Shaun Rein, Founder and Managing Director of the China Market Research Group gives us his take on the recent (Nov. 25, 2007) announcement that IAC/Interactivecorp's is putting $100 million into China's tech and gaming sector. 

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About Shaun Rein

An impressive list of media references, Business Week, Forbes, the International Herald Tribune, underlines Mr. Rein's unchallenged position as opinion leader on the Chinese consumer market research. He talks and writes about the mistakes foreign companies make, the Chinese middle class, the Chinese youth culture. Mr. Rein knows how to make his case both when he faces a small group of executives or when he has to address a hall of two thousand.

In a very short time he has developed his China research company into a leading consultancy on China.

Before founding CMR, he was the Chief of Research for venture capital firm Inter-Asia Venture Management. He also was the Managing Director, Country Head China for e-learning software company WebCT where he also ran the company's Taiwan and South Korean operations. He also served as the Assistant Director of the Centre for East Asian Research at McGill University.

He has been widely published, written about and quoted in newspapers worldwide including BusinessWeek, the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Dow Jones' MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, TheStreet.com, Investor's Business Daily, the Wall Street Journal, and Barron's.

Shaun won an award from Harvard University for "Excellence in Teaching" and is a frequent guest lecturer at universities worldwide, including the University of Pennsylvania, Fudan University and CEIBS (China-Europe International Business School). He speaks at major business conferences such as Lnoppen's China Luxury Insights, Marcus Evans' China Retail, IBC-Asia's Private Equity, GIC's China Consumer Market Strategy, Profit and Loss Magazine's FOREX Asia, and Hong Kong Cyberport's VC Technology Conference.

Over his decade in China, he has assisted hundreds of Fortune 500 and SMEs determine how best to take advantage of the growing opportunities in China.

Shaun currently serves on JP Morgan's "Hands-on China" expert group as well as ad: Tech China's Board of Advisors. He is Senior Advisor to VC firm China Metropolitan Ventures and is on the Board of Advisors of Pacem Production's Building China Modern series of PBS documentaries. He previously served as the Secretary General of the Asia Society's China Board, Form Director for St. Paul's School, and sat on the Advisory Committee for Shareholder Responsibility to the Harvard Corporation.

He earned his graduate degree from Harvard University focused on China's economy and received a BA Honours from McGill University.