Here is our guide Baidu Baike.

Baidu Baike (百度 百科 in Chinese, translated as “Baidu Encyclopedia”) is a collaborative, web-based encyclopedia that is owned and produced by the Chinese search engine Baidu. The test version was released on April 20, 2006 and within three weeks the encyclopedia had grown to more than 90,000 articles and surpassing Chinese Wikipedia. In January 2018 Baidu Baike had more than 15.1 million articles.

Baidu officially declares that Baidu Baike serves as an online encyclopedia, as well as information storage for netizens. Baidu Baike claims “equality”, “cooperation”, “sharing” and “freedom” as the platform’s core values. It is connected with search engines in order to meet information needs of the users.

Baidu Baike Concept

At World Wide Web Consortium 2018, Baidu’s William Chang said that “there is actually no reason for China to use Wikipedia … It is very natural for China to make its own products.”

While using Baidu search engine, the link of the corresponding entry in Baidu Baike, if present, is placed as the first result or one of the first results.

Content restrictions

Articles or comments that contain the following types of content are not allowed:

• Pornographic, violent and “uncivilized” content
• Advertisement
• Personal attacks
• Content against morality and ethics
• Malicious, trivial or spam-like content
• Personal facts

Since Baidu falls under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, it is mandatory to censor the contents of their encyclopedia in accordance with relevant government regulations. All editors must register accounts with their real names before they can create or edit articles. The administrators filter the edits before they become public.

As a result, Baidu Baike has an advantage over its competitors by complying with Chinese censorship laws. Since Chinese version of Wikipedia does not censor its own content, the government can block it while Baidu Baike remains accessible.

Structure: front page

The current front page of Baidu Baike was put into operation in 6 September 2012. At the top of the page displays the official Baidu Baike slogan “Let all humankind learn about the world”, as well as up-to-date information about the number of users and mentions. The selected content is presented at the bottom left of the front page.

The bottom right contains announcements, plans and projects. The information on the front page usually contains current hot topics, often related to featured news. In addition to these popular topics, there are also one-sentence summaries of the news. Baidu Baike also includes other channels such as nature, culture, geography and special topics such as core users, digital museums, etc.

Submissions

The access pages of Baidu Baike include telephone cards, texts and other supporting information. An earlier version allowed users to respond to pages, but this feature was removed after September 2008, coinciding with time when other major Western social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) became inaccessible in China. The main language of Baidu Baike is Chinese, written with the simplified script, messages written in traditional Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese or Japanese are automatically translated.

Calling cards and texts

Baike telephone cards contain two parts: the description of an item and the basic information. The first is similar to the preface of an article, which provides a general introduction to the whole text. The latter uses a table to summarize basic information and statistics. Both are processed separately from the main part of the article. The main text is limited to 40 thousand bits, which corresponds to 20 thousand Chinese characters.

The earlier versions could only contain one image, but now 20 images and 20 albums can be included in an article. The item may also contain a link to a Baidu card, dynamic screenshots and videos. The information cited is below the main text, which does not distinguish footnotes from other details. However, the quoted images do not specify the source.

Supporting information

Most pieces of supporting information are located at the bottom or the right of the page, except for scientific terms, which are pushed upwards. Usually supporting information is automatically generated by the system, with some manual editing. Supporting information on the right side of the page contains personal information, statistics, today in history, honor contribution and current trends. Statistics include the number of page views, the number of editors, the latest updates, information about makers, etc. Editors who contribute complex articles are also mentioned and honored.

A user can see a database, the Baidu dictionary and related items at the bottom of each article. The celebrity articles have added databases with their individual songs, albums and videos. The user recommendations section is used to collect feedback about the article.

Editing Encyclopedia entries

When an editor makes an edit that has been approved, the editor’s account receives a certain number of experience points based on the complexity of the operation (1 for the simplest operations, 5 for a complex operation). When an editor successfully completes the requested job, the editor receives experience points and a predetermined number of welfare points that can be used to make purchases on Baidu. Editors are divided into 15 levels with corresponding ‘Encyclopedia titles’ (百科 头衔) based on their accumulated experience points. In 2012, the names of the titles were changed from modern business-sounding titles to titles that resembled the Chinese imperial exam and the Confucian scholarship.

Content and categories

In contrast with a traditional encyclopedia, the information in Baidu Baike is somewhat broader. Baidu Baike also contains food recipes, film products, internet programs and video games, as well as their encyclopedic content. However, unlike Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu Baike never gives a strict definition of the difference between an encyclopedia entry and a dictionary entry. There are also many statements about diction and common phrases.

