US sanctions forced the telecommunications group Huawei to completely reorganize itself. The smartphone division, which until that point had been very successful globally, had to take such a strong hit, that an expansion into new business areas was necessary. Frank Sieren spoke with Liang Hua, CEO of Huawei. The topics were exciting – whether the geopolitical conflict between China and the USA will potentially lead to two independent tech spheres and different standards, what measures will be taken to reduce CO2 emissions of data centers, and which technology fields the company wants to increase its focus on in the future.
The issue of differing standards and inefficient duplicate structures even seems to extend to space. Gregor Koppenburg and Jörn Petring have analyzed China’s plans to build a satellite internet. Beijing plans to launch 13,000 satellites into space for this very purpose. SpaceX, OneWeb and Amazon are pursuing similar plans. Experts already fear space collisions with this many satellites in Earth’s orbit. But the issue of space debris is already of significant concern.
And a lot has happened on a geopolitical level over the weekend: The US blacklisted more Chinese companies and EU foreign ministers are pushing for an alternative to the New Silk Road.
I hope you enjoy your read and i wish you a good start in week!
Frank Sieren: Mr Liang, is the geopolitical power struggle between the US and China now leading to the emergence of two technological standards? The Europeans view this with great concern. Hardly any other company suffers more from this than Huawei.
Liang Hua: I think standards will continue to unify globally. Global networking is moving humanity forward. This can only happen with open cooperation and common standards. The big trend, beyond politics, beyond currently opposing currents, is clearly going heading in this direction.
Even with Huawei’s 5G technology? Huawei may indeed expand its global market leadership. The world is divided over the use of Huawei’s 5G equipment, both for data security concerns and geopolitical reasons.
The development history speaks for this: With 2G there were still many different technical standards. Later, GSM became a uniform standard in Europe. With 3G, there were initially three variants: CDMA2000, WCDMA and China’s TD-SCDMA. In the end, WCDMA prevailed. With 4G, we still two standards, LTE and WiMAX; the latter originated in the USA. LTE eventually became dominant. With 5G, there is now only one standard globally. I don’t see that changing again now, mainly because humanity needs global interconnectivity, and because the technology works best on unified platforms. Different standards in different countries significantly increase costs, for example in chip production and in building networks. Only open collaboration and shared success will move us all forward technologically.
Isn’t that a bit naïve? In the end, geopolitically, the more successful Huawei or China are, the more relentless the US will be in their attempts to push Chinese competitors out of the global market.
Technical standards and market presence are two different things. The US attempt to exclude Huawei has nothing to do with technology. But we are convinced that market forces are stronger than political ones in the long run. That’s why we simply continue to focus on providing the best products for our customers.
Your HarmonyOS operating system, which you had to launch much earlier than planned due to of US sanctions, still lacks the abundance of apps like Android and IOS. Your smartphone sales have plummeted dramatically.
But after all, 25 million people have already upgraded their smartphones to HarmonyOS 2.0.
Android has 2.5 billion users.
Yes, but we’ve only just begun. The benefits of our operating system will catch on quickly because it will make the lives of customers easier. HarmonyOS is a system for all IoT devices, for the Internet of Things. Competitors don’t have that. Especially since individual devices can be combined to form a super device.
And the apps?
More and more app partners are working with the ecosystem. Currently, there are already more than 200 app providers, and more than 2.3 million developers are testing and developing their apps on our Huawei Mobile Services, or HMS. With more and more apps and more HMS-based smartphones, we will be able to offer a better experience for our users. We already are the third-largest ecosystem globally and we are working closely with developers and IoT device manufacturers all over the globe and are becoming the third alternative for them.
German customers are asking one thing: When will the Harmony operating system be on par with the current systems in Germany?
In China, Huawei smartphones are already able to be upgraded to Harmony 2.0. The number of apps in our app gallery has already increased tenfold from 2019 to 2020. However, we still don’t have all the apps our users want. We need to continue to improve the user experience.
In another area, Huawei has entered the market as a new player: Autonomous driving. You are late to the party. In what way are you superior to your competitors?
