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China Prospects Forum
Breakfast Series
Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010
8:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

 
Venue: Twenty Four Fifth Ballroom
(24 5th Ave. b/t 9th & 10th)
New York City

This Month's Topic:
"Media Roundtable"

 Sponsored by:

About the Program:

Fortunes have been made (and lost) with the stroke of a journalist's pen or a mention (positive or negative) on the nightly news. With all the attention on China and its economic potential, it would seem to follow that the sector of China-based companies trading on the U.S. capital markets would be endless fodder for stories in the mainstream business press. However, these companies remain "under-the-radar" and often completely overlooked.

In a large part this is due to the sector neglecting to promote itself. Media relations is a complex endeavor for any business, but the management teams of China-based/U.S. listed companies are not proactive in promoting their companies to the press and do not take the time to understand the process. In addition, many rely on their  investor relations firms to handle the media, misunderstanding that dealing with Wall Street and dealing with the media are separate arts.

Even when China-based/U.S. listed companies are routinely mentioned in the U.S. national press, such as Baidu in regard to the "Google" story or Suntech in regard to opening a plant in Arizona, often the reporter does not note that they trade on the U.S. capital markets and possibly is not aware they do. Perhaps this is the biggest missed opportunity of all, as even the inclusion of a ticker in a major news story could spur investor interest. There is no question that China-based companies trading on the U.S. capital markets need to do a better job honing their public relations efforts and getting the word out about their companies.

Our Media Roundtable will bring together members of the media (from both the west and the east) to dicussion this issue, focusing on the following topics and more:  

• How editors and journalists choose what stories and companies to cover.
• Tips on raising a company’s profile in the eyes of the media.
• The advantages and disadvantages of hiring a Public Relations firm.
• Tips on Media Etiquette. 
•  How the U.S. and China press differs.
• The role of blogs written by investors and others not trained as journalists.

Confirmed Panelists Include:

(Please scroll down to see full bios)

• Xiang Ji (Nina), Reporter, Institutional Investor Magazine
• David Lariviere, Freelance Reporter, Forbes.com, AllBusiness.com, (formerly Dow Jones,CNBC.com & TheStreet.com)
• Scott Sunshine, Principal & Managing Director, Middleberg Communications
• Scott Tong, Marketplace, Former Shanghai Correspondent, Current Sustainability Correspondent
• Chen Weihua, Deputy Editor, China Daily, U.S. Edition
• More to come!

Who Should Come?

Management of China-based/U.S. listed companies wishing to learn more about Media Relations and "meet the press"; professional services firms which are pivotal to advising their China-based/U.S. listed companies; Investor Relations reps who want to hone their media skills and meet members of the press; analysts who want to make connections in the press; Individual Investors, Fund Managers, Venture Capitalists, Private Equity Executives and Hedge Fund Managers.

Past attendees include executives from Acquavella, Chiarelli, Shuster, Berkower & Co., Aon Corporation, Amaranth Consulting, Americores, Axiom Capital, Bentley Associates, Bernstein & Pinchuk, Beyond the Bottom Line, Bloomberg News, Brean, Murray, Carret & Co., Brunswick Group, Chinavestor.com, China Business News, China Digital Animation, China Direct Industries, China U.S. Capital Holding Group, Crescendo Communications, Crescendo Partners, Crystal Equity Research, Friedman, Global China Connection, HSBC Bank USA, HC International, Holtz Rubenstein Reminick, Hudson Securities, The Jin Law Group, Johnson Edman Advertising, Kee Global Advisors, Kramer Levin, Major, Lindsey & Africa, NYSE Euronext, National Committee on U.S. China Relations, Newbridge Securities Corp., OTCQX, OLP Global, Outernational, Paragon Capital, Penick & Associates, Rhoades & Associates, Rodman & Renshaw, Sichenzia Ross Friedman Ference, SmartMoney, Song PLLC, TerraNova Capital, ViriathusCapital, Western Bridge, Whitestone Communications, Inc., Wiebe Associates, World Journal, Yomiuri Shimbun

 
The event is produced by Janet Stites, Publisher/Editor of

China Business Knowledge

For more information contact:  
Janet Stites

Publisher
China Business Knowledge
jstites@chinabusinessknowledge.com

(917) 846-4251

SPEAKER BIOS

XIANG JI

Xiang Ji (Nina)  is a reporter at Institutional Investor magazine in New York City. Joining the magazine in 2008, she covers capital markets, mergers & acquisitions, investment banks and private equity. She was previously at Business Week magazine in its Beijing bureau, covering a wide range of subjects from the Chinese economy to its financial markets reform. She holds a B.A. degree in television journalism from China Communications University in Beijing and a M.A. In journalism from the University of Missouri. While at Missouri, she received scholarships from the Foreign Press Association in New York City and the National Press Foundation in Washington D.C.

