Investing in Chinese media – new perspectives and new market demands for media products

Norimitsu Onishi’s piece in the January 2, 2006 New York Times    “For China’s Youth, Culture Made in South Korea”  is essential reading for understanding that South Korea is filtering “western” culture into China.  This piece raises a number of important issues about new media markets:  (i) the rise of new sources of creative content; (ii) the importance of so-called South-South trade; (iii) the key positions of countries like Korea, India, Thailand and South Africa in being interpreters of modernization in cultural industries; (iv) the character of the Chinese domestic market for media products.  
David Barboza’s “Nick’s Cultural Revolution” in the December 29th 2005 New York Times demonstrates the importance of this underexploited market for the international investments community.  The nature of the Chinese market for educational product has attracted a number of targeted business strategies.
            The interesting challenge for globalizing cosmopolitans is how to create a product appropriate to a new market.   Just as there is a market for Italian films in Canada, there is an emerging market for global content in Mumbai or Shanghai.  But there is also a market for specific products, customized and attuned to the cultural sensibilities and educational aspirations of these new media markets.
            The task of building customized programming for the Chinese market raises some intriguing questions of business strategy and global politics.      One is increasingly struck by a need for a programming which teaches perspective-based history without lapsing into relativism.  How does one teach about the Opium War look from a Chinese perspective?   How can western-Chinese relations be constructed if there is no such understanding of a key moment in world history?    How does one accelerate democratization without the kind of contamination that centuries of world history teach Persians and Koreans comes with imposition of western ideas?   Without this Rashoman-like view of history, it is impossible to imagine a global democracy which moves beyond the use of history to assign blame and on to the use of history to promote understanding.  
Onishi’s analysis of Korean success in the Chinese market is helpful in this regard.  In part, the success of Korean film is explicable in terms of its own success, the remarkable synthesis of Japanese, Chinese, American and unique Korean traditions which go into Korean philosophy and aesthetics.   Korean films are among the most innovative and high quality in the world, but there is more involved in their popularity in China than simply an acknowledgement of their quality.      Onishi is right about the view of Korea as a place where East Asian traditions and western ideas sort themselves out.  In this manner, Korean film and music has become a form of transmission belt for the introduction of non-Chinese ideas and experiments into Chinese culture.  A successful approach to developing a media strategy for China will reflect a similar cultural sensitivity and could enable Canadians to make concrete the exportation of our new cosmopolitan ideas as part of an approach at media strategies. 
A quick survey of the Chinese media market demonstrates some interesting trends that show linkages in media strategies and put the “bet-on-Korean-or-Taiwanese-imports” strategy into a broader perspective of new content development.

1. There are a number of media companies which can create the industry structure of an emerging Chinese media industry:   Shanghai media group , Hunan TV , and China Central      all bring new media programming strategies to the Chinese market.

1. There are formulas in mass market entertainment from American Idol to Big Brother which can be adapted to individual market tastes:  Hunan TV is bringing more innovative TV programming into the Chinese market.  David Barboza’s extremely interesting piece  in the New York Times   of November 27th     shows some of the most intriguing aspects of an innovative media strategy for Chinese markets,  and the potential for entertainment products of the kind which have been pioneered by programme innovators like Endemol in Europe .

1. Internet content provides a new market in China as elsewhere, led by popular entertainment but with the potential:  Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at Berkeley  provides an extremely useful update of activities in the development of new internet product in China. 

1. The development of Chinese language media product has market potential outside of China and conversely, Taiwanese product has potential market in China.  While this remains a very complex investment strategy, the role of Taiwanese investment in China remains a promising   route for North Americans targeting investment opportunities.   The role of the Eastern Multimedia Group    is an extremely interesting case study in this area. 

   Investment strategies for the Chinese market do not come in a single size.   There is a potentially opening market as discussed insightfully by James Paradise in his contributions to Asia Media.  Successful investment opportunities will not be based on a view of the Chinese market as unique.  Its fragmentation into province-based purchasing units and its cultural differentiation (Jiangsi and Yunnan are as complex and different as Toronto and Saskatoon).   The nature of the market, however, is one which creates a number of possible investment strategies.  The following are suggestions as to how to organize strategic thinking regarding the Chinese media markets:

1. investing in Chinese domestic product, the extraordinary Chinese film industry which is capable of producing films of enormous quality;
2. investing in Korean film and music or Taiwanese film and music as a way to establish a presence in Chinese media;
3. investing in Chinese-language internet project which has a customized approach to Chinese consumers, tailoring product to a perspective that is understood, developing programming which reflects a market that wants to connect with the world from a Chinese vantage point;
4. exporting non-customized global product on the blockbuster principle, that Brazilian music,  Hollywood films,  off-the-shelf telenovelas and branded TV series like LOST or Friends can find markets in China.

At the core of all these media strategies is the issue of how one creates product that both entertains and informs in a manner which reflects the needs of the Chinese market.   The next generation of Chinese will demand a Chinese perspective on Persian history or Indian history which will construct the narrative in a manner that is different from that which comes from a Eurocentric perspective.    This raise a number of opportunities for media products in the global community, including ones that offer news on global issues that are customized to different vantage points.    This is the key to the next generation of media product development and will determine some significant competitive advantages within the competition between media companies aspiring to be global brands like Yahoo and Google or to position content providers for distribution in a global internet media market structured by the competition of Google, News, Microsoft, Yahoo and other emerging new entrants.   The Chinese media market remains a complex but real opportunity for customized investment strategies which learn to navigate these complexities.