City Business Magazine is a biannual College magazine, which publishes two issues a year in English and Chinese. We embrace and promote the College values of Global – Impact – Innovation – Inspiration and Sustainability. Recent issues have centred on themes such as fintech, blockchain, digital marketing, the United Nations, sustainability and China, and global free trade vs protectionism. We carry interviews and articles by our forward-looking faculty and distinguished visitors. We also bring news of our major research projects, latest programme developments, and faculty and alumni achievements. City Business Magazine has been going out to some 50,000 alumni, international partners, and corporate stakeholders in hard and soft copy since 2014.
Dr Shan Zhao examines the effect of antitrust enforcement on Chinese internet platforms.
Dr Vikas Kakkar investigates the skills and aptitudes that can help us achieve lifetime financial security.
Henry Ko, CB alumnus and Chairman of Greater China at Flexport, talks about how he decided to work with a technology-driven freight forwarder start-up which now employs over 700 people.
Hong Kong information systems leaders give their take on how entrepreneurship is driving technological innovation.
In an age where data privacy is a major concern, Professor Keng Leng Siau asks what an ethical AI might look like.
Dr Alvin Leung shows how alternative data is giving investors an ever richer picture of corporate performance.
Professor Alan Wan argues that combining statistical models offers advantages in forecasting compared to selection of a single model, and that this approach is likely to be an increasingly used analytical tool.
Professor Houmin Yan charts the chequered history of alternative data, ensuing concerns over data privacy, and how a federated learning model can provide rich and transparent alternative data.
Analytics should go beyond operational and technical levels and be driven by business insights, says Professor David Li. This will give business schools opportunities to offer students a more holistic view of business problems.
Professor Jane Lu argues that scholars need to put a human face on the victims of inequality, and urges researchers to focus on the role of organisations in producing societal inequality
Professor Muammer Ozer challenges the notion that industrial clusters necessarily promote innovation, and highlights the importance of network ties with supplier and buyer firms
Professor Haibin Yang reveals an uncomfortable truth: high-stakes exploratory alliances can actually increase the likelihood of competition between partner firms
Professor Jeong-Bon Kim describes how global convergence of accountancy standards has been integral to China’s successful integration into the global economy
Dr Yangxin Yu takes a critical look at how the rapidly expanding sector of corporate social responsibility is entering the mainstream of financial reporting
Dr Zilong Zhang discusses the chequered history of China’s state-owned enterprises and how a series of defaults brought a systemic response and increased financial discipline to the sector
High levels of air pollution are leading to growing concerns for our everyday health. Dr William Chung argues that access to cheaper natural gas on world markets will reduce current levels of pollution from power plants and allow Hong Kong to enjoy a coal and nuclear free future
Professor Chi-yuan Liang examines Taiwan’s constraints around natural gas and renewables, taking into account the results of a recent referendum expressing opposition to expansion of coal-fired plants, and proposes an optimal energy mix for 2025
In a chaotic world with widening inequality, energy resource depletion, ecological imbalance, and global warming, Professor Chao-shiuan Liu’s Wang Dao Sustainability Index prioritises sustainable development in ranking the performance of countries around the world
Celebrating the diversity of our student and alumni achievement
The psychology of smartphone addiction
Johnny Wong is CEO of Hotmob, a leader in mobile marketing in the Asia region. Here he reveals how he started out after graduating from the Department of Information Systems at CityU, his early work in SMS games, the launch of first generation apps in Hong Kong, and how we can collectively build a responsibly managed digital advertising environment.
In this fictional account of weddings, robots and space travel, Professor Julie Li, Department of Marketing, points to the ongoing revolution in marketing, and the proactive role that all of us can play.
Professor Wenyu Dou of Marketing discusses how decentralised e-commerce trading platforms promise to lower transaction costs, increase reliability, and promote frictionless trade. After a kaleidoscopic tour through marketing innovation in world history, he asks how profound a change blockchain is likely to make?
The inequities of behaviour-based pricing
How trust was created out of financial turmoil
If you have been on Planet Earth over the last couple of years, you cannot fail to have heard of Bitcoin and its underlying technology, blockchain. Although the two concepts are often used interchangeably in the domain of cryptocurrency, in broad context Bitcoin and blockchain mean very different things. In this short article, let’s start with Bitcoin and then focus on blockchain surrounding the issue of trust, a concept that goes to the very core of all business activities.
A bubble? A fraud? A way to the future? A currency? Digital gold? With all the recent fuss about bitcoin, its identity seems as mystic as its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The good news is that, unlike Satoshi, who intentionally tries to remain anonymous, bitcoin was designed to be transparent from day one, at least to those who are willing to dig into its open source programme files.
