China Digital Digest Weekly: Exploring the Chinese Digital Landscape

Hi folks, we are back with our weekly edition of China’s Digital Digest, wherein we bring you weekly updates on China’s digital space. The report takes a quick glance at China’s complex and rapidly evolving social media landscape by providing updates on the latest happenings across the social media industry. Here are the major highlights of the report.

1. TikTok Launches New Process To Promote Charity Groups in Your Content

https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2024/12/tiktoks-latest-donation-feature-helps.html

TikTok has launched an updated “Donation” feature, which will make it easier for people to promote, and to contribute to causes directly within the app.

TikTok’s updated Donation feature now lists various causes within the creation flow, which users will then enable them to add to their content via donation stickers, in order to highlight their chosen non-profit. The process will enable creators to choose a relevant cause, then create a personalized fundraiser, which they can then promote within their content.

TikTok has launched similar in the past, with its COVID-19 donation stickers, for example, enabling users to promote directly related causes, and assist impacted communities.

2. Alibaba to Sponsor China’s Lunar New Year Gala to Reach Thrifty Consumers

https://daoinsights.com/news/alibaba-wins-cny-gala-deal-as-jack-ma-makes-surprise-appearance-at-hq/

Alibaba Group Holding has won the sponsorship for the 2025 Spring Festival Gala show, China’s most-watched event of the year, as the e-commerce giant reaches out to consumers to regain growth momentum.

The Hangzhou-based company signed a deal with China Media Group (CMG), which owns state broadcaster China Central Television, to be the “exclusive e-commerce interactive platform” for the show, CMG announced in a statement. The partnership comes seven years after the tech giant last scored a similar partnership through its popular shopping platform Taobao. Neither CMG nor Alibaba disclosed the value of the deal, but the gala sponsorship is often seen as a barometer of financial power and political standing, with blessings from Beijing.

Several Chinese Big Tech firms jostled to sponsor the most-watched television broadcast in the world. The deal came weeks after Alibaba merged its domestic and overseas e-commerce operations to seek synergy.

3. Temu, Shein Halt Vietnam Operations Pending Business Registration

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/temu-told-suspend-vietnam-operations-state-media-reports-2024-12-05/

Popular budget-shopping platforms Temu and Shein have suspended operations in Vietnam, as they await approval from authorities to restart their local services.

The country’s Ministry of Industry and Trade ordered Temu, owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, to halt its business after the platform failed to complete the required business registration process by the November 30 deadline. Temu said on Thursday it was working with authorities to register its e-commerce services and it had submitted all required documents.

Meanwhile, Shein has published a notice on its local website saying that its shopping platform is temporarily unavailable in Vietnam, as it works with the Ministry of Industry and Trade to register its e-commerce services.

4. ByteDance’s AI Assistant Doubao Introduces Image Recognition Feature

https://www.aibase.com/news/13722

ByteDance‘s AI assistant Doubao has now launched an image recognition feature, with added photo and camera buttons on the Doubao app and Koze PC. After uploading a picture, it can recognize the content of the image.

The “Image Understanding” feature of Doubao can recognize the elements and basic features contained in images. Users can also inquire about the location of a certain scenic spot or the origin of a character from a film or TV show through this feature. In addition, in November not long ago, Doubao launched a video generation beta function, supporting one-click creation of videos from images with text, dynamic camera movements and consistent multiple camera angles selection based on style proportions.

5. WeChat Official Account Grayscale Testing AI-Generated Image Function

https://pandaily.com/wechat-official-account-grayscale-testing-ai-generated-image-function/

The WeChat official account backend recently underwent an update, introducing a new feature called "AI Image Generation," aimed at simplifying the process of image selection and insertion for content creators during article editing.

This new feature allows creators to not only select images from the image library or upload from their local device but also to quickly generate images that match the article content using AI technology. When users utilize the AI Image Generation feature, they will be directed to a dedicated AI image generation page. On this page, users simply need to input a brief text description outlining the style and theme they want the images to reflect.

The system will then intelligently generate four images that match the user's description within a matter of seconds. Users can adjust the style and aspect ratio of these images and further optimize them until they achieve a satisfactory result before inserting the images into their articles.

Wrapping Up

The vast and diverse nature of the Chinese Social Media space makes it incredibly challenging to keep a tab on the rapid developments taking place. However, China’s Digital Digest brings you all the latest updates from there to keep you abreast of all the evolving trends.

To delve deeper into the findings of our latest report, click here.