Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

Luxury Brand Growth in China; OmniaLuo, Inc., Coach Inc., BMW Group, Audi AG and the Swatch Group Ltd Brands Add to Social Status of Chinese Consumers - China Poised to become Second Biggest Consumer of Luxury Goods by 2015

囧 – “I was terribly 囧 not to have known this before”…”It made me so 囧 I didn’t buy this cool bag”…a wide ranging use of expressions of this ‘re-launched’ 3,000 years old Chinese character proves invaluable to brands all over China, especially those trying to attract young internet-savvy consumers.

Mengniu is the No.1 diary brand, and also one of the most prominent brands in China. The brand is as famous as Lenovo in the country. Its milk product is not only popular in Mainland China, but also in Hong Kong.

A former Australian diplomat has warned against Australian universities setting up Confucius Institutes with the Chinese government. The former diplomat is worried that the institutes will potentially produce propaganda instead of research.

Australia will almost surely become the most China-friendly country in the West with Kevin Rudd becomes the next Australian prime minister. How would that affect Canada-China trade?

The quick answer is: Canada will tail behind more.

Stories like the one about slave workers in brickyards may not have become public without citizen journalism. Government has "launched a number of online crackdowns" since January.
"A letter posted on the Internet by 400 parents of children working as slaves in brickyards was the trigger for the national press to finally report on the scandal", reports The Age, Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald just reported that the whole Chinabounder blog seems to be a hoax! The blog was set up by performance artists, both men and women, from Britain, Australia, Japan and China. They 'fabricated its content as an investigation into online vigilante behavior.' If this is true they did a good job!

A coalition of advocates met at City Hall in Lower Manhattan to announce the launch of a 24-hour appeal for China to release prisoners -- including journalists, bloggers and artists -- before the Olympics opening ceremony on Aug. 8. "It would show goodwill toward keeping promises they made in 2001 to the International Olympic Committee that they have not yet kept," said Lucie Morillon, Washington director of Reporters Without Borders, which helped organize the appeal.

Campaigns also were launched in Melbourne, Australia; Toronto and Vancouver, Canada; Hong Kong; Berlin; and other cities.

Australia has upset Chinese delegates at the Climate Change Conference in Nairobi with claims the Asian giant is set to become the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases.