采访视频连接：http://english.cntv.cn/2014/11/20/VIDE1416490679202599.shtml
For more insight on the World Internet Conference and China’s internet industry, we are joined from CCTV's Hong Kong studio by Professor Zhao Kefeng from the department of economics at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
Q1: Staying on the issue of new and traditional media, how will traditional media’s role and strategies adapt in the future in light of the surge in popularity of new media channels?
Perfectly neutral media never really existed. Many countries have a tendency to favor certain media ecosystem. New publishing technologies broke the equilibrium. Now everyone is a reporter; everyone is a publisher. But you could say that any information unimportant to you is spam. Traditional media firms, those with good reputation, could still play an important role of reliability endorsement. The customers demand credible information because they could no longer stand the huge volume of information bombarding them.With more credibility comes responsibilities. The new and old media firms have new roles to play in steering public debate too.
I will say that the next step for public media firms is about how to maintain credibility of their news since customers will crosscheck the news with many other channels.The next step for the private media firms is to find new ways to make money and burn money efficiently in the stage of attracting eyeballs. They need to know that customers no longer sit in front of a TV as the only means of receiving information. They desire tailored-made portfolio of news accessible anytime on their portable devices.
Economic principles tell us that if everyone wants different things, you should price discriminate them if you have full information about their preferences. But the reproduction cost of information is zero, market forces drive the price to the zero cost. It is very hard to survive by simply selling news. A natural strategy is to burn enough money to dig deep into what the customers have read and push them the information of products they most wanted. It means a closer tie of the news market with product markets. And it might imply the sharing of personal information across businesses. Privacy is becoming a huge concern.
Q2: The World Internet Conference is the first of its kind, and it’s being held in Wuzhen, China. What’s the significance of this? What does it say about China’s internet industry?
On one hand, the significance of the World Internet Conference being held in the Zhejiang province is two-fold. Wuzhen is one of the most beautiful ancient river villages. It is two hours away from Shanghai.The conference there is showing off how rural villages are very well connected to the Internet. Second, the two other cities in the same province, Hangzhou and Jinhua, are important cities with a high concentration of Internet firms. The event is showing off how Internet firms could thrive away from major technology hubs such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The other cities should pay close attention to how Zhejiang made it. One reason for sure. Alibaba is there. The other two big players in China are located elsewhere: Baidu is in Beijing and Tencent is in Shenzhen. This time Alibaba’s Jack Ma,Tencent’s Pony Ma, and Baidu’s Robin Li all attended the event, among other major domestic and foreign companies.
On the other hand, the significance of the event being held in China needs more interpretation. If we look at the previous World Wide Web Consortium and Internet Society meetings, they were first attended by predominantly engineers and increasingly more lawyers attended to steer direction of standards setting. What does it mean? Engineers came to make the pie bigger and the lawyers came to divide the pie. Unlike these meetings, this time the senior management came together with key governing officials. Of course, the domestic players don't need to come in order to know which pie the government says is edible. The bigger message is perhaps to let the world knows that China wants to engage in talks to build consensus about how the Internet should be governed and the proper code of conduct. The China market is huge. With Alibaba claiming the largest global IPO ever and Huawei becoming the largest telecommunication equipment firm in the world, China now plays a key role on the Internet. But China faces many challenges with clashes of management styles. The East and West need to respect each other in this online world that blurs boundaries. Just as the theme of the conference goes: "An Interconnected world shared and governed by all".
I hope the East and West will all win. The Internet world is not a zero-sum game.