In addition to articles, Baidu Baike contains several special pages:

• A Sandbox entry (编辑 实验), giving users the opportunity to practice editing;
• Help, which offers terminologies, basic settings, prescriptions, user titles, etc.
• User page, called “Baidu Authorized ID” which is similar to that of Wikipedia. However, these are considered an encouragement for advanced users – very few editors receive the privilege to create their own page;
• Baidu Baike has an open policy for adding entries and supports categorized search functions. The classification is based on the characteristics of an item, but not on the quality, and there is no limit to categorization. Baidu Baike now has an elementary categorized page and tree. Part of the open layout can be set at levels, but catalogs with similar meanings cannot be merged or redirected.

Source: Wikipedia

Read more on how you can take advantage of marketing on Baidu Baike.

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Here are some of the examples of the most common questions:

• When it comes to China B2B marketing, what tools are the most effective?
• Is it critical to establish B2B company’s presence on Chinese social media and if so, which platforms are the must have?
• How can companies re-purpose their existing campaigns on traditional Western platforms for Chinese market?

In this post we have attempted to consolidate our answers to those questions in an easily digestible Q&A format.

China B2B Marketing Q&A

Q1: What is the significance of digital marketing in the China B2B (Business-to-Business) market?

Chinese workforce is very well connected digitally, hence reaching it via those channels is an effective way to engage with the decision makers at all company levels. A lot of communication is taking place within WeChat, both on one-to-one basis as well as in the groups. Taping into that space can prove extremely beneficial for brands selling products to other companies.

Q2: Are there any differences between B2B and B2C?

Yes, some digital platforms are less suitable for B2B, however that would also depend on the type of business you are in. B2B sales process is generally longer and involves more than a single decision maker while this is usually not the case for B2C. Since there is practically no impulse buying in B2B, the marketing should focus on stressing product’s benefits and establish trust rather than relying on the emotional appeal.

Q3: Should companies manufacturing and distributing industrial goods invest in digital marketing activities – in general and especially in the Chinese market?

Yes but, perhaps, not to the same extend as B2C companies. Depending on the niche, B2B companies should invest in quality content that can be distributed to the target audience via WeChat or company blog.

On the other hand, digital marketing helps to establish brand reputation which goes a long way in developing trust, a critical component in B2B sales.

Q4: What are the most important instruments of digital marketing in China in relation to industrial goods?

In our experience, the most effective tools for such companies are WeChat official accounts, search engine marketing and email marketing. They can target potential buyers at different levels of the sales funnel and, if done correctly, will complement and leverage each other.

Q5: Should all these instruments be used in parallel or does their use depend on product group and target group?

Depending on the niche, some channels can be more of less effective. It also depends on where the potential customer is in the sales funnel: SEM is best for finding new business while WeChat and EDM are best for getting repeated business and strengthening brand image and reputation.

Q6: What hurdles do B2B companies have to overcome if they want to start digital marketing activities in China to reach their target group?

It is unrealistic to only rely on digital tools to grow business in China B2B marketing context. Direct marketing and trade shows should be used in the combination with online platforms.

Both digital and offline methods should ideally complement each other and be a part of coordinated strategy. For example, a sales person meeting with a client should have that client’s email recorded in the email database that will be later used for targeted email marketing campaign (with their permission of course). At the same time, that same sales person should also encourage a client to follow company’s official WeChat account, so he or she will be included in a more extensive long term WeChat based marketing effort in the future.

Q7: What is your opinion on data protection with regard to the collection of personal data using digital marketing tools?

Chinese are generally less concerned with privacy compared to Westerners but there are relevant laws and regulations that must be followed. Cybersecurity law that was adopted about 1.5 years ago is very detailed and fairly complex. Companies who collect and store personal data must make sure to stay in compliance with the law or face heavy penalties.

Q8: Which digital marketing instruments should be part of a strategy for the Chinese market and why?

The big ones are WeChat, Weibo and search engines like Baidu and 360Search. WeChat presence is a must for most brands, but Weibo is more suitable for brands that have a social element in their marketing approach. Baidu and 360Search are used to target potential customers early on in their search or discovery stages.

Q9: Is there a need for a different digital marketing strategy for the Chinese market than, for example, for the European or American market?

There is no direct equivalent to WeChat in the Western markets, and there are no direct parallels with Twitter or Facebook in China. Each Chinese platform is a combination of some of those features. Therefore, copy and paste of Facebook/Twitter marketing to those channels would probably not work.

