Personalized services for officials booming in China
August 13, 2013 Leave a comment
Personalized services for officials booming in China
Staff Reporter
2013-08-13
A lucrative new industry has emerged in China that helps cater to both government officials and the people who deal with them, reports the Guangzhou-based Topnews9 network.
Given the massive number of officials in China, most of whom are more well off than the general public, many entrepreneurs around the country have started tailoring their businesses to attend to specifically to their needs.For example, one thing an official must do every day is to keep up with the news and read the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily. To save them time, companies have started offering news summary packages that compile all the day’s major stories in a concise format, which has reportedly evolved into a lucrative market, especially among local party officials.
Another money-making service is feng shui, where companies will use the ancient Chinese system of geomancy to recommend to officials the best ways for them to get ahead in their careers, in particular in the way they configure their homes or offices.
Officials are also said to be keen on surveillance and monitoring in the hope that they gather useful information that can help them get a promotion. Conversely, they are at the same time afraid that they themselves are being monitored. As a result, services both for installing surveillance equipment and sweeping for bugs are also reportedly on the rise.
Deleting unfavorable information on the internet is also a growth area. Many tech companies are now charging at least 500,000 (US$64,500) to help officials remove unwanted posts and web pages.
Apart from these services designed for officials, there is another segment of the market that caters to businesspeople who need officials and their influence to give their business a boost. The personalized services including manipulating photographs to make it seem like you are shaking hands with an official, or providing detailed “scouting” reports on specific officials to learn their likes and dislikes, which could prove the difference when trying to secure a deal.
One of the most popular services on the market is said to be a brokerage whereby middlemen will introduce local businesspeople to officials or vice versa for a fee.
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