New: the stay-at-home economy – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

China’s consumers have developed new behavior during the lengthy quarantine, writes marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok and dives into newly emerged economies like the smart home market, and the fitness market for Dao Insights.

Ashley Dudarenok:

The smart home market

People at home started looking into purchasing smart home and entertainment devices during the pandemic, driving the “Stay-at-Home” Economy forward. Such devices include electronic locks, home security devices and virtual reality equipment.

Smart home technology has evolved in recent years due to the rapid development of new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and 5G. China’s market has demonstrated to have the biggest potential as the world’s demand rises.

In recent years, IoT devices are becoming more powerful and smarter, and their form factors are shrinking. Enhancements in communication protocols are delivering greater range and greater energy efficiency, and consumers are adding more connected devices to their homes. All of this means the possibility of realising more complex functional combinations, where multiple devices can work together seamlessly and intelligently.

According to the China Business Industry Research Institute, the scale of China’s smart home market has increased from 260.85 billion RMB ($38.66 billion) to 514.47 billion RMB ($76.24 billion) from 2016 to 2020 with an average annual compound growth rate of 18.51%.

The home fitness market

With nationwide lockdowns came the closure of fitness centres and sports interest classes. The Chinese were forced to come up with ways to stay fit during the pandemic and this led to a rise in the purchases of exercise equipment. People were also worried about living an inactive lifestyle at home and decided to start actively taking care of their health.

More young people were opting for at-home workouts as the pandemic spread because the internet has made regimens, fitness gurus, and sports stars more accessible than ever. Millions have made it a daily ritual to tune into Liu Genghong’s livestreams. The 49-year-old musician, who was born in Taiwan, recently rose to fame online because of his entertaining fitness livestreams on Douyin. Olympic sprinter Su Bingtian, who has 4.7 million followers on Douyin, regularly shares brief videos of at-home workouts like squats and high knee exercises.

Over half of the 234 participants in a small-scale survey by CGTN exercise at home on a regular basis, and over one-third of participants exercise every day or at least three times each week. The pandemic, time savings, and cost savings were listed by respondents as the three main benefits of working out at home.

More economies at the Dao Insights.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more consumer experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

How tough was the Shanghai quarantine? – Mark Schaub

 

Mark Schaub

China lawyer Mark Schaub returned to London after three months of quarantine in Shanghai, including a COVID camp. He looks back at the experience in his resumed China Chit-Chat.  How bad was it really? How different is it from the US? And: are his Chinese friends leaving Shanghai?

Mark Schaub:

How tough was Shanghai’s lockdown?

My impression is that Shanghai’s lockdown was tougher than similar European lockdowns – no going to the supermarket, no pharmacies, no exercise – but not as inhumane as often portrayed in Western media. Many poorer people suffered greatly but this is not unique to China’s lockdown.

One group that suffered in particular were the elderly – Shanghai’s lockdown was in many ways an e-lockdown. Many elderly Chinese people have modest lives and do not own a smart phone. A smart phone is needed to show your PCR test result and obtain the green code. Without a green code you cannot not go about your normal life (e.g. get on a bus, enter a shop or even come back home). Many older residents also rely upon their family – isolation hit them especially hard.

I think many forget how tough Western lockdowns were – in London there was no mixing outside your social bubble, difficulties accessing medical care, you could not visit critically ill loved ones, no funerals, … it was a lonely and isolating time. Shanghai’s had all that toughness and more … but its advantage was its relative brevity and geographic containment. If China was doing its lockdown when the West was doing theirs I assume it would not have been much of a media topic.

More in the China Chit-Chat.

Mark Schaub is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) conference or meeting? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more experts in managing your China risk? Do check out this list.

Why China is leading the way after the coronavirus crisis - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean

While the rest of the world is firmly into a lockdown, China is slowly getting back to normal. That is only one of the reasons why the country is leading the way after the coronavirus crisis, says William Bao Bean, partner, SOSV Capital and Managing Director, Chinaccelerator from Shanghai to Webintravel in a podcast.

Webintravel:

“We’re in China. We’re talking to you from the future. Most of the world are just coming into quarantine. And we’re coming out of it after two months. So think about what happens. People still have to eat. So how do they get their food? People get very bored and they also get very angry and distracted by their children. So there’s actually quite a lot of opportunity here.”

