News on the Internet & Tech Industry in China

Troubled relaunch
Why Didi faced a backlash from female users
Nov 15, 2019 (WiC 474)

A survey in the China Youth Daily found that over 50% of women had experienced some kind of inappropriate touching while using buses and trains. The problem led to experiments with women-only buses and train carriages. And last week Didi ...

Full speed ahead
Huawei the big winner as China celebrates its commercial launch of 5G
Nov 8, 2019 (WiC 473)

Almost 20 years ago, when European governments were selling 3G licences for tens of billions of dollars, China was just beginning to make its way in 2G telecommunications. Its government only gave out a trio of 3G licences a decade later, after ...

Head east, and then go west?
AliExpress targets overseas sales, with big advances into Eastern Europe
Nov 8, 2019 (WiC 473)

This Saturday marks the 30th anniversary since the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. That night, thousands of jubilant East Germans poured into West Berlin in search of the consumer freedoms they had only seen on their TVs. The influx ...

Game not on
More arrests in fresh setback for Kingnet
Nov 8, 2019 (WiC 473)

The online game developer Kingnet has always been a bit creative. For example, in 2015 when there was a freeze on new IPOs, it started trading on the Shenzhen stock exchange by exchanging shares with a shoe company already listed on the bourse ...

Following the fanju
What an annual dinner in Wuzhen says about China’s tech tycoons
Nov 1, 2019 (WiC 472)

In China a business dinner is referred to as a fanju (饭局). The first character fan (饭) means rice and is straight forward enough. But the second, ju (局), has more complex cultural connotations. Breaking down the ...

Very educational
Bytedance seeks Indian image overhaul
Nov 1, 2019 (WiC 472)

The Chinese video sharing app TikTok has been variously accused of broadcasting pornography; spreading propaganda from the terror group ISIS; and also of stealing personal data from its users, many of whom are minors. So it’s not surprising ...

Musical chairs
Tencent sets record with Jay Chou’s single but threat from Alibaba lurks
Sep 27, 2019 (WiC 468)

In the 1990s, the folk song My Old Classmate was so popular in China that it was often compared with the Beatles classic Yesterday. With lyrics detailing a young man’s recollections of a girl he shared a desk with at high ...

First impressions
Megvii is the first of China’s facial recognition firms to file for IPO
Sep 6, 2019 (WiC 465)

The social media sensation in China over the last week was a face-swapping app called Zao. Similar services have been available in the past but Zao has been a breakaway success, winning fans from across the country. Developed by ...

Double or quits?
China’s most famous bet gets renewed by Gree’s Dong and Xiaomi’s Lei
Sep 6, 2019 (WiC 465)

When senior executives are selling down stakes in their firm, it’s often a signal for stockmarket investors to consider their exit strategy: particularly if the person in question is one of the company’s founders. And sure enough, Xiaomi ...

Not in the driving seat
Why top car-hailing service Didi isn’t welcome in Shanghai anymore
Aug 30, 2019 (WiC 464)

Didi Chuxing had a dreadful 2018, after two high-profile murders of passengers by its drivers. Since then China’s leading ride-hailing service has been engulfed in a regulatory storm. At one point in late 2018 inspectors from more than 10 ...

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