Brands should familiarize themselves with pros and cons of each platform and adjust their strategies accordingly. For example, the requirements for content size, style and formatting are different among those services and may be suitable for different purposes.

Q10: What approach do you recommend to newcomers to creating a digital marketing strategy in B2B for the Chinese market?

Newcomers should start off investing in SEM and WeChat marketing in combination with traditional direct marketing which is aimed at building networks of business contacts at traditional offline events such as trade shows.

If a foreign company is at the beginning of their journey in Chinese market, they will be better advised to outsource such efforts to professionals.

Q11: How important are defining the target group, analysis and selection of suitable measures and instruments for the creation of a suitable digital marketing strategy?

B2B companies usually have a good idea of who their customers are and what they are interested in. Therefore, detailed definition of target audience like it is common in B2C (psychographics, behaviors, interests etc.) is often less relevant when applied to China B2B marketing context.

Q12: Where do you see opportunities but also risks here?

Prevalence of digital tools in China presents a unique opportunity to have a direct access to customers and engage them on a constant and intimate basis as long as the company can offer good value with their content.

The risk is mainly over-reliance on digital tools neglecting traditional “offline” methods that are still the most effective in building business networks and develop brand trust in China B2B marketing environment.

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In China, Sina Weibo and WeChat are two most popular platforms. Sina Weibo has evolved around desktop use while WeChat only works with mobile. I have already those platforms in much more details in this blog. For now, suffice it to say that, for the purpose of market research, Weibo is much more suitable and this is what I will be focusing on.

Using Chinese Social Media Channels for market research

First of all, searching for something like “sunglasses” on Weibo is unlikely to be a very useful exercise – most results would probably quite irrelevant returning mostly some news or pictures of people wearing sunglasses.

While searching Chinese social media channels, it is much better to make a more focused searches such for specific brand names of competitors for example.

In any case, when it comes to searches for social mentions Weibo is fairly similar to Twitter with the difference that instead of preceding a term with #, it should be enclosed with # like this: #太阳眼镜#.

One useful aspect of a search for a broad term is finding out who is advertising with that keyword. Here is the screenshot of a sample search results with the ads shown on the right panel:

The best way to use social media search is to find out about the competition and how they are using this channel. For example, let’s search for one of the famous brands for sunglasses – Oakley (the brand name searches don’t require #):

The first result would usually be the official brand account followed by news and social mentions which also can be quite useful.
While browsing competitors accounts it is a good idea to note how many followers they have, how frequent they post and whether they receive engagement on their tweets.

In the above example, Oakley’s account reveals a fairly active channel with over 80K followers and 5.5K tweets (as of November 2015). The company seems to be engaging in promotions via sponsored sports events and many tweets feature new designs and product launches:

In summary, social media searches on Weibo are best for researching competitors and their ways of using this highly effective marketing channel. It can help you to figure out how much emphasis on social media your marketing campaign should include and what you should be tweeting about to keep your targeted audience engaged.

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This post is the first one in the upcoming three part series covering basic market research in China.

Baidu Search

Due to a number reasons, the familiar digital marketing tools, which are mainly run by Google in the Western markets, are not available in China. Google search engine market share in China has fallen below 1% this year and all the Google services, such as Google docs, Google maps, Google analytics etc., have also become blocked from access. This fact alone is making life quite difficult not only for marketers but for regular citizens and businesses.

Luckily, there is an alternative and it is Baidu (baidu.com), the largest Chinese search engine with about 60% market share.

In fact, just a few years ago, Baidu was much more dominant reaching about 80% of the total search market. Since then, other popular services became more competitive and managed to grab larger market share away from Baidu. Those platforms are 360 Search (haosou.com) and Sogou (sogou.com) holding somewhere around 30% and 15% respectively as of the end 2014.

Here I will be mainly focusing on Baidu but, in principle, other search engines are fairly similar and can also be used for the purpose of basic market research.

Just like with Google, your basic research can start with a simple search term of a product translated to Chinese. Now, a word of warning, I strongly advise against using Google Translate or other machine translation program for that. You must find a native speaker to verify the term that you are interested in.

Let me give you an example. Suppose you are interested to search for the term “sunglasses”. Here is what Google Translate would return:

Unfortunately, even though the translation may technically be correct, no one in China actually uses the term太阳镜.

The proper term for sunglasses is太阳眼镜 and this is what you should be using for Baidu search. Once again, Google Translate cannot be relied upon even for a translation of simple keywords, let alone complex “long tail” ones.

