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 to Expand E-Commerce in More Countries as US Business Remains in Limbo
TikTok is expanding its e-commerce operations to Italy, Germany and France, with plans to also launch in Japan and Brazil this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
TikTok Shop, the in-app retailing feature on the popular short video platform, had started approaching Chinese sellers to open stores for the new markets. Merchants targeting Italy could set up their stores by the end of this month, while it remained uncertain when exactly TikTok Shop operations in Germany and France would commence this year, one of the people said. The platform’s “yellow shopping cart” icon is expected to be activated in late March or early April in Italy.
2. ByteDance’s Doubao Team Releases Open-Source VideoWorld Model for Video-Based AI Learning
ByteDance’s Doubao large AI model team, in collaboration with Beijing Jiaotong University and the University of Science and Technology of China, unveiled VideoWorld, a video generation model that has now been open-sourced.
Unlike mainstream multimodal models such as Sora, DALL-E, and Midjourney, VideoWorld learns from visual information, relying solely on video data to develop reasoning, planning, and decision-making capabilities. To train VideoWorld, the team constructed two experimental environments: video-based Go gameplay and robotic video simulation. The model learns from an offline dataset of video demonstrations, adopting a naive autoregressive framework that combines a VQ-VAE encoder-decoder and an autoregressive Transformer architecture.
3. Chinese City Shenzhen Introduced “AI Civil Servants”
The Chinese city of Shenzhen has introduced AI digital employees powered by DeepSeek technology. These intelligent entities not only possess the general capabilities of DeepSeek but have also been customized to align with the specific business processes of various departments and units. The first batch of these AI employees has been designed to address the needs of 240 distinct business scenarios.
In Shenzhen's Futian District, 70 "AI civil servants" have been deployed, covering the entire spectrum of government services. This marks the official integration of these 70 AI civil servants into the city's operations. By conducting precise analyses across 240 government service terminals, they will establish a closed-loop ecosystem encompassing "demand identification, training, scenario application, and iterative improvement."
4. National-Level Application WeChat, Baidu Access DeepSeek
A range of Chinese companies is already diving head first into Chinese AI giant DeepSeek’s latest offering, with Baidu and Tencent confirming they would both incorporate the company’s latest AI model.
Baidu has said that it would be implementing DeepSeek as well as its own Ernie Bot into its search function, promising “expert-level” responses and a “more diversified search experience”. Tencent, a rival of Baidu, also plans to implement a DeepSeek R1-powered AI search function in its WeChat service. It is also considering trialling the implementation of DeepSeek across its other offerings and is already testing its own AI reasoning model to make responses sound “more human”.
5. Baidu’s Ernie Bot to be Free Starting from 1st April
Baidu has announced that its Ernie Bot will be completely free starting from midnight on April 1st. This move will undoubtedly further enhance the user coverage and market influence of Ernie Bot.
Simultaneously, Ernie Bot has also launched a deep search function, which will also be freely available to all users starting from April 1st. With its stronger thinking and planning capabilities and external tool usage, the deep search function can provide users with expert-level content responses and effectively handle multi-scenario tasks.
6. Shein Faces Investor Pressure to Slash Valuation to US$30 Billion
Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein is under pressure to cut its valuation to about US$30 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, having in the past been valued at more than three times that amount.
Shein shareholders are suggesting that an adjustment is needed to help get its potential initial public offering (IPO) in the UK over the line, the people said, asking not to be identified because the talks are private. Shein has had a bumpy ride in its attempt to list, with questions raised over its supply-chain operations and labour practices amid mounting uncertainty over global trade relations and political tension. The company diverted its IPO application to London last year after its goal of listing in the US faltered.
7. Jack Ma Tours Alibaba’s Freshippo Supermarket In Central China After Xianyu Visit
Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma visited a Freshippo supermarket in central Hunan province, days after he appeared at the Chinese e-commerce giant’s Hangzhou campus in a show of support for the business empire he created more than two decades ago.
This comes just two days after Ma showed up at the Hangzhou offices of Xianyu, the online flea market established in 2014 by Alibaba. He was seen smiling and waving at employees. The retired entrepreneur in December also visited Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province, where he gave a rare public speech on the 20th anniversary of Ant Group’s fintech business, saying he had faith in the “next 20 years” of the company and expected “more miracles”.
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.
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