Xiang Ji also works part-time  as the U.S. correspondent for China Business Network (Di Yi Cai Jing), a Shanghai-based financial television channel, and the U.S. Correspondent for China Radio International, China’s national English language radio station. 

DAVID LARIVIERE

 A graduate of the prestigious S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, David Lariviere has worked as a journalist in the metropolitan New York area for the last three decades. He began his career in sports, but has focused on business news for the last 15 years with stints at Dow Jones, TheStreet.com and CNBC.com as a writer and editor. He has also consulted for a financial communications firm that worked closely with JPMorgan Chase and CitiGroup. He currently writes for Forbes.com, AllBusiness.com and other niche publishing properties. He recently received his MBA.

SCOTT SUNSHINE

Scott is a Principal and Managing Director of Middleberg Communications and heads the firm's Financial & Corporate Practices Group. In this role, he directs the development and implementation of reputation-based communications programs that give public and private companies a competitive edge in an increasingly fragmented marketplace. His areas of expertise include strategy, brand development, positioning, and CEO counsel.

Previously, Scott was a principal and head of the Media Relations Practice at TowersGroup, an agency specializing in the financial services sector, which merged with Middleberg Communications in 2006.

Prior to joining TowersGroup in 1998, Scott was a Vice President at Morgen-Walke Associates, where he developed and executed communications strategies for financial clients in the firm's Corporate Communications Group. Previously, Scott was President of The Brann-Hill Group, a public relations firm. His 22 years' of experience also includes positions with Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising and Hill & Knowlton, Inc. During his public relations career, Scott has counseled Fortune 500 companies on marketing strategies and devised crisis communications programs for the governments of Yugoslavia, Turkey and Mexico.

Scott holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Cape Town.

SCOTT TONG

Scott Tong is Marketplace’s sustainability correspondent, based in Washington, D.C.  Tong joined Marketplace as a staff reporter in Washington, D.C. in 2004. From January 2007 to July 2010, he served as Marketplace’s China bureau chief, beginning in its Shanghai office and filing news spots and features on China’s continuing emergence in the global economy. He reported on China weathering the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, the new urban consumer class, American businesses manufacturing and selling in China, Shanghai’s property boom, China’s increasing environmental challenges, and its imports of commodities and exports of capital.
 
Also during that time, Tong went down coalmines and up the skyscrapers. He reported from casinos in Macau, dairy ranches in Inner Mongolia, lakes in Hunan and electronics factories in Shenzhen. He interviewed factory workers and bosses, financiers and fishermen, and many, many consultants.

Tong’s investigative features uncovered brick kiln owners employing slave laborers, a smelting plant whose pollution caused lead poisoning in more than a thousand children, a web of traffickers who sold babies then adopted overseas. He profiled China’s coal dependency for Marketplace’s special series “The Climate Race,” and the global trade in lead for the program’s “Consumed” series.” He concluded his China posting with a six-part series on the economics of the one-child policy.
 
Tong has spent much of his life bouncing in and out of greater China. A New York native, he attended international schools in Hong Kong and Taiwan before attending Georgetown University. He studied government and history, graduating in 1991. Tong previously worked as a congressional staffer, healthcare print reporter, and producer for the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He traveled on assigned to Iraq in 2003, producing a series of short documentaries for the NewsHour. He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife Cathy and three children.

 To listen to some of Tong's China coverage click HERE.

CHEN WEIHUA

 Chen Weihua is the Deputy Editor of China Daily U.S. Edition based in New York and also a columnist for China Daily. He joined China Daily in 1987 working for the China Daily Business Weekly in Beijing. He has  worked on various positions at the largest national English-language paper, including Deputy Bureau Chief in Shanghai, Managing Editor of the weekly Shanghai Star, a tabloid published by China Daily, Managing Editor of China Daily East China Edition, Chief Correspondent and Chief Commentator of China Daily in East China before he came to work in New York in November 2009.

Mr. Chen covered the very early stages of China’s stock market, witnessing the launch of the Shanghai Stock Exchange in December 1990.  In New York, he has also reported a number of Chinese companies listed in the US.

Mr. Chen was a Freedom Forum Fellow at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1993-94, a World Press Institute (WPI) Fellow based at Macalester College in 1998 and a Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 2004-05. He graduated from the Fudan University in Shanghai with degrees in microbiology and international journalism.

Mr. Chen has spoken on a wide-range of topics related to China to groups such as the 60-member Brookings Institution group visiting China, Jefferson Fellows, Indian Young Entrepreneurs Delegation and MBA and other students from a number of U.S. universities.