Shanghai is looking to get rid of poorly translated English signs as it readies to welcome 4 million foreign visitors to next year’s World Expo. Read More…

I realize that scientify data — sometimes — tends to skew towards where scientists want to, but this one is quite interesting: Read More…

In the first half of 2008, China’s total advertising launch reached 244.9 billion yuan (over 36 billion U.S. dollars) , an increase of 17% compared with the same period last year, according to well-known global media and information group Nielsen latest report of ad information services, Xinhua News reported.

Among the three types of major media Nielsen monitored, television continued to lead with 83% of the advertising market share, a total of 204 billion yuan; and print media advertising made progress with an increase of 14 percent. Among them, newspapers and magazine ads amounted to 36 billion and 5 billion yuan.

And the arrival of the Olympic Games clearly has stimulated China’s advertising market. By the end of June, according to the Nielsen results, 28 Olympic sponsors had invested ads of 11.8 billion yuan, grew by 12 percent compared with last year, and the total market share reached 5 percent.

“Advertisers have now returned to expected advertising levels following a lull in May as a consequence of the Sichuan earthquake,” said Richard Basil Jones, Managing Director, Nielsen Media Research, The Nielsen Company, Asia Pacific. “Obviously Olympic sponsors have been more aggressive in their advertising strategy in the lead up to the Games, which has fleshed out to RMB 6.6 billion in just the second quarter, a significant 28 percent increase from the first quarter.”

How time changes: the latest survey from Nielsen during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games shows that among all the sponsors, the Coca-Cola Company had the highest consumer awareness, but only ranked third in advertising costs.

In addition to Nielsen’s survey data, survey data from R3 also showed that nearly 50 percent of respondents initially mentioned that Coca-Cola is the sponsor of the Olympics; and more than 86 percent of respondents could say Coca-Cola is the Olympic Games Sponsor after a simple prompt. Coca-Cola holds the highest consumer awareness; and has made the deepest impression on public Olympic sponsors.

What sets this year’s marketing apart from previous Olympic marketing, which focused mainly on the host country, is that the Coca-Cola headquarters implemented a global marketing plan. During the Olympic Games, the four Chinese “Coca Cola” characters appeared on Coca-Cola products in 160 countries and regions for the first time; and simultaneously launched a huge Olympic marketing plan in the 60 countries and regions. According to statistics, the Coca-Cola supplied 25 million bottles of Coca-Cola daily to Beijing’s Olympic venues, exceeding the 20 million bottles in the Athens Games.

Athletes, officials, spectators and tourists can pick up the Bible or just the New Testament for free during the Olympic Games. Tens of thousands of copies of the Bible, the New Testament and booklets with just the four Gospels (according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) have been printed for the purpose, say officials of China’s Christian society.

News of the printing of the Scriptures should put pay to rumors started by overseas agencies saying the Chinese authorities would not make the Bible available at the Games.

Rev Xu Xiaohong, an official of the Shanghai-based China Christian Council in charge of publishing, says 50,000 bilingual (Chinese and English) editions of the Gospel booklets had already been printed by June. They are on way to six cities hosting the Olympic events in the mainland.

As has been the practice at earlier Games, the Gospel booklets will be available mainly in churches and the Olympic Village in Beijing, and in Qingdao, Shanghai, Shenyang, Tianjin and Qinhuangdao, Xu says.

Places of worship for people of other religions too have been set up in the Olympic Village, Chen Guangyuan, president of the Islamic Association of China has said.

The cover of the Gospel booklet will have the Beijing Olympics logo. “This is especially significant (because) as far as I know, this is the first time an Olympics logo will be used on a religious booklet,” Xu says. “The Olympic spirit and the spirit of living a ‘purpose-driven life’ that Christians believe in come together in the combination.”

Nanjing-based Amity Printing Co, the country’s major printer of the Bible, has printed the Gospel booklets. Its general manager Li Chunnong says 30,000 copies of the New Testament (Chinese-English bilingual edition) are being printed for free distribution during the Games.

The Beijing Christian Council has placed an order with Amity to reprint 10,000 copies of the bilingual Bible edition to be distributed in the Olympic Village, Li says.

Amity Printing is a joint venture of the country’s Amity Foundation and the international United Bible Society.

“This is a major and exciting opportunity. We are privileged to be able to support the Church in China in the publishing of the Bible during the Olympics,” says James Catford, chief executive of the Bible Society.

The society, however, has no plans to provide free copies of the Bible in hotels, according to Xu.

Churches in Beijing have been asked to provide people to man the Olympic Village chapel and hold services and prayers, says Liu Bainian, vice-president of the China Patriotic Catholic Association.