We have decided not to build cars. We are sticking to our strengths. We wish to be a supplier and partner for car manufacturers and not a competitor at the same time. Our strength is ICT, i.e. information and communication technology. Through autonomous driving cars will be increasingly networked – with each other and in the cloud. Its a dramatic change for the industry.
How will cars change in the future?
Cars will become mobile data centers in the future. They will need to collect, process, forward or store large amounts of data very quickly. We are pretty good at this. At the same time, we offer integrated solutions, including data acquisition: lidar, radar and cameras.
The Kirin chips of Huawei smartphones are among the most advanced in the world. To have them manufactured, Huawei had to rely on US technology. But former President Donald Trump has also banned Asian manufacturers from producing for Huawei should they use US technology. Now you have to find partners who can produce on the same level of quality without any US technology. How long will it take for that to happen?
All market participants are currently looking for ways to become less dependent on political influences. Those in Europe and China, but also Taiwanese and South Korean market leaders. All are investing heavily in this field because the restrictions imposed by the USA have shaken confidence in the global chip industry. It’s a big problem. We hope that trust can be restored and that all market participants will be able to cooperate again.
Increased connectivity is producing more and more data. To manage it, Huawei requires more and more electricity. This impacts the climate. Does Huawei need to rethink?
This is a major challenge. Statistics show that data centers already consume about one to two percent of global power capacity. That’s a lot – and a climate change challenge. For us as well.
And what measure are you taking?
When it comes to environmental protection we focus on three key areas. Firstly, on reducing CO2 emissions, secondly on promoting renewable energies and thirdly on our contribution to the circular economy. As an information and communications technology company, the first thing we need to do is to reduce our power consumption. To achieve this we use eco-friendly technology in our equipment. But more importantly, data centers as a whole need to become more power-efficient. Our newest data centers already consume 20 to 30 percent less power to cool our hardware – an area with the highest energy consumption.
How does it work?
We have developed iCooling-solutions that use artificial intelligence to teach data centers how, where, and when to save power. In our cloud data center in Langfang near Beijing, for example, this solution is already implemented. Our AI systems are constantly optimizing temperature based on cumulative experience better than any human could. In this way, we save 13,000 tons of CO2 per year in this center alone.
Do you also influence the electricity you get? Almost 70 percent of China’s electricity production still relies on coal. That is not very environmentally friendly.
We support renewable energy with our Digital Energy division and already implemented photovoltaic solutions and energy storage products. I recently visited Qinghai, a sparsely populated province on the northeastern edge of the Himalayas. There, we helped develop a 200-square-kilometer solar panel plant in the desert. Very impressive. We have developed smart solutions to operate this plant as well as energy storage products. For example, what’s new about this plant is that it reduces soil evaporation by 30 percent – allowing more grass to grow under the solar panels, which, in turn, is used as food for sheep. This produces more renewable energy and increases the income of the shepherds – a real synergy between technology and the ecosystem as well as between new energy and traditional industries.
Does Huawei use predominantly green energy?
We are getting there. Our research center in Chengdu is powered exclusively by renewable energy. We are building more and more data centers in the west of the country, where there is a lot of wind, a lot of sunlight, and a lot of water to produce electricity with. The temperatures are also much lower there. And we’re getting better and better in the field of circular economy.
Electricity from alternative sources has one major disadvantage. It is dependant on the weather and therefore is very unstable. Do you have to go back to coal to compensate for fluctuations?
The solution to this is energy storage. We are working tirelessly on this matter and believe it can be solved.
But do you manage to reduce your overall power consumption with such projects or just the growth of power consumption? You are already working on 6G. The amount of data you have to process is growing exponentially.
Data centers are certainly getting bigger, and we need more of them. Nevertheless, I believe that our overall power consumption will decrease. For example, the energy consumption per bit in our 5G technology is only one-tenth of the consumption per bit of 4G. More importantly, when it comes to climate change, we need to look at power consumption as a whole. For example, with video conferencing people no longer need to travel by plane for meetings. True, this way data centers need more electricity. But the amount of energy saved by less travel is much greater.
How has environmental awareness developed at Huawei? Were you forced by the government?