Anatomy of a typical Baidu search results

Here is an example of a Baidu search results for the term “sunglasses” (太阳眼镜). Paid results are typically grouped at the top and on the right panels like in the example below:

Compared to a typical Google search results page, with Baidu, it is somewhat harder to tell the difference between paid and organic results. In fact, the only thing that indicates paid ads would be a small word “推广” at the bottom right.

For popular keywords, there would be very few organic results (if any at all) on the first results page.

Next, you would typically see results from Baidu-owned sites like Baike (equivalent to Wikipedia) or Baidu Zhidao (Chinese “Yahoo answers”).

News related results would be ranked next followed by the results from ecommerce sites. Interestingly, links to the largest ecommerce platforms of Alibaba, Taobao and Tmall, would not be shown at all. This is the result of the fierce competition between Baidu and Alibaba.

Finally, closer to the end of the page in this example, you can finally see a few organic results followed by another block of ads:

What can you learn from Baidu search? First, you can immediately see the level of competition in your intended market. If there are many paid ads, be prepared to compete with those advertisers for the same keywords.

Next, you will be able to learn who the main competitors would be and what they are offering. It’s a good idea to go and see their sites, explore the offers, sales strategies and distribution channels.

Finally, basic search would give you a better sense on whether it would be wise to invest in Baidu pay-per-click (PPC) or SEO to get ranked organically. I’m going to discuss those choices in more details in the future posts.

Stay tuned for the upcoming post on how to perform basic market research with Chinese online marketplaces.

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Chinese internet ecosystem is, perhaps, the only one in world where names like Google, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter are entirely absent from the vocabulary. Admittedly, one of the main reasons for it is inaccessibility of those platforms from China. However, even when they were allowed to operate, they simply didn’t adapt fast enough to the local market like their local competitors did. The eventual government’s sponsored shutdown was just the last nail in the coffin for those services.

The Chinese equivalents who filled the vacuum have quickly established themselves as not only the viable alternatives but also as the innovation leaders in their own right. They were not a mere copycats (those who just copied didn’t do well), but figured out their own unique place in the market.

Some of the big names like Facebook and Google haven’t given up on the idea of coming back to China in way or the other. Facebook has been busy establishing some local partnership, so there is a hope that, at some point in the future, a “sanitized” version of Facebook will be allowed to rejoin much evolved Chinese internet ecosystem.

Google is now almost certain to reestablish itself in China with the censored version of its search engine that is rumored to be in the works.

Those companies, undoubtedly, will be facing an uphill battle against the local competition. The infographic below gives an overview of the most important players in Chinese internet ecosystem and their key statistics.

Chinese Internet Ecosystem Infographics

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The trade war between two world’s biggest economies, the U.S. and China, is escalating. Since January 2018, we’ve seen rounds of tariffs, applied on various products, impacting negatively local businesses and their customers.

The automobile, tech and agriculture sectors are already suffering from the dispute. Companies manufacturing in China, like Apple or Tesla, are facing a price increase on raw materials which most possibly will result in higher prices of their products and eventually fewer buyers. American farmers report $11.8 billion loss in their personal incomes. Not to mention those, who went bankrupt after introducing the soybean tariff. What is going to happen next?

With the help of a infographic prepared by Trademachines.com you can get a visual insight into the subject, understand what tariffs are, and why Donald Trump turned into protectionism. This visual summary of the war traces back the initial motives of the trade dispute and gives you a timeline of the most relevant events.

US has now imposed new round tariffs on wide range of Chinese made goods worth USD 200 billion overall. China has retaliated with its own tariffs, albeit for only 60 billion.

Naturally, since the trade between the two countries is unbalanced in favor of China (the official pretext of this trade war) America has more opportunities to impose new tariffs on more good rather than China.

Huawei, China’s top tech giant and the world largest telecom equipment maker, has already become the latest casualty of this trade war. The first shots were fired with the arrest of Huawei CFO and the daughter of the founder, Meng Wangzhou.

US and many of its allies stopped doing business with this firm. This even included Google blocking Huawei’s access to its Andriod system updates and Play Store.

China has promised to retaliate and there is a growing popular sentiment aimed at boycotting US firms such as Apple.

Here is the infographic on US-China trade war

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Singles day is an informal shopping festival in China that has originally celebrated people who are still single. It falls on 11/11 which is meant to symbolize people who are not in a relationship. Since it started back in 2009, it has become the largest shopping event in China, akin Black Friday or Cyber Monday in North America, although much bigger.

