Kaiser Kuo is an American-born writer, rock musician, technology watcher and cultural commentator. In June 2010 he became director international communication at China’s largest search engine, Baidu.com. Baidu was the first Chinese company to become part of the NASDAQ-100 index.
In 2007, he joined the leading advertising agency Ogilvy as their director of digital strategy, but left in early 2009 to devote more time to writing and to his advisory work for several Chinese Internet startups. Before joining Ogilvy, had worked extensively in China’s booming Internet and mobile sectors. As an opinion leader in his industry, Mr. Kuo worked at the famous magazine Red Herring as their Beijing bureau chief, but his activities have not been limited to that leading publication. He is a frequent guest on CCTV-9 program Dialogue, where he has debated issues ranging from Internet vigilantism to Feng-shui. Mr. Kuo has been the anchor columnist for the popular English-language monthly magazine that’s Beijing and its successor, The Beijinger, for almost eight years, contributing a satire column called “Ich Bin Ein Beijinger.”
In his almost two decades in China he worked has a technology and business writer for such publications as Time, China Economic Review, Asia Inc., and the South China Morning Post. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and holds an MA in East Asian Studies from the University of Arizona. Kaiser was cofounder and lead guitarist of one of China’s most successful rock bands, Tang Dynasty. He continues to be active in Beijing’s rock scene as lead guitarist of Chunqiu.
He is currently working on a new book on Sino-American relations at a people-to-people level.