We became involved with environmental protection very early on. Our first committee on environment, health and safety met back in 2003. At that time, it was mainly about internal environmental protection. For example, the use of eco-friendly materials. We have been publishing a sustainability report since 2009. As we became more successful globally, we were forced to adapt to the standards of the respective countries. And we currently are operating in 170 countries.
Which technological area will you be paying particular attention to in the future?
Of course, we are working on many areas. But the digital networking of small and medium-sized enterprises will be very important for us in the next few years. There are 25 million such companies in Europe, and only 17 percent of them are networked. Among conglomerates, it’s already 50 percent. Here we can contribute a lot to Europe’s competitiveness.
Which technological field are you personally most interested in?
That is a tough question. I’ve never thought about it before because we have so many different areas – networking, computing, consumer goods or cloud services. The more I think about it, the more I would say that 5G computing will dramatically change business models and therefore the economy and – ultimately – all of our lives. Just like the invention of electricity did in the past.
Born in 1964, Liang Hua is the current CEO of Huawei, the most internationally successful Chinese company. The technology group is headquartered in Shenzhen. Liang has been working at Huawei since 1995, mainly in its tech sector. Before that, he earned a doctorate in mechanical engineering in Wuhan.
It was curiosity that prompted student Dominic Sachsenmaier to apply for a scholarship in the early 1990s: a year of learning Chinese in Taipei. Up to this point, his studies had been strongly focused on Europe. Ee studied European history, philosophy and classical philology in Freiburg. After he returned from Taiwan a year later, Sachsenmaier not only had a solid grasp of the language but his interest in Chinese culture had also been awakened.
One doctorate and many more stays abroad later, the 51-year-old is now a professor at the East Asian Department of the University of Göttingen. The name of his professorship: Modern China with a focus on global historical perspectives. A global view of China allows for new approaches, says Sachsenmaier. “It’s about understanding China better through the lens of globalization. At the same time, the question is: How much do we need to focus on China to understand globalization?“
The need to catch up in dealing with the People’s Republic is immense: “Knowledge about China is still underdeveloped in our country,” says Sachsenmaier. It stems from a time when China was not nearly as economically relevant as it is today. “I would say that we are not prepared for the new age.”
Sachsenmaier is currently occupied with two major projects: He is writing a book on the global history of China in the 20th century. He is also involved in the research project “World Generation”, in which he and his team are analyzing ideas of world order in China and other countries. In doing so, he is not only focusing on China from a European perspective but also aims to bring Chinese scholars and China specialists with experts on Latin America, Africa and the Arab world, at one table.
Sachsenmaier studied in Nanjing and maintains close contacts with universities in China, especially Tsinghua University in Beijing. He spent a large part of his time abroad, a total of over eleven years in the USA: at Harvard and universities in California and North Carolina. Research on China is much more widespread in the US than in our country: “Two to three of the larger American universities have the same capacities that we have in the whole of Germany,” he says. As a result, research is highly specialized. In Germany, we have fewer professorships but more points of interdisciplinary contact, which is an advantage.
In recent years, Sachsenmaier has observed a shift in the U.S. on its stance towards China. “On a broad social basis, attitudes toward China have become more negative. What’s remarkable about this is that it applies to both political factions.” At US universities, one senses increasing pressure to reduce collaborations with China. Sachsenmaier is also concerned that freedom of expression in China is becoming increasingly restricted. “But I believe that this is precisely why we need to maintain and intensify our contacts with China.” Sarah Schaefer
Teddy bouquets, piggy steamed bread and Gucci handbags with cuddly cartoon kittens? No one can avoid a little “meng” in everyday Chinese life! 萌 méng actually originally means “to sprout” or “to bud,” but today the term is predominantly used as an adjective in the sense of “cute, adorable, cute.” Like Japan’s kawaii culture, which has already achieved some notoriety in the West, China has its own trend towards all things cute and childishly playfulness, and that is across all age groups.
