contained ‘carcinogenic sulfites’. In response, the China Oral Health Products Industry Association cast doubt on the methodology of the study, but the report caused a spike of social media conversations on Sina Weibo, many of them negative. Read more

May 3

Sanitary Pads_Page_2

Fake sanitary pads: Massive margins driving rampant piracy

A typical sanitary pad customer will remain loyal to one brand for several decades, so a company with a strong brand and good distribution has a license to print money. And where there is money in China, there are pirates. Southern Metropolis Daily 南方都市报 last week reported that counterfeit sanitary pads worth over 150 million yuan were seized by police in a port city famous for its smugglers: Quanzhou in Fujian province. Read more

Apr 26

Weibo Quake Donations Chart_Page_1_Page_1

Corporate earthquake donations and social media

Soon after the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, donation fever gripped China as individuals and companies lined up to donate funds for disaster relief. Some of this enthusiasm turned sour: Internet users drew up a spurious list of the top ten “international iron roosters” 国际铁公鸡 accusing global brands like Samsung, Nokia, and Coca-Cola of donating nothing to the earthquake relief effort despite reaping in millions in profits in the China. Read more

Apr 10

The Danwei Bulletin Image

The Danwei Bulletin

The Danwei Bulletin is a new weekly report produced by Danwei and published on the FT’s China Confidential website and sent to premium subscribers. The Danwei Bulletin is a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media before the information appears in English language reporting.

A brief summary of each week’s report can be viewed on the China Confidential website, and the full edition is available on subscription. For more information on The Danwei Bulletin or about our custom media monitoring and research services, please contact jeremy@danwei.com.

Stay ahead of the news
The examples below illustrate how the Danwei Bulletin readers get the scoop on business stories long before they hit the international media.

Gold Price
April 25 – Danwei Bulletin
Despite gold prices dropping in the last week, demand in China remains strong
Chinese social media websites were buzzing with reports of mainland Chinese visiting Hong Kong to buy gold. One photo that was widely shared shows a branch of the jeweler Chow Tai Fook with shelves completely empty after a visit by goldbug mainlanders.

May 3 – South China Morning Post
Chinese mothers beat Wall Street to force gold price rebound
Attempts by Wall Street funds to drive down bullion value through short selling thwarted by Asian mothers swooping in to buy for weddings.

May 9 – Bloomberg
At least 30 tons of gold were sold between April 29 and May 2 in Hong Kong, up more than 50 percent from last year, according to estimates by the city’s Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society.

Nongfu Bottled Water – major bottled water and beverage brand
April 3 – Danwei Bulletin
Bottled Water – Scandals continue
Wang Hai, a veteran Chinese anti-fraud activist, has suggested that there may be quality problems with Nongfu Spring tea beverages… Nongfu… has been on the defense recently, fending off charges that its water sources are polluted

May 3 – CCTV English – China Central Television News
Via Twitter
Nongfu Spring, China’s leading bottled water, pulled from shelves in Beijing as it failed national standards.

May 4 – Shanghai Daily
Industry body seeking Beijing ban for Nongfu Spring water
The Bottled Water Sales Association of Beijing published a notice yesterday saying that Nongfu Spring water was not only in violation of national standards but also guilty of false advertising and misleading customers.

Apr 9

Get a pack of cigarettes and find a nice local apartment

Corner store consumption: profiles of small Chinese convenience stores

Xiaomaibu literally means small selling department, and refers to Chinese corner shops or small convenience stores usually run by an individual or a family. The person who runs such stores may sleep inside the store. The range of products and services sold in such stores varies immensely. This post highlights such xiaomaibu in a few locations around China, looking at the most popular products sold in each store along with particular services offered that make each xiaomaibu an essential local dispenser.

Read more

Mar 22

Apple in CCTV's crosshairs

Taking the shine off Apple’s China prospects?