In 2015, the United Nations adopted a highly ambitious agenda for bringing prosperity and wellbeing to citizens, eradicating extreme poverty and saving the planet - leaving no one behind. All member states approved this ambitious agenda of People Planet and Prosperity.
MTR carries over 12 million passenger trips - with almost half of them in Hong Kong - every weekday. And despite relatively low fares, it does not require Hong Kong government subsidies. How is this achieved? According to MTR's Dr Jacob Kam, Public-Private-Partnership is central to the railway success story in achieving sustainable urban development.
Professor Yongheng Yang is Associate Dean, School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, whose areas of research include Government Performance, and Public Service Delivery. In this interview, he talks about People First Public-PrivatePartnerships in China especially as they may relate to healthcare, Hong Kong's niche in the Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative, and the role of Tsinghua University and City University of Hong Kong in delivering specialist educational courses.
As the protectionist spirit takes hold across the North Atlantic, Dean Houmin Yan describes how China's One Belt One Road project is promoting connectivity and collaboration across Eurasia using the Public-Private-Partnership model, and how China is emerging as a surprise champion of global free trade.
Against a background of rising costs, Chinese manufacturing is on the move — to the US and Southeast Asia. Professor Frank Chen, Head and Chair Professor of Management Sciences, investigates latest trends and how a record inflow of Chinese investment is helping revitalize the American economy.
Dr Isabel Yan, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance, discusses the efficacy of President Trump's protectionist policy, the future of UK-EU relations in the wake of Brexit, and how the One Belt One Road project is boosting economic cooperation.
Cities have been – to a degree – smart for centuries. The Romans achieved reliable water flow into their cities using aqueducts. Two millennia later, as cities grew phenomenally, the electrical grid helped mitigate seemingly insurmountable pollution problems.
Joseph Y. Hui is Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University, CEO of Monarch Power Corp, and also goes under the name of Solar Man. Since 2010, he has filed more than ten patents in the areas of water, energy, food, information, and transportation, collectively known as We-fit.
We talk to College of Business alumni Dr Toa Charm and Karen Wu about Cyberport's mission to nurture digital industry startups, and Cyberport's new University Partnership Programme.
After a century of marginalisation, Central Asia transit routes are once again taking centre stage. City Business Magazine editor Eric Collins investigates the nature of the historical Silk Road, and asks why China is unveiling a new version for the 21st century.
Hong Kong is pivotally placed to contribute to One Belt One Road. Dean Houmin Yan describes how the College of Business at CityU and Tsinghua University, Beijing will play a role in setting up an International PPP Specialist Centre of Excellence for Public Transport Logistics.
Professor Wenyu Dou, Department of Marketing, and Ms Ting-ting Du, College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, look at how Internet+ is creating a tidal wave of online marketing opportunities.
Innovation is not just a concern of the worlds of business and technology but of universities as well.
An Interview with Xi Zhinong, one of China's foremost wildlife photographers and conservationists.
In early March 2015 a documentary film on China's air pollution, Under the Dome1, attracted a huge amount of public attention. The film, produced by Chai Jing a prominent Chinese journalist and popular TV anchor, took a personal angle to look at China's air pollution issues and especially PM2.5 pollution.
Spring 2015 Issue
Genie out of the Bottle - The impact of the Alibaba IPO
This was a big bang by any measure. An Initial Public Offering (IPO) which broke all records, shares soaring 38 percent on their debut, and US$21 billion raised. After its IPO, with a market value of US$220 billion, Alibaba was worth more than Facebook, Amazon or eBay. The figures are mind numbing. But what is the wider significance of the Alibaba IPO?
The rising cost of healthcare is a concern for governments around the world, with aging populations consuming an ever greater proportion of GDP. At the same time health services are often vigorously defended, many seeing them as an essential pillar of society.
Professor Yin-wong Cheung is Hung Hing Ying Chair Professor of International Economics, and Head of the Department of Economics and Finance at City University of Hong Kong.
Professor Houmin Yan is Dean of the College of Business and Chair Professor of Management Sciences.
Hong Kong is famous the world over for its buoyant free market, active stock exchange, and keenly priced goods. People are drawn here to its shopping malls, computer centres, and street markets. It is a place where a generally light regulatory touch inspires trust, while the market is free enough to express itself: a place where the consumer would be king…
Mr James Liu started his first garment business back in 1976 and is now Managing Director of the global Hanbo Group, a leading supply chain management service provider in the garment industry.
