Chinese media, advertising, and urban life.

David Wolf

David Wolf has been working in China's media, technology and communications industries since the 1980s. He is a consultant to both local and international companies in those industries, and a frequent commentator in the press. He also writes a blog at Silicon Hutong and posts to Twitter as wolfgroupasia.

In Danwei's comments section, Wolf recently disagreed with my take on what foreign financial information providers (FFIPs) should do in the face of new regulations prohibiting them from also collecting news in China:

Whereas I think that Reuters Thomson, Dow Jones, Bloomberg et al. should just make a 'Chinese wall' between their news gathering and information sales operations, David says that such a wall won't work because it will be difficult to manage and won't really fool anyone.

I sent him some questions to explore the issue a little further.

Danwei: Does it make any difference that the State Council Information Office is now the regulator? Might they behave in a different way from Xinhua when it comes to regulating FFIPs?

David Wolf: As with so many of these things in China, it's a good news / bad news matter.