The cuddly trend is presenting some Western marketing strategists with completely new challenges and its not even stopping at established luxury brands. In January of this year, Gucci launched a special collection for the Chinese New Year featuring the Japanese manga cult character Doraemon (机器猫 jīqìmāo), who is also popular in China. On social media, Chinese fashion fans raved about this collaboration, which evoked childhood memories as well as catered to the desire for fashionably cute looks. That same month, other luxury brands followed suit with their own “meng-ish” CNY cartoon collections – from Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga to Burberry and Loewe.
Mengmania” also paved the way for the triumphant advance of the Chinese toy manufacturer POP MART (泡泡玛特 pàopao mǎté). Founded in 2010, the company’s dolls and collectible figurines are usually sold in a surprise box – the so-called “ blind box” (盲盒 mánghé). Often they are available from specially set up toy vending machines, which along with vending machines for stuffed animals(娃娃机 wáwajī) are now part of the basic equipment of every well-stocked Chinese mall.
A stroll through the world of cuddly Chinese logos and product mascots is like a little safari: Online shopping is done at dog (京东 Jīngdōng) and cat (天猫 Tiānmāo, Alibaba’s T-Mall), supermarket orders are delivered by hippo (盒马超市 Hémǎ chāoshì) and food deliveries by Meituan kangaroo (美团外卖 Měituán wàimài), children receive online tutoring from a zebra (斑马Bānmǎ app) and chat via a penguin (腾讯 Téngxùn Tencent – operator of WeChat and QQ).
If you not only want to consume but also spread a bit of cuteness yourself, you can “sell meng” (卖萌 mài méng), or “pretend to be cute”.
So is cuteness the new glamour? Some market researchers are already predicting a future for “meng” and “kawaii” as a new global youth trend. After all, the Tiktok generation is starting to come into contact with Asian pop trends such as K-pop, which are influencing their sense of style. But experience shows that a rethinking is likely to take quite a while yet. Some people already said to have received the occasional disturbed glance when visiting Germany with “mengish” shopping finds from China – e.g. a sweatshirt printed with cartoon prints – because the whole thing was mistaken for a pyjama top. A classic reverse culture shock. So be warned against any hasty fashion escapades after a long stay in China.
Verena Menzel runs a online language school in Beijing www.new-chinese.org.
US sanctions forced the telecommunications group Huawei to completely reorganize itself. The smartphone division, which until that point had been very successful globally, had to take such a strong hit, that an expansion into new business areas was necessary. Frank Sieren spoke with Liang Hua, CEO of Huawei. The topics were exciting – whether the geopolitical conflict between China and the USA will potentially lead to two independent tech spheres and different standards, what measures will be taken to reduce CO2 emissions of data centers, and which technology fields the company wants to increase its focus on in the future.
The issue of differing standards and inefficient duplicate structures even seems to extend to space. Gregor Koppenburg and Jörn Petring have analyzed China’s plans to build a satellite internet. Beijing plans to launch 13,000 satellites into space for this very purpose. SpaceX, OneWeb and Amazon are pursuing similar plans. Experts already fear space collisions with this many satellites in Earth’s orbit. But the issue of space debris is already of significant concern.
And a lot has happened on a geopolitical level over the weekend: The US blacklisted more Chinese companies and EU foreign ministers are pushing for an alternative to the New Silk Road.
I hope you enjoy your read and i wish you a good start in week!
Frank Sieren: Mr Liang, is the geopolitical power struggle between the US and China now leading to the emergence of two technological standards? The Europeans view this with great concern. Hardly any other company suffers more from this than Huawei.
Liang Hua: I think standards will continue to unify globally. Global networking is moving humanity forward. This can only happen with open cooperation and common standards. The big trend, beyond politics, beyond currently opposing currents, is clearly going heading in this direction.
Even with Huawei’s 5G technology? Huawei may indeed expand its global market leadership. The world is divided over the use of Huawei’s 5G equipment, both for data security concerns and geopolitical reasons.
The development history speaks for this: With 2G there were still many different technical standards. Later, GSM became a uniform standard in Europe. With 3G, there were initially three variants: CDMA2000, WCDMA and China’s TD-SCDMA. In the end, WCDMA prevailed. With 4G, we still two standards, LTE and WiMAX; the latter originated in the USA. LTE eventually became dominant. With 5G, there is now only one standard globally. I don’t see that changing again now, mainly because humanity needs global interconnectivity, and because the technology works best on unified platforms. Different standards in different countries significantly increase costs, for example in chip production and in building networks. Only open collaboration and shared success will move us all forward technologically.
