Police in Henan province recently arrested a man who allegedly defauded pig farmers of more than 1000 pigs to buy presents for his mistresses.

Zhao, the farmer, approached hog farmers in Huaxian county in Dec 2009 and persuaded them to give him their pigs so he could sell them off and bring back a good price. Zhao took more than 1000 pigs, which were worth at least 1.2M RMB (US $180,600). He sold the pigs but never gave a penny to the farmers, who lodged a police complaint.

Following his arrest, Zhao claimed that he spent all the money on buying gifts for his two mistresses. (Source: China Daily Thurs Oct 21, 2010.)

A man who dropped his mobile phone in the toilet while using a public facility in Jiangsu provice was not to be deterred. He decided to go after the phone, only to have his entire arm stuck inside the dirty drain until rescuers arrived at the shocking scene half an hour later. Rescue workers broke the porcelain bowl using crowbars and freed the man’s hand, which had clutched onto the phone like a magnet.

The phone was not functioning. (Source: China Daily Thurs Oct 21, 2010.)

Fake iPads selling like hotcakes: in the local markets that sell fake goods, fake iPads were just released and are selling for around $100 (650 RMB). The fakes have the Apple logo on the back and come in boxes that look just like my real iPad’s, but do not access iTunes. Which is why I love my iPad – content is always available and works, even if I have to pay a little. The fake iPads only have 1GB of memory (even though the box says 64GB), and do have good Wi-Fi functionality and USB ports to get your content on it. Batteries reportedly last about 2 hours. Still, they are flying off the shelves, with the local news saying vendors are selling more than 50 fakes per week (and there are LOTS of vendors).

Update: iPads are officially on sale in China now. At the Apple store in Beijing Sanlitun, the police and guard dogs had to be called in to manage crowd anger at line cutters. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

B2C Market booms: in the first six months of 2010, China’s B-to-C market had 200B RMB in revenue (about US $29B), way up from 2009’s total of 260B RMB. Wow!

Smartphone growth: 24 million smartphones were sold in China in the first half of 2010. That’s a lot of people who can surf your website and buy your products! (Source: Analysys International)

Cheap delivery prices: Selling to Chinese buyers near your factory source: one of the things that surprised me about Chinese e-commerce is how cheaply products get delivered. On Taobao, for instance, if the product is physically located in Beijing and the buyer is also in Beijing, delivery is only 5 RMB (about 74 cents). That is the customer expectation. So, one interesting joint collaboration here is between China Post and Tom Group. These two companies are launching a new website, Ule.com.cn, and goods sold through the site will be able to utilize the delivery capabilities of China Post, which include over 150,000 post-men and 56,000 mail trucks. Check it out!

C2C: If you want to sell to consumers in China, there is one site to focus on: Taobao.com. They dominate the C-to-C market with over 80% market segment share. Note that taobao is consumers buying from consumers. (Another interesting note: eBay’s former Chinese subsidiary, now called EachNet, has only about 5% market share.) If your small business is a bit larger, look at dangdang.com, Amazon, and 360buy.com, especially if you sell electronics.

SEM: when targeting consumers in China, here are the search engines with the largest presence here: #1: Baidu #2

Google #3:  #4: SogouNote: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Mobile browsers: If you are thinking about having a Chinese version of your website, make sure you test it on browsers that are most used inside China. On the mobile side, i.e. if a Chinese consumer is using their cell phone to browse your site, insure that your site works on the UC Mobile (57%) and Opera Mini (21%) mobile browsers. (Source: Analysis International)Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.