Business Beyond the Reef

Things you might find interesting, but I haven’t had the time or inclination to blog about:

• Anything involving counterfeiting, fraud, or commercial piracy gets me excited, so you can imagine my reaction to Monday’s reports of massive piracy of the hit film “Avatar“.  According to the London Times, Avatar set a new record for number of pirated copies in its initial days of release: 980,000 illegal copies in the first five days – half a million in the first two days!  The studio expected nothing like this, having convinced themselves that nobody would pirate a 3D film since they couldn’t copy it in 3D.  Wrong.  And it will get worse when Avatar comes out on DVD.
• I’m glad their sales grew somewhere.  General Motors said Monday that its sales in China grew 67% in 2009 over 2008. I assumed this was from very low volume, but was blown away when I saw that GM sold 1.8 million vehicles in China last year.  Good on you, Detroit!

• The Huffington Post carried an outstanding article January 5 by Michael T. Klare of Hampshire College, entitled “The Blowback Effect: 2020″, which examines likely trends over the next decade.  While I may not concur with all the details, Klare’s trends are spot on and should be the basis for many an international business plan in the next ten years.  Klare discusses the rise of China, the relative (but only relative) decline of the United States, the continued emergence of developing countries, and climate issues.  Well worth a read.

• Another good read is an article at Asia Times by Brantley Womack of the University of Virginia.  Womack examines the good and the bad of the new China-ASEAN free trade agreement, with some especially interesting analysis of potential issues between China and Vietnam.  Look for “China-ASEAN Pact Offers More Than Win-Win.”

• U.S. software firm Cybersitter, known for its award-winning parental filtering software, has filed suit in California against the government of China and two Chinese software firms for stealing code to block access to “politically undesirable” websites by Chinese Internet users.  The suit alleges that more than 3000 lines of code were copied into China’s control software, Green Dam.  Cybersitter says that more than 56 million copies of the pirated software were distributed after China required that Green Dam be bundled with new computers sold in China.  See the full story in the New York Times.
• International Living has issued its 2010 Quality of Life Index of the best places to live, ranking a whopping 194 countries.  The top five are France, Australia, Switzerland, Germany and New Zealand.  The United States did well, coming in with a tie for 6th with Luxembourg and Belgium.  Then there is the other end of the scale.  The bottom five, predictably, are Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Chad and Afghanistan.
• It finally happened, but don’t get excited yet.  China is now the world’s largest exporter – at least for the first 11 months of 2009.  China sold $1.07 trillion during the period, while the long time title holder Germany slipped to second with a mere $1.05 trillion.  Germany’s exports were picking up toward the end, so adding December may reverse China’s title hopes.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 7:56 am and is filed under Business Opportunities, China, Corruption/IPR/Economic Crime, Exporting, S.E. Asia, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.