MCLC: Chen Guangbiao's business card

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Chen Guangbiao's business card
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Source: China Real Time (1/14/14):
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/01/14/chen-guangbiaos-business-card
-needs-to-be-recycled/

Chen Guangbiao’s Business Card Needs to Be Recycled
By Wei Gu

Recycling tycoon Chen Guangbiao should rethink his now-famous business
card.

And, perhaps, he needs to rethink his use of a business card to begin with.

The Chinese businessman’s card made headlines when he went to New York
earlier this month in what he said was an effort to buy foreign media
assets. Next to his photo—a detail that some in China include on their
cards, especially those who work as property or insurance brokers—he also
offered up 10 honorary titles, including “Most Influential Person of
China,” “China Moral Leader,” and “Most Charismatic Philanthropist of
China.”

The Chinese side of his card also has 10 titles, but different ones that
play more to a domestic audience. One cites the May 1 medal for outstand
achievement he received from the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.
Many Chinese entrepreneurs like to stress their affiliation with
government bodies, which gives them more credibility in the
state-dominated society.

The titles have the opposite impact that Mr. Chen probably wants. So many
big titles together make them all seem small.

Though they didn’t draw headlines, Mr. Chen’s contact details also were
noteworthy. Unlike most other important people in China, who pride
themselves on not giving much contact details on their cards, Mr. Chen
listed two mobile phone numbers and two email addresses.

His China cellphone number is a status symbol in itself, with six “8”s,
including four together at the end. The number must have been pricey to
procure, as the number eight is deemed as a particularly auspicious number
in China.

Mr. Chen doesn’t appear to have devoted the same sort of effort to
technology systems at his own company. Both of his email addresses are
with 163.com, a free email service provided by Netease. This isn’t
uncommon in China, where even government officials put their own Yahoo or
Hotmail addresses on their cards.

The bigger question is whether Mr. Chen needs a card at all, particularly
in a China that has become more technologically sophisticated.

With the rising popularity of Chinese social networks on cellphones, email
increasingly looks like an outdated way to keep in touch. When Chinese
people meet at social functions now, they often don’t exchange business
cards. Instead, they turn to their phones, open their WeChat application,
and started adding each other as friends.

Li Ling, a children’s book publisher in Beijing, said she hasn’t used
business cards for more than a year now. Instead, she has put all her
contact details on a QR code, the black-and-white checkerboard patterns
that people can scan with their smartphone cameras. When she meets new
people, they can simply scan the code on her phone with their own devices
and the contacts will be added to their address books.

Of course that doesn’t work with everyone. Recently a foreign business
associate who isn’t on WeChat kept asking her for a business card. Her
friend jokes that she is getting so famous that she doesn’t need carry a
business card anymore.

Ms. Li says environmental reasons aside, there are practical reasons to
keep it simple. “If I meet someone with whom I’m not really interested in
keeping in touch, there is no point exchanging business cards,” said Ms.
Li. She added, “Now, without WeChat, it is hard to do business in China.”

Maybe Mr. Chen should listen to Ms. Li’s advice and live up to his title
of “Environmental Protection Top Advocate” by getting rid of paper cards
entirely.

–Follow Wei Gu on Twitter at @weigu <http://www.twitter.com/weigu>