The Negotiation

Topics Discussed and Key Points: ●      Commercial and residential real estate trends in China from 2008 to 2011 ●      How real estate investors tend to operate in the China market ●      Where the real estate industry is going in the next ten years ●      Why China’s economic future may mirror that of Japan’s ●      China in the new normal ●      Property Passbook’s mission ●      Running a glob...

Today on The Negotiation, we are taking aim at trying to understand the housing bubble in China, by speaking with Professor Simon Zhao, Former Director at the International Centre for China Development Studies, University of Hong Kong. Simon has recently published an article on the housing bubble in China, so we thought he would be an excellent place to start our conversation. Simon tells us that...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Jacob Cooke, co-founder of WPIC Marketing and Technologies, and his experiences since returning to China recently. Jacob notes the huge amount of digitization efforts since his last time in China. eCommerce is booming. What was once a convenience has now become a necessity. Digitization now encompasses all parts of society and users now include people of all...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with fashion designer and entrepreneur Bruno Schiavi. With a background in the retail industry spanning 25 years, he has launched many brands internationally with some of the biggest companies and names in the world. His latest brand is Uncle Bud’s Hemp and CBD, which focuses on topicals that cover everything from pain relief to anti-aging to bath and body. Uncle...

Today on The Negotiation, we continue our conversation with Kevin Xu, founder and author at Interconnected, “a publication that analyzes businesses and trends from the lens of builders (entrepreneurs & engineers), operators (business managers), investors (capitalists), regulators (politicians and government officials), and how they are all connected.” He is also a contributor for and the co-cr...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Kevin Xu, Founder, and Author of Interconnected.blog, a publication that analyzes businesses and trends from the lens of builders, operators, investors, and regulators, and how they are all interconnected globally. Kevin received his Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Brown University before studying both Law and Computer Science at Stanford. H...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Tom Parker, Head of China with the Australian Football League (AFL) and Vice President for the Australia China Business Council. Tom shares his journey in the Chinese business world, beginning in 2007 with the founding of Red Tape Consulting, “a China Advisory business that helped stage the first AFL exhibition match as part of the Shanghai World Expo.” Sinc...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Bertrand Schmitt, tech entrepreneur, Co-Founder, and Chairman of App Annie, and co-host of the Tech DECIPHERED podcast alongside Strive Capital’s Nuno Goncalves Pedro. Bertrand has been involved in the mobile industry in China since 1999, through what he refers to as its period of “growing pains”. When the iPhone and the App Store came out in 2007 and 2008,...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Jesse Chester, Category Leadership Director at Mars who leads the category leadership organization in Guangdong, China, and in Arkansas, USA. Jesse’s role was to create strategic plans around category growth by working with retailers to help grow the marketplace as a whole. He also contributed to the reinvention of Mars’ innovation strategy. The snack indust...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Kimberly Kirkendall, founder and President at International Resource Development, on adjusting to the business environment in China as a Westerner. Kimberly discusses the foundational cultural differences in doing business with the Chinese as opposed to Westerners. She had an advantage getting her start in China when she was in her early 20s, as she was able...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Aynne Kokas, Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, where she teaches students about U.S.-China media and technology relations. She is also a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia where she does work related to U.S.-China policy, particularly around how corporations and the go...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Hendrick Laubscher on current and future developments around shipping, warehousing, and logistics networks in China. At first glance, distribution in China may appear more or less similar to the networks and processes of other countries, particularly in the West. However, Hendrick explains that China, by virtue of its 1.3 billion-strong population and well-k...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Xin Yi Lim, Senior Director of Corporate Development at Pinduoduo and former Technology Analyst for GIC in Singapore and New York. Xin Yi discusses some of PD’s latest developments, including founder Colin Huang Zheng’s recent move into an executive chairman role and news on the company’s agritech initiatives, which include its Smart Agriculture Competition...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Wei Liang, Professor of International Policy Studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. She discusses the current state of the Belt and Road Initiative in-depth, as well as China’s current reputation on the world stage amid a variety of crises, not least of which are COVID-19 and the country’s strained relationship with Hong Kong....

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Gen Kanai, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Animoca Brands and Mentor at Chinaccelerator. Regarding the challenges of entering the Japanese market, Gen says that Japanese customers generally do not pirate software and content. Japan “can be a very profitable market if you can crack the market.” At the same time, it is a challenging market, with many non...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Benjamin Qiu, Partner at Loeb & Loeb LLP. Benjamin is an “attorney focused on the capital market, venture financing, corporate governance, IP asset development, and technology protection & licensing.” He discusses the legal side of startup financing in China, of which he first developed expertise during his time at Innovation Works (China’s answer to...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Shanshan Tang, Global Business Lead for Canada at Alibaba. Alibaba’s Vancouver office was opened in 2018 with two main goals: to help Canadian brands (especially smaller ones) sell to China using their eCommerce platform, and to promote cross-border tourism and online and in-store enablement of Alipay. Alibaba was founded as an eCommerce company 20 years ago...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Barbara Finamore, Senior Strategic Director for Asia at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the author of Will China Save the Planet (2018). She started her career with the NRDC as an environmental litigator, a position she left after getting married to a U.S. diplomat in the 1980s. Her husband took her to China in 1990, when the country was considerin...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Xin Yi Lim, Senior Director of Corporate Development at Pinduoduo and former Technology Analyst for GIC in Singapore and New York. Xin Yi discusses interactive eCommerce, a relatively new term that aims to reproduce the experience of offline shopping by “trying to understand human needs through the community that surrounds each and every one of us.” Pinduodu...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with TR Harrington, Co-Program Director at Mobile Only Accelerator and Program Director at SOSV. He is also a Startup Mentor at Antler, Mucker Capital, and Chinaccelerator. TR discusses the mindset and strategies he used to run a Shanghai-based marketing agency in China, and gracefully enact an exit strategy after over a decade of serving as CEO. He says that the...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with author, speaker, university professor, and serial entrepreneur James Lalonde. He shares decades of experiences working in Asia, comparing and contrasting the social, cultural, and political characteristics of Japan, China, and North America to illustrate how these similarities and differences impact each country’s influence on the world stage. James belie...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Justin Mallen, Founder, and CEO of Silk Road Telecommunication. He shares what it is like being one of the few successful foreign entrepreneurs in China, having entered the market during a time when it was far from the economic powerhouse that it is today. Justin says, “China’s telecom infrastructure is owned and operated by three incredibly large, state-...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Andrea Fenn, a sinologist and journalist who regularly publishes articles and conducts lectures on China’s fast-paced, ever-evolving digital ecosystem. Andrea is also the founder and CEO at Fireworks, which he refers to as a “post-digital agency”. This is due to his belief that brand growth in today’s digital landscape should go beyond vanity metrics such...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with author and educator Mark Greeven. He is a former Associate Professor at Zhejiang University’s School of Management in Hangzhou, China. Today, Mark serves as Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. The biggest difference between teaching at Zhejiang and at IMD is that the former “has all the features of a burea...

Today on The Negotiation, Michael Zakkour returns to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the state of retail in China and the rest of the world. Setting the context for the discussion, Michael says that it is not a question of which retailers are doing well, but which integrated systems are. One of the factors that held China together during the worst of the crisis was the “ecosystems for retail, co...