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 would 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. Chinese Super App WeChat gets more profitable in its competition with TikTok

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-super-app-wechat-gets-093000334.html

China’s super app WeChat continues to get bigger and more profitable as its TikTok-like short video function generates strong advertising revenue and e-commerce sales, according to the latest data released by the app’s owner Tencent Holdings.

According to Tencent, monthly active users of WeChat and Weixin – the terms the company uses to refer to accounts outside and inside mainland China, respectively – reached 1.327 billion by the end of June, up from 1.319 billion three months earlier. Tencent did not provide a breakdown of domestic and overseas users, although it is widely estimated that the vast majority of users are in China.

In the second quarter, time spent on WeChat Channels – the name of the short video service that competes with ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok – almost doubled year on year, aided by double-digit growth in daily active users, Tencent president Martin Lau Chi-ping, said in a conference call with analysts.

2. Chinese Hi-Tech Hub Suzhou Targets Live-Streaming E-Commerce Development

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-hi-tech-manufacturing-hub-093000961.html

Suzhou, a hi-tech manufacturing hub in eastern China, has unveiled a series of measures, including financial subsidies, to spur live-streaming e-commerce activity in the city, following the end of a regulatory crackdown on the country’s major internet companies.

The municipal government of Suzhou, the most populous city in eastern Jiangsu province, has drawn up 17 measures that include providing up to 1 million yuan (US$137,000) in cash subsidies to individual live streamers who generate more than 50 million yuan in annual sales and pay their taxes in the city. Local authorities will also offer Chinese multichannel networks – organizations that directly work with brands to get endorsement from so-called key opinion leaders or influencers in social media – rewards of up to 1.2 million yuan each when they secure exclusive contracts with popular live streamers who generate annual sales of more than 100 million yuan.

3. New York City Bans TikTok From Work Devices to ‘keep Data Safe’

https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/16/nyc-tiktok-ban/

All New York City agencies and employees have 30 days to remove TikTok from government-owned devices.

The Big Apple joined several US states and federal agencies to ban one of America’s most popular social media platforms over concerns of cyber threats, data intrusion and Chinese government influence. TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance and boasts more than 150 million users in the US, according to the company.

4. Tencent Posts 11 Percent Rise In Second-Quarter Revenue Amid China’s Patchy Recovery

https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-tencent-posts-weak-revenue-growth-2023-08-16/

Tencent Holdings, operator of China’s biggest social media app and the world’s largest gaming business by revenue, reported an 11 percent increase in revenue for the second quarter of 2023, missing expectations as it looks to find new growth engines amid domestic economic uncertainties.

Total quarterly revenue for the Hong Kong-listed internet giant reached 149.2 billion yuan (US$20.5 billion), up from 134 billion yuan a year ago. That was worse than the consensus estimate of 152 billion yuan of analysts polled by Bloomberg. Tencent posted a profit of 26.2 billion yuan for the three months ended June 30, up 41 percent from the same period a year ago, missing the Bloomberg consensus estimate of 32.3 billion yuan.

5. Kenya to Investigate TikTok Over Mental Health, Violence Concerns

https://dig.watch/updates/kenyan-lawmakers-to-investigate-tiktok-amid-calls-for-ban-over-inappropriate-content

Kenyan lawmakers will investigate the use of TikTok in the East African nation after they received a petition demanding the social media platform be banned for being “inappropriate.”

TikTok is unsuitable because it allegedly promotes “violence, explicit sexual content, hate speech, vulgar language and offensive behaviour, which is a serious threat to the cultural and religious values of Kenya,” Speaker Moses Wetang’ula said in a letter to lawmakers, citing petitioner Bob Ndolo, a private citizen.

Kenya’s speaker asked the house’s Public Petitions Committee to look into the matter. The group usually has 60 days to report back, and the issue is then debated or thrown out depending on its recommendations.

6. Chinese Social Media Filled With Anti-Black Racist Content, Says Watchdog

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/16/chinese-social-media-filled-with-anti-black-racist-content-says-watchdog

Chinese social media is littered with racist videos, particularly content that mocks black people or portrays them through offensive racial stereotypes, research by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.

The human rights watchdog analysed hundreds of videos posted on Chinese social media since 2021 and found that major platforms, including Bilibili, Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu, “do not routinely address racist content”.

One type of video that is popular on Chinese social media portrays people in African countries as primitive or impoverished, with Chinese people – often the content creators – being shown as wealthy saviors.

7. Alibaba Renews Hiring As Big Tech Gears Up For Growth

https://www.business-standard.com/companies/news/alibaba-ecommerce-arm-to-hire-2-000-graduates-as-big-tech-crackdown-eases-123081900082_1.html

Alibaba Group Holding’s domestic e-commerce unit Taobao and Tmall is hiring for more than 2,000 entry-level positions, in a new sign that Big Tech firms in China are gearing up for growth after years of downsizing.

The unit, one of six major business groups under Alibaba, is looking for fresh graduates to fill roles ranging from engineering to algorithms and data in places including its hometown Hangzhou, as well as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Guangzhou, the company said in a statement.

The recruitment effort forms part of an overall plan by Alibaba to add 15,000 employees – including 3,000 fresh graduates – across the company this year. The tech giant’s return to active hiring follows noticeable cuts in its payroll. Alibaba had 228,675 employees as of the end of June, down 6,541 from the end of March, according to its latest earnings report.

8. ByteDance Launches Its First Large-Scale AI Conversation Product “Dou Bao”

https://pandaily.com/bytedance-launches-its-first-large-scale-ai-conversation-product-dou-bao/

The first AI conversational app “Dou Bao” and its web version have recently been launched, with the download channel for Android already open. The “Dou Bao” is the internal codename “Grace” AI project by ByteDance, and currently has functions such as text-based conversation and image-based conversation.

The launch of Dou Bao signifies that ByteDance finally has a conversational large-scale model product similar to Baidu‘s ERNIE Bot and Alibaba‘s Tongyi Qianwen. ByteDance has also entered the competition for the billion-dollar AI Generated Content (AIGC) market.

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 the August report, click here.