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China Design Economics Innovation

China Needs More Intellectual Property Rights Experts

China is facing a damaging shortfall in the numbers of professionals working in the field of intellectual property rights, leading academics claim: a Forum on Intellectual Property Rights(IPR) in Higher Education heard that China will need the skills of between 55,000 and 60,000 experts in the field by 2010. The claim came from Professor Zheng Shengli, dean of the IPR School at Peking University, in his latest research on the IPR profession…

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China Economics Information Technology Software

Shanghai IT income set to beat US$128billion

Revenue of Shanghai’s information technology industry is set to double last year’s figure to surpass 1 trillion yuan (US$128 billion) in 2010 when the World Expo is held here. The city will invest heavily in several IT projects for the expo, such as a citywide wireless broadband network, a digital transport management network, electronic payment and social security systems, paper-less customs application system and mobile TV, according to Shanghai Municipal Informatization Commission […]

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China Economics Information Technology Trend Watching

Information Technology Salaries in the Rise in Shanghai

People working in the information technology industry earned more than employees in all other industries on average last year, according to the Shanghai Statistics Bureau. The wage gap between different sectors widened last year. The average wage in the IT sector was 3.55 times of the average salary for those in the service sector, the lowest paid group of workers, while in 2000, the average wage in the highest sector was 3.24 times that of the lowest […]

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China Consumer Behavior Economics Trend Watching

China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior

With the opening to new markets and the growth of the Chinese economy, a new social class has emerged — to some extend, unthinkable in a Communist China: the millionaires. According to a survey from Cap Gemini/Merrill Lynch, the number of millionaires (in US Dollars) in China have reached more than 230,000. The large majority of these new riches choose Shanghai to invest their money and also spend their money

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China Consumer Behavior Economics Information Technology

Advertising in China: alternative media

Combine cheap labor costs and cheap electronic appliances and you’ll get a high-tech version of the ‘sandwich-man‘: in the middle of XuJiaHui, the busiest commercial center in downtown Shanghai, it’s common to see young men carrying backpacks, probably containing laptops, attached to 17” LCD displays showing TV spot advertising, as well as some interactive media advertising…

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China Consumer Behavior Economics Information Technology Trend Watching

e-Commerce in China: numbers and trends

China could become the world’s biggest online market within two years: the number of Chinese netizens has surpassed 123 million and number of people with access to broadband connection rose by 45.3 percent during the first half of the year to 77 million. Studies show that a typical Chinese consumer spends an average of 17.9 hours per month (36 min./day) engaged in popular online activities such as chatting, blogging, gaming, and shopping […]

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China Economics Information Technology Innovation Trend Watching

China: Technology, Innovation and the Environment

Since the beginning of its economical opening — when the first 5-year plans were devised in 1979 — China has being growing at an incredible speed, with its GNP numbers jumping from 44 billion dollars to 1.6 trillion dollars in just 20 years. Such growth has pushed the Chinese manufacturing industry into devouring huge amounts of natural resources in a alarming way: in 2004, China — the 8th largest economy in GNP scale — consumed 8% of all the oil, 31% of all the coal, 10% of all the electricity, 30% of all ore, 30% of all steel, 19% of all aluminum, 20% of all the copper and 40% of all cement produced in the world […]

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China Consumer Behavior Information Technology

Chinese People and their Mobile Phones: SMS

As in most Western countries, mobile phones are also very popular in China, among all different age groups and walks of life — sometimes seen in very unusual places. The contrast between China and other Western countries shows up in the — astronomical — numbers: up to 1997, there was little over 10 million mobile phone service subscriptions… today, there are more than 400 million.

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China Economics Information Technology Software Trend Watching

Internet in China: Online Gaming & “Gold Farming”

More that 20 million Chinese play online games, and the e-commerce revenue have grown 50% in relation to last year’s numbers.