Isn’t that a bit naïve? In the end, geopolitically, the more successful Huawei or China are, the more relentless the US will be in their attempts to push Chinese competitors out of the global market.
Technical standards and market presence are two different things. The US attempt to exclude Huawei has nothing to do with technology. But we are convinced that market forces are stronger than political ones in the long run. That’s why we simply continue to focus on providing the best products for our customers.
Your HarmonyOS operating system, which you had to launch much earlier than planned due to of US sanctions, still lacks the abundance of apps like Android and IOS. Your smartphone sales have plummeted dramatically.
But after all, 25 million people have already upgraded their smartphones to HarmonyOS 2.0.
Android has 2.5 billion users.
Yes, but we’ve only just begun. The benefits of our operating system will catch on quickly because it will make the lives of customers easier. HarmonyOS is a system for all IoT devices, for the Internet of Things. Competitors don’t have that. Especially since individual devices can be combined to form a super device.
And the apps?
More and more app partners are working with the ecosystem. Currently, there are already more than 200 app providers, and more than 2.3 million developers are testing and developing their apps on our Huawei Mobile Services, or HMS. With more and more apps and more HMS-based smartphones, we will be able to offer a better experience for our users. We already are the third-largest ecosystem globally and we are working closely with developers and IoT device manufacturers all over the globe and are becoming the third alternative for them.
German customers are asking one thing: When will the Harmony operating system be on par with the current systems in Germany?
In China, Huawei smartphones are already able to be upgraded to Harmony 2.0. The number of apps in our app gallery has already increased tenfold from 2019 to 2020. However, we still don’t have all the apps our users want. We need to continue to improve the user experience.
In another area, Huawei has entered the market as a new player: Autonomous driving. You are late to the party. In what way are you superior to your competitors?
We have decided not to build cars. We are sticking to our strengths. We wish to be a supplier and partner for car manufacturers and not a competitor at the same time. Our strength is ICT, i.e. information and communication technology. Through autonomous driving cars will be increasingly networked – with each other and in the cloud. Its a dramatic change for the industry.
How will cars change in the future?
Cars will become mobile data centers in the future. They will need to collect, process, forward or store large amounts of data very quickly. We are pretty good at this. At the same time, we offer integrated solutions, including data acquisition: lidar, radar and cameras.
The Kirin chips of Huawei smartphones are among the most advanced in the world. To have them manufactured, Huawei had to rely on US technology. But former President Donald Trump has also banned Asian manufacturers from producing for Huawei should they use US technology. Now you have to find partners who can produce on the same level of quality without any US technology. How long will it take for that to happen?
All market participants are currently looking for ways to become less dependent on political influences. Those in Europe and China, but also Taiwanese and South Korean market leaders. All are investing heavily in this field because the restrictions imposed by the USA have shaken confidence in the global chip industry. It’s a big problem. We hope that trust can be restored and that all market participants will be able to cooperate again.
Increased connectivity is producing more and more data. To manage it, Huawei requires more and more electricity. This impacts the climate. Does Huawei need to rethink?
This is a major challenge. Statistics show that data centers already consume about one to two percent of global power capacity. That’s a lot – and a climate change challenge. For us as well.
And what measure are you taking?
When it comes to environmental protection we focus on three key areas. Firstly, on reducing CO2 emissions, secondly on promoting renewable energies and thirdly on our contribution to the circular economy. As an information and communications technology company, the first thing we need to do is to reduce our power consumption. To achieve this we use eco-friendly technology in our equipment. But more importantly, data centers as a whole need to become more power-efficient. Our newest data centers already consume 20 to 30 percent less power to cool our hardware – an area with the highest energy consumption.
How does it work?
We have developed iCooling-solutions that use artificial intelligence to teach data centers how, where, and when to save power. In our cloud data center in Langfang near Beijing, for example, this solution is already implemented. Our AI systems are constantly optimizing temperature based on cumulative experience better than any human could. In this way, we save 13,000 tons of CO2 per year in this center alone.
