Product details

In February 1997, Xindeco became the first Chinese technology company to list publicly. Impressed by their successes, the China Vista site attempted to expand out and become a 'gateway', or niche portal, for interest in China. The aim was that anyone who wanted to find out information about China would make their first stop the China Vista site. It quickly became apparent that not only was the scope of this expansion beyond their resources, there was very little in the way of revenues being generated to support such an expansion, and the market was rapidly becoming crowded with foreign-backed imitators who could subsidise information aggregation to a far greater degree than China Vista, and who were fighting over what was still a comparatively small market. With the basic China Vista site still gaining critical respect and foreign companies approaching the site's developers for assistance in entering the China market, a new business plan and a new site were created, which focused on aggregating members rather than (solely concentrating on) information resources - and thereby building loyalty. This focus allowed the developers to realise the existence of a community peculiar to cyberspace, that of the 'virtual foreign China-interested community' - a community dispersed around the world but united by their common interest in the commercial development of China.