Volvo has announced that it will build a plant in China, and seeks approval for a second, in what it calls its second home market. It was inevitable, though for the long-term survival of the brand, it’s not a bad idea. Through Geely’s acquisition, it can potentially leapfrog other foreign car brands inside […]
Tag: Red China
MG taps into BMC’s small-car heritage to market the 3
SAIC is doing a great job in tapping to the heritage of MG and the companies that have gone before. Hop over to the SAIC–MG site and you’ll see this image to tie in to the launch of the B-class MG 3 hatchback: The imagery tells a good deal of the story already: the […]
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Civility is a good thing
Baidu Talk, which launched in September, has netted 1 million users already, according to PC World. Michael Kan reports that thanks to the service’s insistence that no aliases are used (registered users’ identities are verified with the People’s Republic’s government) ‘this has led to more “civil” discussions between users on Baidu Talk.’ It shows […]
Even as Liu Xiaobo gets a Nobel prize, Beijing can be smug
As I watched actress Liv Ullmann read Liu Xiaobo’s address, ‘I Have No Enemies’, on BBC World, I was quite moved. The address is what the Nobel Prize-winning author and intellectual delivered prior to his sentencing by a Red Chinese court for subversion. What is fascinating is the dignity with which the words […]
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Johnny Foreigner might be better at running a car company in Shanghai
As I made links for the last post, I noticed there were a lot of comments on AROnline about the replacement for the Roewe 750, the Chinese car that is based on the old Rover 75. The replacement will be on the Opel Insignia platform, owned by GM. It’s been followed by a lot […]
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Wikileaks’ brand of transparency is the enemy of the establishment
There are probably two things, chiefly, that fuel support for Julian Assange. First, the idea that the mainstream media are not independent, but merely mouthpieces for the establishment. There’s some truth to this. Secondly, the fact that Wikileaks is revealing, this time, things that we already knew: that governments are two-faced. While […]
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Just one clause, and I’m out of there
A contact of mine kindly sent me an invitation to a Chinese business networking site, called Ushi. All seemed well till I looked at the terms and conditions, which have, inter alia: You agree to abide by any and all the related Chinese laws and regulations of the Contract Law of the People’s Republic of […]
Volvo Cars, a unit of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co.
I haven’t missed the sale of Volvo to Geely, but it wasn’t as momentous as the rebirth of Saab. We knew the deal was coming and the rest were formalities. The company has said there will be no Geelys badged as Volvos and vice versa. It recognizes the Volvo brand is too valuable to […]
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Toyota’s recent “30-degree” scandal in China
Sam Flemming in Advertising Age mentioned the scandal that Toyota has been embroiled in inside China, before a lot of the bad press it received in the occident over “unintended acceleration”. This involved a netizen, an owner of a Toyota Highlander Sport, filming that his SUV was unable to get up a 30-degree incline, […]
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How could the Chinese republic celebrate its centenary?
Next year marks the centenary of the founding of the Chinese republic. We got rid of our rather hopeless Ching Dynasty, and ushered in Asia’s first democracy. Both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China see 1911 as an important year, and Dr Sun Yat-sen as the founder of the nation […]
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