Do you also influence the electricity you get? Almost 70 percent of China’s electricity production still relies on coal. That is not very environmentally friendly.
We support renewable energy with our Digital Energy division and already implemented photovoltaic solutions and energy storage products. I recently visited Qinghai, a sparsely populated province on the northeastern edge of the Himalayas. There, we helped develop a 200-square-kilometer solar panel plant in the desert. Very impressive. We have developed smart solutions to operate this plant as well as energy storage products. For example, what’s new about this plant is that it reduces soil evaporation by 30 percent – allowing more grass to grow under the solar panels, which, in turn, is used as food for sheep. This produces more renewable energy and increases the income of the shepherds – a real synergy between technology and the ecosystem as well as between new energy and traditional industries.
Does Huawei use predominantly green energy?
We are getting there. Our research center in Chengdu is powered exclusively by renewable energy. We are building more and more data centers in the west of the country, where there is a lot of wind, a lot of sunlight, and a lot of water to produce electricity with. The temperatures are also much lower there. And we’re getting better and better in the field of circular economy.
Electricity from alternative sources has one major disadvantage. It is dependant on the weather and therefore is very unstable. Do you have to go back to coal to compensate for fluctuations?
The solution to this is energy storage. We are working tirelessly on this matter and believe it can be solved.
But do you manage to reduce your overall power consumption with such projects or just the growth of power consumption? You are already working on 6G. The amount of data you have to process is growing exponentially.
Data centers are certainly getting bigger, and we need more of them. Nevertheless, I believe that our overall power consumption will decrease. For example, the energy consumption per bit in our 5G technology is only one-tenth of the consumption per bit of 4G. More importantly, when it comes to climate change, we need to look at power consumption as a whole. For example, with video conferencing people no longer need to travel by plane for meetings. True, this way data centers need more electricity. But the amount of energy saved by less travel is much greater.
How has environmental awareness developed at Huawei? Were you forced by the government?
We became involved with environmental protection very early on. Our first committee on environment, health and safety met back in 2003. At that time, it was mainly about internal environmental protection. For example, the use of eco-friendly materials. We have been publishing a sustainability report since 2009. As we became more successful globally, we were forced to adapt to the standards of the respective countries. And we currently are operating in 170 countries.
Which technological area will you be paying particular attention to in the future?
Of course, we are working on many areas. But the digital networking of small and medium-sized enterprises will be very important for us in the next few years. There are 25 million such companies in Europe, and only 17 percent of them are networked. Among conglomerates, it’s already 50 percent. Here we can contribute a lot to Europe’s competitiveness.
Which technological field are you personally most interested in?
That is a tough question. I’ve never thought about it before because we have so many different areas – networking, computing, consumer goods or cloud services. The more I think about it, the more I would say that 5G computing will dramatically change business models and therefore the economy and – ultimately – all of our lives. Just like the invention of electricity did in the past.
Born in 1964, Liang Hua is the current CEO of Huawei, the most internationally successful Chinese company. The technology group is headquartered in Shenzhen. Liang has been working at Huawei since 1995, mainly in its tech sector. Before that, he earned a doctorate in mechanical engineering in Wuhan.
It was curiosity that prompted student Dominic Sachsenmaier to apply for a scholarship in the early 1990s: a year of learning Chinese in Taipei. Up to this point, his studies had been strongly focused on Europe. Ee studied European history, philosophy and classical philology in Freiburg. After he returned from Taiwan a year later, Sachsenmaier not only had a solid grasp of the language but his interest in Chinese culture had also been awakened.
One doctorate and many more stays abroad later, the 51-year-old is now a professor at the East Asian Department of the University of Göttingen. The name of his professorship: Modern China with a focus on global historical perspectives. A global view of China allows for new approaches, says Sachsenmaier. “It’s about understanding China better through the lens of globalization. At the same time, the question is: How much do we need to focus on China to understand globalization?“
The need to catch up in dealing with the People’s Republic is immense: “Knowledge about China is still underdeveloped in our country,” says Sachsenmaier. It stems from a time when China was not nearly as economically relevant as it is today. “I would say that we are not prepared for the new age.”
