Beijing

Boomtown Beijing to Screen at 21st Singapore International Film Festival

March 28, 2008 By Des Walsh

The documentary film Boomtown Beijing, directed by Tan Siok Siok, will screen at the 21st Singapore International Film Festival on April 9th and at Singapore’s Sinema Old School on April 15th. Boomtown Beijing film poster

Tan Siok Siok, also known as Siok Siok Tan, is an international documentary film maker, Singapore born, whose films focus on the greater China region. With an elite team drawn from the Beijing Film Academy, she has produced what promises to be a marvellous cinematic insight into the “Olympic fever”, of which I saw plenty of signs in Beijing late last year. With the Games only a few months away now, that fever has no doubt increased in pitch and intensity.

I have the honour of counting Tan Siok Siok as a colleague, through our shared association with Culture Fish Media and the Creative Skills Training Council.

By the way, the Beijing Film Academy has a fascinating history in its own right, having produced such legendary film directors as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, who revolutionized Chinese cinema with Red Sorghum, Farewell My Concubine, Yellow Earth, Raise the Red Lantern, and other international successes.

Boomtown Beijing tells the story of how three quite different residents of Beijing are working to achieve their personal dreams.

This film chronicles the attempts of three Beijing residents to make their personal Olympic dream come true. A 11 year old boy wants to beat the odds to become an Olympics torch-bearer. A road sweeper dreams of staging his own mass Olympics countdown performance. An aging blind athlete makes one last stab at a Paralympics medal before he retires from sports. Together, their stories give a snapshot of the city of Beijing the summer before the big games come to town.

For those of us interested in film culture and/or the evolution of the Beijing Olympics phenomenon and/or conemporary China generally, the Boomtown Beijing website, using the WordPress.com platform, will be worth watching. Tan Siok Siok has a neat vision for it – well beyond the standard “website as electronic brochure” approach used for films generally. Her approach is more embracing of the larger cultural context:

Beyond the obligatory film information, it will also create a context for understanding the themes of the film, the Beijing Olympics phenomenon (believe me, it is a phenomenon) and the complexity of contemporary China.

And I didn’t find the word “semiotics” used once on the website, thankfully.

RSS/Syndication link for entries on the site. I understand there will be a trailer of the film available soon.

[Update: the trailer is now available.]

Filed Under: China Tagged With: Beijing, Biejing Olympics, Boomtown Beijing, China film culture, Singapore, Singapore 21st International Film Festival, Siok Siok, Tan Siok Siok

China Internet Usage Growth and Corporate Social Media

March 19, 2008 By Des Walsh

Ever since visiting China for the first time late last year and being hit with the statistics of growth in Internet usage as well as other aspects such as the much greater proportion of time spent online compared with the West, I have been endeavouring to make sense of what all of this might mean for my particular area of interest, the introduction and use of social media in and by the enterprise.

Certainly the growth numbers, in terms of Internet use in the general population, are amazing. The writing was on the wall by the beginning of this year when the latest update appeared from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

With the release of a more recent report by consulting and research firm BDA the new reality is now upon us: China has more Internet users than the United States.

Perhaps even more significant than the raw numerical superiority is that while the major growth is over in the US it is still to come in China.

Among consultants in the social media space, on blogs and in mainstream media articles in the West there is a recurring theme that goes something like “with the pervasive uptake of social media in the community and especially by younger generations, businesses need to become more active players in the social media space, or they will become increasingly unprofitable, even irrelevant”. It’s not about technology for its own sake. It’s about a new conversation which companies can choose to be part of, or not. There are consequences either way.

Writing in reference to a contemporary Western context, commentator Mark Pesce put the challenge for business to engage in (networked) conversation in forceful terms:

Something’s got to give. And it’s not going to be the public. They can’t be whipped or cowed or forced back into antique behaviors which no longer make sense to them.

The social media enabled conversation in China might not be as pervasive yet as in the USA. After all, Internet takeup is only 16% of the population in China compared to around 70% in the West, right?

Well yes, but that is an overall figure.

In Beijing and Shanghai, as at the end of January 2007, the Internet penetration rate was 46.6% and 45.8% respectively.

For companies wanting to access more affluent Beijingers or Shanghainese, would it make sense to look intently to ensure that opportunities for conversation were not being lost?

For companies employing young people in Beijing or Shanghai, would it make sense to look just as seriously in China at the deployment of social media within the enterprise as leading corporations are considering or doing in the West?

As an aside, although part of the bigger picture, there is also the aspect of companies in the West, with technologies that could be welcomed in China, perhaps not seizing the day. Some companies I talk to are concerned about the risks of copyright piracy, which is an understandable concern. No doubt there are also concerns about cultural difference and language barriers – the usual litany of “too hards”. But are there in fact opportunities emerging but being overlooked? One blogger thinks so. Tarun at TechBanyan says American startups are surprisingly ignorant of what is happening:

However what is extremely surprising on the part of American startups is, their sheer ignorance of the Chinese market. After the home market, the next usual target is Canada and/or Europe. In the meantime, some Chinese spark sees the potential, builds a copy cat application, and before the nerd in Silicon Valley realizes it, the startup has lost the first mover advantage in world’s biggest web market in terms of eyeballs and advertising revenue.

There’s lots of food for thought – and for corporate strategizing – in the available statistics. There is no shortage of reading material: the CCNIC’s Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China: January 2008 is 87 pages long. It has lots of interesting statistical breakdowns – city/country, gender, age, education levels – with illustrative graphs. Even better, it’s also free to download.

What I’ve so far not found a lot of are analyses of what the statistics might mean for the use of social media, beyond basic e-commerce so to speak, at an enterprise level. Suggestions welcome!