Today we offer the world transparency in finding information and knowledge in matters that deal with sourcing, importing and exporting from and to China.  By creating a place online to search and discover information and knowledge that has been carefully picked, aggregated, and indexed while being translated where necessary – we offer the world a level of transparency that has never been easily available to the general public in a variety of languages. For those who are in the business of international trade and source (import) from or export to China, the availability of information and knowledge on matters that impact their business on the Internet has been and continues to be a pain point.  Searches for China Customs changes or new tariffs or regional laws to even how local prices are reported by China’s Ministry of Commerce are hard to find if not impossible if you don’t know Chinese.  In many cases the major search engines brought those in search of Chinese information to the former SourceJuice site – a blog that was created to help readers and those doing business get insights and facts - like “new 2009 changes to China’s value added tax tables showing the discounts”. What we found was that if you didn’t speak Chinese or read Chinese for that matter or were very aware of resources around the Internet – it was difficult to impossible to be aware of information that can impact your business when doing trade to or with China.  This information ranges from international law changes to China Customs policy changes to even how a product recall can impact your purchasing decision and especially your overall costs of doing business.  And all this information wasn’t just from China but all over the world and very hard to find.  Additionally, there are many sites that claim to provide you China trade information or advice on how to source, import, and export or deal with suppliers in China.  However, most of these sites are difficult to trust and seem to be put up by companies trying to sell their own products and or services with little to no investigation of the material they presented to the public was factual or not.  So what did we do? We searched and took the last 8 months to analyze what was available and what was not depending on your language.  For example – what was available to a Chinese reading person when searching for China trade related knowledge and information versus a person who can only read in English or French or Portuguese?  What we found was daunting – there were mountains of information available but not in English or other languages.  Now we know that many Chinese government publications are reprinted in English or other languages like German but the vast majority of publications are not.  This ratio is sometimes as high as 1000 to 1.  Meaning for 1000 publications in Chinese there may be 1 that gets republished in English or German, etc. This is the gap and we at SourceJuice knew that we could never human translate all this vast material (even new publications that come out daily are in the hundreds of articles) so we decided the next best option was to provide machine translated versions easily searchable with a highly accurate and relevant search engine. As we have learned doing business in China – it is far better to know a little Chinese than nothing.  So we firmly believe – it is far better to have something searchable and legible that can be found and reviewed for further exploration (where necessary) than relying on the possibility that your Chinese partner, staff, or some other company, agency, or news company providing this.  Having something is far better than nothing.  Having transparency to information and knowledge in your own language (more languages coming in the near future) is so important to executing informed and intelligent business. That was our goal. Our technologies are first class – try search and yes the translation on many of the posts may be far from perfect but we will get there and in due time we will take leading and business critical articles and have them human translated for your information needs – just give us some time since we just launched this new site this week!   And don’t forget – find an article, click on the URL to go that page and then press the “Show Original Source” button on the right when you get to a translated article and you will see the original source (in Chinese for those that are in Chinese) and you can take that straight to your company or partner or 3rd party as original copy and to show them that you are indeed informed! For those who were avid followers of insights from our former blog – we will continue to offer insights from our editors but with far more frequency starting next month with targeted insights that cover new laws, trends, and regional updates from the major cities in China along with import and export volumes and price changes.  Information you can use.  SourceJuice editor posts will continue to provide information that can help your business – especially for those companies that are small and medium sized companies with limited reach and or resources in China.   Look for changes in the coming months as we roll out our next phase of evolution. By the way - so what does Trusted Sources™ mean? We want to provide you a place on the Internet where you search and find valuable information and knowledge from reliable and trustworthy sources (like government agencies, insightful and respected business blogs, and experts in global and or China trade).  This is what we mean by Trusted Sources™ - reliable sources of information and knowledge you can trust.  We want to be the platform for information you can rely on as well as the place where you can be part of a larger community of those doing business in International Trade.  As you will see in the coming weeks and months we will be expanding this center of trust by launching new features like Trade Forums where you can ask questions from other business owners and the larger community we have at SourceJuice which mostly is made up of buyers (those sourcing and importing from China) from large to medium companies.  Additionally, other new services and features that are coming soon will be substantially different than what the market currently offers in terms of actionable information.  Give us some time and we will show you why SourceJuice.com will be your preferred destination for reliable information and knowledge as well as services that you can trust.  International Trade with transparency – that is our mission. So please – browse and learn.  With 800,000 pages and growing of content from trusted sources we begin the year 2009 as your search engine and knowledge center of choice for China trade information and knowledge. Special Thanks and Credits Below, we would like to extend a special thank you to these members of the SourceJuice.com engineering team for making the dream a reality.  Each member was critical to making today possible and for building a platform for many exciting things to come. Andy Li – Platform Architect and Project Manager Eric Wei – Open Source and Search Engine Master Henry Zhong – Mister Spider Man William Chen – Artist and Design Guru We would like to thank some of the members from our partners at ThinkRace (TR) for their support.  A special thank you to Rick Tang (Managing Director at TR), Allen Zhang and Nick Huang. And finally, the most important team members – We thank our readers for inspiring us as well as providing the feedback and suggestions to make today possible!  Our readers are people in the industry of global trade with a focus on China (mostly buyers working for some of the largest companies in the world to those who source from China for their own online or retail business).  As of this writing we have about 121,053 readers with less than 25% coming from the USA and the rest from 21 other countries including China, Brazil, Spain, France, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, Japan, and many parts of Eastern Europe.  An international community doing international business and now part of a new world of transparency so that they can make smarter, more efficient, and more informed decisions with knowledge and intelligence from their trusted source of information - SourceJuice.com    We thank you all for your continued support and hope to hear from you for any suggestions and other – please use our Contact Us page. We, the Principals, Editors, and Team of SourceJuice.com look forward to growing with you to provide meaningful and actionable value with transparency. Paul Chong, Dylan Blankenship & Team SJ - Matt Karp, Mike Tucci, David Anderson, Andy Li, Eric Wei, Henry Zhong William Chen & Special Contributing Editor – Marshall Taplits *plus a special thanks to our significant others – Jenny Chong and Amanda Blankenship The new SourceJuice.com above for 2009. Above, a glimpse into our past from 2007 – 2008. Thank you to all the readers who supported us from the beginning! SourceJuice.com | Search and Discover China Trade Knowledge from Trusted Sources™ Copyright © 2007 - 2009 SourceJuice.com & SourceJuice All Rights Reserved.