Archives: May 2006

Good timing for Jeff Immelt in China

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 31

It’s Chindia Week for GE. The company’s Chairman and CEO, Jeff Immelt, was in Bombay today, having been to Beijing on Monday. According to the AP, Immelt revealed that General...

Beijing's new move to fight fraud

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 29

The Chinese government, embarrassed by some high-profile accusations of plagiarim and fraud among professors at top universities, is taking action. Last Friday, the People’s Daily reported that the Ministry of...

Cancer research in China

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 26

For a change, some good medical news to report from China. Lately the country has been rocked by scandals, with several cases of fake or faulty drugs getting surprisingly big...

Turmoil in China's pharma industry

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 24

Major new developments in China's medical scandals, thanks in part to attention from local reporters in Hong Kong and China. A few days ago, I wrote on the New Tech...

The Big Game on the Smallest Screen

Posted by: Ihlwan Moon on May 23

It isn’t just flat-panel TVs that could score big from next month’s World Cup soccer tournament. In South Korea at least, hundreds of thousands of soccer fans are snapping up...

Softbank isn't small fry

Posted by: Ian Rowley on May 21

One more thing on Softbank. In last week's story on the Apple and Softbank iPod phone rumors, we mentioned that ex-Apple sources thought it unusual for Apple to tie-up with...

More mobile music in Japan

Posted by: Ian Rowley on May 21

Last Monday, Kenji Hall and I wrote about reports in Japan that Apple and Softbank were planning an iPod phone for release later this year. If it happens, it...

China's scandals get worse

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 21

More sci-tech scandals in China. I’ve blogged (here and here) about Chen Jin, the Shanghai engineer who has been fired from Shanghai Jiaotong University after being accused of faking what...

Lenovo's State Dept setback

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 19

With right-wing critics in the GOP putting pressure on the State Department because of a deal to buy thousands of computers from China’s Lenovo, the Bush Administration has decided to...

Softbank dumps Vodafone brand

Posted by: Ian Rowley on May 18

Among the numerous missteps made by Vodafone in Japan after its acquisition of J-Phone in 2001 was the undue haste with which it installed the global Vodafone brand. Most Japanese...

A new crackdown on Internet cafes

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 17

Well that didn’t take long. On May 5th, bombs exploded at two Internet cafes in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province in southeastern China. Two people died. I mentioned in...

More on China's chip scandal

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 14

Back in March, I blogged about Chen Jin, a professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University and head of the microelectronics school there. Chen had won acclaim a few years ago by...

Can Buffett be eyeing Sony's financial unit?

Posted by: Kenji Hall on May 11

Japan's financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun is well-known for the guessing games it plays. During earnings season, it's notorious for splashing profit figures on the front page that often turn...

Who needs Wikipedia anyway?

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 11

Yesterday Baidu, China’s leading search company, announced first quarter numbers that were so good the company’s Nasdaq-traded stock price jumped by 37% in just one day. Baidu also announced that...

Hong Kong cracks down on Net movie pirates

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 10

Hong Kong's movie industry used to rank up there with Hollywood and Bollywood in terms of output, but in the late 1990s the industry fell on hard times, largely...

Dell turns to Taiwan

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 09

As the bad news at Dell gets worse, its dependence on Taiwanese suppliers is increasing. Kevin Rollins, the CEO of Dell, was in Taiwan yesterday and told reporters that the...

Pssst...More on PS3

Posted by: Kenji Hall on May 09

Can Sony's next-generation video game machine really be twice the price of Microsoft's? You better believe it. Sony announced yesterday ahead of the E3 conference in Los Angeles that its...

Bombings at Chinese Internet cafes

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 07

Tragedy over the weekend at two Internet cafes in the central Chinese city of Hefei. According to Xinhua, a bomb exploded at one Internet café at 9:36 on Friday night,...

Google's unpopular new Chinese name

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 03

For Google, nothing comes easy in China. The company had to fight in court against Microsoft just to hire the head of its China operation, former Microsoft executive Kai-Fu...

Why Google should be wary about buying Sina

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 01

My BusinessWeek colleague Gene Marcial reports that Google might be interested in taking over Beijing-based portal Sina. In response, Google has denied that it’s interested in the Nasdaq-listed company: The...