Apple in the crosshairs, and the shadow of Google’s misadventures in China

On March 15 — World Consumer Rights Day — China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast its annual investigative program that seeks to expose companies that harm or mistreat Chinese consumers. Several companies, both foreign and domestic came under the spotlight, and the program rehashed familiar accusations of Chinese consumers being treated unfairly by multinationals. Specifically, CCTV accused Apple of discriminating against Chinese customers by offering lower levels of service and charging fees for replacing back covers of faulty iPhones, which is done for free in other countries. Read more

Mar 7

Master Kong Stock Chart

Master Kong: How Internet rumors can affect share prices

The chart above illustrates how Internet rumors can ravage a company’s stock price. The company in question is Master Kong (康师傅), China’s best-loved brand of instant noodles. Read more

Mar 7

China Media Montage

Intelligence from the Chinese Media and Internet

Danwei tracks companies, brands, investments, topics and people on the Chinese Internet and in the media. Read more

Jan 31

Nanyang Wanbao 31Jan

Nanyang outlaws “eating and drinking big”

The city government of Nanyang (南阳), Henan province, is taking corruption and extravagance very seriously. The front page of the Nanyang Evening Post (南阳晚报) today proclaims in a very large headline: “Saying ‘no’ to tip of the tongue waste”. The phrase “on the tip of the tongue” sounds strange when translated directly into English, as I’ve done here, but it essentially refers to the enjoyment of a country’s food and drink culture. Any foreigner’s experience of China inevitably includes savoring the many interesting dishes of Chinese food, which are enjoyed “on the tip of the tongue.” Yet the city government of Nanyang has declared war on the inherent waste and extravagance of “tip of the tongue” enjoyment. As the newspaper explains in a somber fashion today, the disciplinary inspection committee in the city yesterday launched a special new operation to “strictly investigate the use of public funds for eating and drinking”.

And these are not merely empty words, because the newspaper recounts that teams were dispatched to hotels to winkle out those gorging themselves at the public’s behest. To spice things up even more, at the very top of the article, city residents are called upon to denounce any government officials violating the rules by engaging in “eating and drinking big” (大吃大喝). Clearly, Nanyang has put its money where its mouth is. Read more

Jan 25

Shougang

Wastelands of Beijing

About 20 km outside Beijing, tourists sitting in tour buses from Beijing north-eastwards towards the Badaling section of the Great Wall can spot the apparent remains of a medieval castle some distance from the expressway. Its concrete spires rising above a muddy corn field, the eerie shell remains as a relic of the grandiose ideas of once-powerful men who’ve since passed through the grinding mill of elite politics, corruption and prison in China. All around Beijing, architectural artefacts of previous decades remain, many decayed and going to ruin.

This article is a tour through some of the more spectacular wastelands of contemporary Beijing, places that will surely be developed into something entirely different at some point in the future – when the interest groups that control the land and construction finally make a deal they can live with.
Read more

Jan 6

Image from ESWN: The Shishou Mass Incident (2009)

Legal Daily report on mass incidents in China in 2012

The Legal Daily 法治日报 has published a summary of their ’2012 Mass Incident Research Report’ 2012年群体性事件研究报告, quantifying and analyzing ‘mass incidents’ in China – riots, civil unrest, and protests. The data sources and methodology behind the report are not made explicit in their introduction (which says the full report can be provided if you contact them; Danwei has not yet obtained a copy of the full report).

The summary does not give an absolute number of mass incidents in 2012, and the numbers in the geographical distribution section which seem to indicate, for example, that Guangdong only had eight mass incidents, do not make sense when compared to previous reports by Chinese government organs that talked about 80 to 100,000 mass incidents a year nationwide.

The report highlights Weibo as an increasingly significant factor in mass incidents, and makes recommendations that local authorities take “positive” steps like making official announcements and dealing with the person responsible for the situation, rather than using “negative” methods such as information blackouts, forced dispersals and arrests.

Some key statistic of the report are summarized below: Read more

Nov 28

Nanfangdushibao 28 Nov

Pandemonium on China’s stock market

There’s pandemonium on China’s newspaper front pages today: the stock market is falling even faster than the sliding temperatures. So there’s graphics of bears and plunging arrows galore. The Southern Metropolis Daily (南方都市报) from Guangdong chose today to dispense with any graphics and simply put the cold, hard truth writ large on its front page: “The weather is really cold, but the stock market is even colder”. There’s some fun stock market crash graphics to admire on various other papers though. Read more

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