China saw a slowdown in auto sales growth in the first half of 2008, due largely to increasing gas prices and looming restrictions on vehicle operation for better air quality during the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on recently that between January and June 2008, the country sold 3.61 million passenger motor vehicles, a growth of 17.07 percent over the same period a year previous. The growth rate, however, was 5.19 percentage points lower than the 22.26 percent level recorded in the same period last year.

The total included 2.67 million cars, up 16.72 percent and 111,400 multiple purpose vehicles (MPVs), an increase of 4.09 percent. In addition, 224,300 sport utility vehicles (SUVs) were sold, up 42 percent.

The top-10 brands accounted for 1.76 million units, or 65.86 percent, of the total car sales. They were FAW Volkswagen, Shanghai Volkswagen, Shanghai GM, FAW Toyota, Chery, Dongfeng Nissan, Beijing Hyundai, Guangzhou Honda, Geely and Chang’an Ford.

In June, 588,300 passenger vehicles were sold nationwide, up 15.23 percent over the same month last year.

The total included 433,600 cars, up 13.19 percent, 18,100 MPVs, up 4.53 percent, and 45,200 SUVs, up 49.25 percent.

Analysts with the association attributed the fast growth of SUV sales partly to mounting demand driven by disaster relief.

Experts with the Zhonglian Auto Trade Market in Beijing said most potential auto buyers had taken a wait-and-see attitude and that the market would warm again in late September upon easing of the Olympic auto restrictions.

China has told its six telecommunications companies to merge their assets, allowing fixed-line carriers to expand into wireless services and creating three operators that will offer phone and Internet connections to 1.3 billion people.

Under the plan, the parent of China Telecom will buy a mobile phone network from the parent of China Unicom, which in turn will merge with the company that controls the China Netcom Group, the Ministry of Industry and Information said in a statement on Saturday. China will issue three third-generation wireless licenses after the overhaul is completed, it said.

The revamp will help China Telecom and Netcom expand their operations to compete against China Mobile in China, the world’s biggest wireless and Internet market by users.

China had 583.5 million mobile phone users at the end of April, exceeding the combined populations of the United States and Japan. But the $105 billion US dollars industry has room to expand because 6 out of 10 people in China still do not own mobile phones and 84 percent of the population lacks Web connections.

“Everyone has been waiting for it for over three years and now it is here,” said Kelvin Ho, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Nomura International, referring to the reorganization plan. “Creating three full-service phone companies offering both fixed and mobile services will help the fixed-line phone companies.”

The statement, jointly issued with the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission, did not give a timeframe for the plan or financial details.

China Telecom said in a statement on Sunday that it was in talks to buy Unicom’s code-division multiple access technology business, or C.D.M.A. — the technology that is used in Japan and South Korea. The companies have not agreed on a price. In a separate release, Unicom confirmed those talks and also said it was discussing a merger with Netcom.

Trading in shares of Netcom, China Unicom and China Telecom was suspended on Friday at the companies’ request after a report from the official Xinhua News Agency prompted speculation that China was poised to announce its plans for the industry. Trading will continue to be suspended in Hong Kong pending further announcements, according to the statements.

China Mobile, which has nearly 400 million customers and is the world’s largest phone company by users, fell the most in two months in Hong Kong trading. The drop wiped out $12.8 billion in market value on concern that the company would face increased competition.

China Telecom, the nation’s biggest fixed-line company, will acquire Unicom’s smaller mobile-phone network, which provides services to 43 million customers based on the C.D.M.A. technology, according to the statement. China Telecom will also get the phone assets of China Satellite Communications, the statement said.

Unicom’s C.D.M.A. network, the smaller of the company’s two wireless networks, and its subscribers are worth about 111 billion yuan ($16 billion US dollars), according to estimates by Goldman Sachs in a March report.

The China Network Communications Group, Netcom’s parent, will merge with Unicom’s parent to offer fixed-line and mobile phone services based on the global system for mobile communications technology, or G.S.M., which is the technology used in most of the world, according to the statement.

Unicom had 125.4 million G.S.M. customers as of the end of April, according to the company. Netcom, the nation’s second-largest fixed-line company, had 108.7 million phone users.

China Mobile, which counts more than two-thirds of the nation’s mobile phone users as customers, will take control of the unlisted Tietong, the statement said, confirming the Xinhua report.

China’s telecom market has long suffered from a lack of competition under the de facto monopoly of China Mobile, which has been raking in huge revenues in recent years and taking business away from fixed-line carriers China Telecom and China Netcom as users go mobile.

Chinese regulators aim to boost competitiveness at fixed-line operators before the nation introduces 3G high-speed wireless services, which will require billions of dollars in investments for network equipment. The government has said it plans to offer 3G during the Olympic Games in August.