Society

U.S. President Barack Obama visited Indonesia with a U.S. business delegation last week. How successful was the trip for U.S. companies? How will the visit affect commercial relations between China and Indonesia? We exchanged by email on Sunday with Justin Doebele, the chief editorial advisor for Forbes Indonesia, the licensed Indonesia edition of Forbes magazine.

Q. How was President Obama received in Indonesia?
It doesn’t matter that Obama had postponed his trip twice, and then when he came stayed only for a short visit and just in Jakarta. He’s a rock star in Indonesia. He’s the first American president to speak some of Indonesian language, and to have lived here. As one headline put it, “Barry’s back.”

Within 10 years, China’s entertainment industry has the potential to create more new wealth than any other industry in the country. At least, that’s what Rupert Hoogewerf, publisher of the Hurun Rich List, says in a recently released report – his first — on the entertainment industry’s top moneymakers.

Hurun’s entertainment rich list isn’t what you’d expect. Instead of movie stars, models and the like, China’s entertainment industry is dominated by suits – possibly a consequence of Hurun’s definition of “entertainment,” which includes new amusements like instant messaging and online gaming in addition to traditional diversions like movies and sports.

Pony Ma, founder of Tencent Holdings, China’s largest Internet portal and provider of the popular QQ messaging service, topped the new list. Hurun calculates that 23 billion yuan, or 3.5 billion dollars, of Ma’s total worth comes from his company’s entertainment business, which generates roughly 80% of Tencent’s total market cap. Ma fell just outside the top ten on Hurun’s 2010 general list of the richest people in China and finished second to Baidu CEO Robin Li on Hurun’s latest IT industry rich list.

Mention Guangzhou to the Chinese and they instinctively think of two things: food and money.

As the capital of the Guandong province, the city is the hub of the Cantonese cuisine and so, naturally, things like dim sum and char siu taste just a bit better than in other places. And as the factory workshop to the world, this sprawling city of 13 million—China's third-largest—is the engine for the Chinese economic miracle. Guangzhou is your place for cheap jeans and fridges.

Food and money come together in the city's countless gilded and chandeliered restaurants, where the upwardly mobile are eager to show their new riches by ordering expensive delicacies in excessive quantities. Here, Chinese diners clutching luxury handbags order Cantonese preparations of Californian abalone, Australian lobster and Thai prawns. New China indeed.

In a remote and mountainous part of China's southwest Yunnan province on a cool autumn morning, three of Asia's top movie stars are waiting for the action to begin.

Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei have traveled with the rest of the 200-plus crew to this isolated spot near the border with Myanmar, where they have been camped out since late August.

"Wu Xia," from director Peter Chan, is a $20 million martial-arts drama slated for release next summer. The story, which takes place during the end of the Qing Dynasty, is about a repentant killer living a simple life in a secluded village and whose past catches up with him.