Sachsenmaier is currently occupied with two major projects: He is writing a book on the global history of China in the 20th century. He is also involved in the research project “World Generation”, in which he and his team are analyzing ideas of world order in China and other countries. In doing so, he is not only focusing on China from a European perspective but also aims to bring Chinese scholars and China specialists with experts on Latin America, Africa and the Arab world, at one table.
Sachsenmaier studied in Nanjing and maintains close contacts with universities in China, especially Tsinghua University in Beijing. He spent a large part of his time abroad, a total of over eleven years in the USA: at Harvard and universities in California and North Carolina. Research on China is much more widespread in the US than in our country: “Two to three of the larger American universities have the same capacities that we have in the whole of Germany,” he says. As a result, research is highly specialized. In Germany, we have fewer professorships but more points of interdisciplinary contact, which is an advantage.
In recent years, Sachsenmaier has observed a shift in the U.S. on its stance towards China. “On a broad social basis, attitudes toward China have become more negative. What’s remarkable about this is that it applies to both political factions.” At US universities, one senses increasing pressure to reduce collaborations with China. Sachsenmaier is also concerned that freedom of expression in China is becoming increasingly restricted. “But I believe that this is precisely why we need to maintain and intensify our contacts with China.” Sarah Schaefer
Teddy bouquets, piggy steamed bread and Gucci handbags with cuddly cartoon kittens? No one can avoid a little “meng” in everyday Chinese life! 萌 méng actually originally means “to sprout” or “to bud,” but today the term is predominantly used as an adjective in the sense of “cute, adorable, cute.” Like Japan’s kawaii culture, which has already achieved some notoriety in the West, China has its own trend towards all things cute and childishly playfulness, and that is across all age groups.
The cuddly trend is presenting some Western marketing strategists with completely new challenges and its not even stopping at established luxury brands. In January of this year, Gucci launched a special collection for the Chinese New Year featuring the Japanese manga cult character Doraemon (机器猫 jīqìmāo), who is also popular in China. On social media, Chinese fashion fans raved about this collaboration, which evoked childhood memories as well as catered to the desire for fashionably cute looks. That same month, other luxury brands followed suit with their own “meng-ish” CNY cartoon collections – from Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga to Burberry and Loewe.
Mengmania” also paved the way for the triumphant advance of the Chinese toy manufacturer POP MART (泡泡玛特 pàopao mǎté). Founded in 2010, the company’s dolls and collectible figurines are usually sold in a surprise box – the so-called “ blind box” (盲盒 mánghé). Often they are available from specially set up toy vending machines, which along with vending machines for stuffed animals(娃娃机 wáwajī) are now part of the basic equipment of every well-stocked Chinese mall.
A stroll through the world of cuddly Chinese logos and product mascots is like a little safari: Online shopping is done at dog (京东 Jīngdōng) and cat (天猫 Tiānmāo, Alibaba’s T-Mall), supermarket orders are delivered by hippo (盒马超市 Hémǎ chāoshì) and food deliveries by Meituan kangaroo (美团外卖 Měituán wàimài), children receive online tutoring from a zebra (斑马Bānmǎ app) and chat via a penguin (腾讯 Téngxùn Tencent – operator of WeChat and QQ).
If you not only want to consume but also spread a bit of cuteness yourself, you can “sell meng” (卖萌 mài méng), or “pretend to be cute”.
So is cuteness the new glamour? Some market researchers are already predicting a future for “meng” and “kawaii” as a new global youth trend. After all, the Tiktok generation is starting to come into contact with Asian pop trends such as K-pop, which are influencing their sense of style. But experience shows that a rethinking is likely to take quite a while yet. Some people already said to have received the occasional disturbed glance when visiting Germany with “mengish” shopping finds from China – e.g. a sweatshirt printed with cartoon prints – because the whole thing was mistaken for a pyjama top. A classic reverse culture shock. So be warned against any hasty fashion escapades after a long stay in China.
Verena Menzel runs a online language school in Beijing www.new-chinese.org.
