Baiguan is not just a newsletter

Discord paying-member community dialogue digest #1

Baiguan is not just a newsletter, but also an active community for people who have a real stake in China to dig out facts and exchange ideas on a daily basis.

As some of you might know, we have been successfully operating a Discord community for paying subscribers for ~2 months now. To date, around 30% of our paying members have already joined the community and engaged in daily conversations, and it has turned into a platform where members with similar tastes but diverse backgrounds can come together to engage in civil, meaningful dialogues and share useful information with each other.

The community is also a live ask-us-anything channel, where Baiguan’s team members stand ready to answer many of your questions. And it’s not just about data. One type of content our members find helpful is our on-the-ground observations of how the “temperature” feels in the many different places that we visit. Moreover, to avoid a mix-up of unrelated interests, we have set up different sub-channels with easily identifiable topics such as economy, equities, domestic policy, private businesses, geopolitics, culture, etc.

At the same time, we have also invited Baiguan’s expert friends to come and share their knowledge. Our first batch of experts includes one highly reputable sell-side research analyst, a leading think-tanker, and a top venture capitalist.

In short, Baiguan is not just a newsletter, but a fast-growing crowdsourced pool of knowledge contributed only by verified sources.

Below are some of the most popular topics that have been discussed in the last few weeks:

• Did Pinduoduo’s Colin Huang really try to avoid becoming China’s richest person through self-sabotaging at the earnings call?

• Finding clues of China’s consumer market today through YumChina (KFC parent company)’s healthy 2024Q2 financial results

• Robert Wu
  ’s on-the-ground observation of offline consumption scenes at Xuzhou徐州, a tier-2/tier-3 city in the Jiangsu Province

• Why Alibaba needs to issue convertible bonds to repurchase shares, answered by a Baiguan’s invited Expert, who is one of the best China Internet analysts on the street right now

• The alert we sent before Nongfu Spring’s bad 2024H1 results announcement which sent its stock price to a historical low

• What China’s policymakers can theoretically do to avoid the deflationary spiral

• Aaron Zhou
  of Baiguan team constructed a “Lucky 6” of China’s top internet stocks and compared it with the “Magnificent 7” and found a surprising result

• Where to find exact data on how much foreign capital has been moving out of China, in both the capital market as well as private investments

• Long-term potential and policy tailwinds for Meituan

• The reality of China’s actual GDP growth using the listing company’s reported results as a proxy

• Robert Wu
  ’s takeaway from participating in Morgan Stanley’s China BEST Conference held in early September

• China’s education sector coming back

• Potential policy impact of Black Myth: Wukong

• Amber Zhang
  of the Baiguan team shared a YouTube video explaining the cultural background of the stories behind Black Myth: Wukong

In the section below behind the paywall, you will find links to the topic threads above.