Impact on big vs small 

“Big, disruptive downturns have a big negative impact on larger companies, as opposed to small companies, because small companies don’t have that physical and human infrastructure. They’re also much more nimble and it’s easier to make cuts.”

Asia leapfrogging in mobile innovation in health tech

“Asia has a bit of an advantage in terms of speed because they’re more open to (tech) adoption than other markets. This is the leapfrog effect twe’ve seen in travel, fintech and banking. And now we’re seeing it in the health industry, where new solutions innovation is rolled out much more quickly.”

On China’s Health Code app, Singapore’s TraceTogether app 

“Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. I think globally, what you’re going to see is an increase in adoption in technology and the lead has really been taken by Asia. People are citing South Korea, China and Singapore.”

More in Webintravel.

William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form. 

You can also send an email to get added to our Zoom-account. Are you looking for more experts on the coronavirus crisis at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.   

Coronavirus: larger effect than the 2008 earthquake - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao interviews author and journalist Yuan Ling after he got into quarantine in his home province Shaanxi. "The virus has already had a deeper impact on the people than even the [2008] Sichuan earthquake [that killed 69,000]," Yuan Ling tells Ian Johnson on the phone, for the New York Review of Books.


Ian Johnson:

Ian Johnson: You’re now back in your home province, Shaanxi, but why are you under quarantine?

Yuan Ling: I took the high-speed rail and they said it was dangerous for spreading the virus. So I’m here in my apartment doing nothing.

That’s hard to believe.

In fact, I have had a chance to think and reflect. In the past, when writing about the realities in China, it was hard to find a milestone-type of event that has significance as a topic for writing. Sometimes you think there is a key event, but its significance disappears very quickly because, no matter what happens, there’s always the opposite argument and explanation. Things that you think matter often don’t matter to others. Even with big topics like the Cultural Revolution, some think it’s good, some think it’s bad, and others think it’s best not to discuss it. So it has been hard to find a starting point.

But the virus has already had a deeper impact on the people than even the [2008] Sichuan earthquake [that killed 69,000]. The virus causes isolation and shutdown, which mirrors the isolation and shutdown in Chinese society, and also because it was directly the result of controlling speech and clamping down on “rumors.” Everyone is isolated, even though it’s not necessary. This is symbolic. During normal times, people aren’t free but they don’t feel it, but now everyone feels their unfreedom.

You’ve written both fiction and nonfiction. What would be the best way to approach Wuhan?

I interviewed a family in Wuhan. The grandmother got sick and died. Both parents are also sick but are away. When they finally got beds in the hospital, the child, who is only eighteen years old, now needs to shoulder a lot of responsibilities. I wrote a nonfiction story like that for Phoenix News.

But I don’t emphasize the boundary between nonfiction and fiction. I hope I can write a novel in the future with a core that touches on the truth about China’s real problems and is based on real things, instead of escaping reality in order to achieve literariness. We need to transcend the boundaries between nonfiction and fiction and reflect truth and be thought-provoking. Camus was a philosopher who wrote novels. His value lies not in the novels themselves but in how he brought up social issues and thought about the human condition.

A lot of people are talking about Camus and his novel The Plague. But you told me earlier that you’re reading Paul Celan [the Romanian-born German language poet and translator]. Why is he significant to you?

Celan lived through the Holocaust. China also has experienced many tragedies. Our writing is an act of reflection and persistence after these tragedies. It’s not some cheap praise for the glories of mankind. As we see in the Wuhan crisis, pessimism, desperation, and cheap praise are not good. We need to take part of the responsibility for the tragedies and reflect on them.

Paul Celan also reflected on whether God exists or not, the state of the world, the absurdity of the world. He had his doubts, and we share similar questions: Will the future be better? Is there hope? We live in all kinds of doubts. If we can keep writing and thinking while doubting, then writing is significant in itself. I think that should be our attitude toward China’s reality: neither pessimism and disappointment nor cheap praise and optimism. So his influence on me is substantial, because Celan takes a truthful approach.
An introduction on Yuan Ling and more of the interview at the New York Review of Books.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more experts on the fallout of the corona crisis in China? Do check out this list.