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 Said to Cut Hundreds of Jobs Globally

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-05-22/amid-tech-industry-layoffs-tiktok-plans-to-cut-staff

TikTok is reportedly to cut hundreds of jobs in its operations and marketing teams, as part of a wider restructuring drive by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance.

The layoffs, which were announced to staff internally last week, are to affect an undisclosed proportion of the roughly 1,000 jobs worldwide in the two teams, according to multiple reports. They are expected to reach into the hundreds of job cuts, with the global user operations team reportedly to be dismantled as part of the changes. While ByteDance’s entertainment empire has expanded from news app Jinri Toutiao and short video platforms TikTok and Chinese sibling Douyin to virtual reality unit Pico, video gaming, and online education, the company has conducted multiple rounds of lay-offs over the years amid regulatory and business uncertainties.

2. TikTok Curbs State-Backed Media Amid Foreign Influence Concerns

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/5/24/tiktok-curbs-state-affiliated-media-amid-foreign-influence-fears

TikTok has said that it was putting restrictions on state-backed media to counter acts of foreign influence on the platform during an important election year in multiple countries.

The move comes after the United States handed TikTok an ultimatum to divest from its Chinese owners or face a potential ban in the US market, based on concerns the app could be used to influence Americans. Under TikTok’s new policy, state-affiliated media attempting to reach communities outside their home country on “current global events and affairs” will be barred from appearing on the platform’s personalized “For You” feed. Furthermore, if these accounts advertise on TikTok, they will not be allowed to do so “outside of the country with which they are primarily affiliated”, the company stated.

3. Alibaba Taps David Beckham As Ambassador In Global Ecommerce Push

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/27/alibabas-global-arm-signs-david-beckham-as-international-e-commerce-brand-ambassador.html

Alibaba Group Holding’s global shopping platform AliExpress has signed up English football star David Beckham as its global brand ambassador, as the Chinese e-commerce giant strengthened efforts to boost its international business amid intensifying competition with PDD Holdings’ Temu.

Under the one-year partnership announced by AliExpress, Beckham will be featured in a series of promotional campaigns on television, internet, social media, and traditional media, starting with TV commercials during the European Football Championship, or Euro 2024, which kicks off on June 14. AliExpress is a sponsor of this year’s event. The move comes after Alibaba’s rival Temu, a budget shopping platform that has been gaining popularity in the international market, splashed millions of dollars on commercials during the past two Super Bowl games, the annual championship of the US National Football League that is one of the most expensive nights to place ads.

4. Alibaba Touts 618 Shopping Festival Sales, a Sign of Brighter Outlook

https://www.nytimesnewstoday.com/alibaba-touts-618-shopping-festival-sales-a-sign-of-brighter-outlook/

Alibaba Group Holding has released encouraging early sales data from its midyear 618 promotions – China’s biggest shopping season after Singles’ Day, and a bellwether of consumer sentiment in the world’s second-largest economy.

Four hours after Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall shopping platforms launched their sales event, 59 brands each saw their gross merchandise value (GMV) – the value of goods sold – surpass 100 million yuan (US$13.8 million), while 376 products saw GMV exceed 10 million yuan, Alibaba’s domestic e-commerce unit said. Apple, which is offering a fresh round of steep discounts for its iPhone 15 models in mainland China, sold more than 1.5 billion yuan worth of products on the Alibaba platforms an hour after the event began, outcompeting its Chinese rivals, according to Taobao and Tmall.

5. Rihanna’s First Official Douyin Livestream for Fenty Beauty Garners Massive Attention

https://jingdaily.com/posts/rihanna-s-queen-of-shandong-viral-moment-fenty-beauty-s-savvy-approach-to-china

On the evening of 21 May, Barbadian singer Rihanna debuted on an official Douyin (China’s TikTok) livestream for her brand Fenty Beauty. She also appeared on Douyin’s livestream hosted by two other beauty brand influencers.

During the livestream, Rihanna enthusiastically promoted Fenty Beauty products, invited her co-hosts to try on her makeup, and showcased ‘Rihanna’ written in Chinese calligraphy. The Weibo hashtag #Rihanna is in livestreaming room to sell goods# garnered 66.5 million views. Fenty Beauty began in June 2013, when Rihanna was already established as a music mogul. With the corresponding influence, she took the initiative to develop a brand and registered the surname Fenty as a trademark for various products. Fenty Beauty is one of them.

6. Pinduoduo’s Market Value Surpasses Alibaba Again

https://pandaily.com/pinduoduos-market-value-surpasses-alibaba-again-chairman-chen-lei-welcomes-healthy-competition-from-rivals/

On May 22, Pinduoduo Group released its financial report for the first quarter of 2024, ending March 31.