Originally, the event was started by Alibaba which began offering discounts on its main shopping platforms, Taobao and Tmall, that lasted for 24 hours. The festival was picked up by other Chinese e-commerce sites like JD.com and now, increasingly, by traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Most of the action still goes online via e-commerce sites and mobile apps.

Every year, the festival kept getting bigger but this year, there were concerns that  it might actually slow down a bit. The main worry was that slowing Chinese economy and the trade war with US would dampen shoppers’ enthusiasm.

“It is possible that there will be a slowdown in growth for Singles Day sales, given that they have had exponential growth in the past,” Xiaofeng Wang, an analyst with Forrester, said before the event.

This did not happen. In fact, 2018 Singles Day raked a whopping $30 billion in the first 24 hours, beating the last year record of $24.2 billion.

Here is the latest data compiled by Statista:

Similar North American events are dwarfed by China’s 2018 Singles Day – the sales on Thanksgiving Day combined with Black Friday are about 5 times smaller.

Attempting to capitalize on seemingly insatiable appetite of Chinese shoppers for foreign products, the event was picked up by platforms outside of China. A recent survey from research firm Oliver Wyman found that 57% of China’s online shoppers consumers were planning to buy goods from overseas during 2018 Singles Day. The top countries that were most popular with the consumers are Japan, USA and Australia.

In addition, Alibaba’s South East Asia subsidiary, Lazada, was offering Singles Day discounts in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

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As the robust growth of international tourism continues, 2017 has seen the highest increase in total worldwide travel expenditure over the past eight years  – about 1.34 trillion US dollars. According to the World Tourism Organization of the United Nations, China has maintained its leading position in the global tourism market since 2012, with outbound tourists spending almost 258 billion US dollars last year, about 20 percent of total tourism spending in the world.

The main factors responsible to meteoric rise of Chinese tourism in recent years are:

• The emergence of a new rich Chinese middle class;
• The relaxation of travel restrictions by the Chinese authorities;
• A simplified destination visa policy;
• An increasing number of direct flight connections from China.

Although Chinese tourists are still famous for spending thousands of luxury luxury foreign brands, new trends in buying behavior are on the rise, especially among Chinese travelers. In 2017 Chinese travelers turned more to niche sectors such as whiskey tasting, aurora hunting, outdoor activities and other high-quality and less mass-oriented products and experiences.

Here is the comparison to other countries’ tourism spending compiled by Statista:

Chinese tourists outspent everyone else in 2017

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Last week, the US announced the last round of trade tariffs that will be imposed on Chinese imports, with goods affected estimated at about $ 200 billion per year. The tariffs that took effect on September 24 were met with Chinese retaliation of $ 60 billion in tariffs on US imports. If this threat is implemented, the US would prepare tariffs for an additional $ 267 billion import.

As Statista’s chart shows, the Trump administration has now analyzed data from the US Census Bureau by the BBC, now imposed for about half of all imports from China, and would even exceed the total import figure for 2017 as the $ 267 billion proposed, new rates appear to be needed. The road is also starting to run out for China. If all proposed tariffs are introduced, Xi Jingping would be left with only $20 billion worth of U.S. imports to penalize when comparing to last year’s total trade figure.

How US-China trade war is going to play out

If China growth continues at today’s rate, it will surpass USA as the largest economy in 2031

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It has already survived the region’s strongest typhoon to be be launched on September 23, as planned. China’s plan to connect Hong Kong and Macao with nine more cities in the neighboring province of Guangdong using the new bullet train and the longest bridge in the world is part of the larger ambition to develop its largest economic cluster.

It is about 20 years since the former European colonies of Hong Kong and Macao returned to Chinese sovereignty. However, both cities remain very different from the rest of China in terms of their political, social and economic indicators. For example, the world’s largest Macao gaming center has a per capita GNP of 77,100 US dollars, three times as much as that of Guangdong’s richest technology and Shenzhen startup hub. That is according to HSBC Global Research data published by Bloomberg.

The former capitalist colonies also have their own currencies, tax rates, passports and legal systems. Challenges remain with cross-border movements of people, residence rights and many other logistical and political issues. They will probably all be resolved by the time that Hong Kong and Macao lose their special status in 2047 and 2049 respectively. Until then, however, it can take more than a bridge and a train to cross those economic and political divisions in the Great Closing the bay.

According to the map put together by Statista, the gaps in GDP in Guangdong province are huge making the whole notion of the new “China’s Silicon Valley” highly controversial. For example, the numbers for Zhaoqing on the “outskirts” of the province are only 10% of Macau’s, the farthest link of the new railway.

Guangdong GDP distribution in China’s Silicon Valley

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