The report shows that Pinduoduo achieved revenues of 86.8 billion yuan in the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 131%, and the net profit attributable to Pinduoduo‘s ordinary shareholders was 27.978 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 246%. Previously, the market’s revenue expectation for Pinduoduo for this quarter was 76.86 billion yuan. After the release of the financial report, Pinduoduo‘s pre-market share price in the U.S. rose by more than 13% to $158.46 per share. With the release of the financial report, Pinduoduo‘s market value once again surpassed Alibaba.

.

7. Baidu CEO Robin Li Calls for Increased Pace of AI Development at VivaTech

https://kr-asia.com/baidu-ceo-robin-li-urges-faster-ai-development-at-paris-tech-event

On May 22, Baidu‘s Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO, Robin Li, appeared at VivaTech, a major European tech event in Paris. He engaged in an insightful chat with Maurice Lévy, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Publicis Groupe.

During their chat, Li discussed the current state and future of AI. He expressed concern that AI technology isn’t advancing quickly enough, despite the impressive progress made in recent years. Li also shared his views on the timeline for achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He believes it’s more than a decade away, contrary to those who think it’s just a few years off.

Li is a strong advocate for an application-driven approach to AI. He believes this strategy can speed the transition from the internet to the AI age. He also noted that in China, the emphasis is on developing super apps or killer AI native apps for the AI age. One such example is Baidu‘s ERNIE Bot, a conversational AI bot launched in March 2023, which now boasts 200 million users.

8. Baidu Announces Two Main Large Models Will Be Available for Free

https://www.business-standard.com/technology/tech-news/chinese-tech-giants-cut-prices-of-language-models-used-to-power-ai-chatbots-124052200492_1.html

Baidu AI Cloud announced that its two main models ENIRE Speed and ENIRE Lite of the Baidu ENIRE large model will be completely free, effective immediately.

According to the previous pricing, ERNIE Lite charges 0.003 yuan per thousand tokens for input and 0.006 yuan per thousand tokens for output. The price of ERNIE Speed is 0.004 yuan per thousand tokens for input and 0.008 yuan per thousand tokens for output. On the same day, Alibaba Cloud also announced that the API input price of its main model Qwen-Long has been reduced from 0.02 yuan per thousand tokens to 0.0005 yuan per thousand tokens, a direct decrease of 97%.

9. Moonshot AI’s New Valuation Is $3 billion, With Tencent Joining in

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hot-chinese-ai-start-moonshot-093000048.html

The financing of Moonshot AI, a large-scale company, is still ongoing, and the latest valuation has reached 3 billion US dollars.

Informed sources revealed that new entrants include Tencent, Gaorong Ventures, and other institutions. This also means that Chinese large-scale startup companies have entered the 20 billion RMB club. The start of a new financing round signifies the completion of the previous round. In mid-February this year, Moonshot AI initiated a new round of over one billion US dollars in funding, which can be considered a milestone in the financing history of large-scale model startup companies.

At that time, Moonshot AI’s valuation had reached 2.5 billion US dollars. It was later understood that this financing round initially concluded with 800 million US dollars from investors Alibaba and Capital Today. However, this does not include additional investments from existing shareholders or institutions whose investment processes were not completed due to the Chinese New Year holiday.

10. TikTok Launches Management Platform for Creators

https://musically.com/2024/05/28/tiktok-launches-a-new-tiktok-studio-tool-for-its-creators/

TikTok has launched a new dashboard where creators will be able to manage all aspects of their TikTok presence, including video uploads, editing, performance analytics, and more.

Called TikTok Studio, the new platform is an updated version of its Creator Center platform, which enables creators to manage their TikTok presence on desktop. The new Studio app includes all of the key TikTok creation and management tools, providing streamlined access to TikTok’s various functions in one place. All of the tools available in the new platform have been around for a while, they’re now just easier to get to in one place.

11. TikTok Updates Disclosures Around State-Based Influence Efforts

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-says-disrupted-15-influence-operations-year-one-china-rcna153831

TikTok has released an updated transparency report to address concerns about state-based influence operations, particularly those linked to the Chinese Government.

The new report provides detailed case-by-case breakdowns of detected influence groups, including the number of profiles, cumulative followers, and the intent of each group. According to the report, TikTok has disrupted 15 influence operations and removed 3,001 accounts in the first four months of 2024. Most networks aimed to influence political discourse, including elections in Indonesia and the UK. The report includes disclosures on influence operations from China, potentially indicating TikTok's independence from the CCP.

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.