Hello and welcome to ClearTipsNews's China Roundup, a summary of recent events that are shaping the Chinese technological landscape and what they mean for people around the world. This week, we have updates to Alibaba's growing cloud computing unit, Apple's controversial decision to remove two podcast apps from its Chinese App Store, and more.
Chinese technology abroad
TikTok's besieged rivalZynn, a TikTok rival who had climbed the top of the download rankings a few weeks since its launch in May, was removed from Google Play this week for plagiarism. Developed by Kuaishou, the sworn enemy of TikTok's Chinese sister, Douyin, Zynn is another application made in China that has recently conquered the international market.
In a statement (in Chinese) this week, Kuaishou said the deletion was triggered by a complaint about a user-generated video that had stolen content from another platform. As Turner Novak, a venture capitalist, observed, much of the original content of Zynn appears to have been ripped from TikTok.
However, the main driver of the app's growth is its reward system; it basically pays users to use and promote its app, a strategy that has proven popular among rural and small town people in China. Nasdaq Qutoutiao-listed content aggregator used the same tactic to grow.
It remains to be seen whether this pay-per-use strategy is sustainable. Zynn is apparently making efforts to gain user loyalty in other ways, saying it is in talks with "celebrity-level" creators to enrich its content.
Alibaba seeks global influencers to sell moreInfluencers are in high demand these days. After proving the strategy of boosting e-commerce sales through direct promotion of influencers, Alibaba decided that it wanted to introduce the model to foreign markets. As such, he published a notice to recruit up to 100,000 content creators who would help the Chinese giant to promote the products sold on its international market, AliExpress.
Tibet data center to connect China to South AsiaMany may know that China has transformed one of its poorest provinces, Guizhou, into a hub of technology hosting many cloud services, including Apple China. Now China is transforming Tibet into another cloud computing center. A main project is a 645,000 square meter data facility that will facilitate the exchange of data between China and South Asia.
Chinese technology at home
Dingtalk as OSAt its annual summit this week, Alibaba Cloud reiterated his latest strategy to "integrate the cloud with Dingtalk (in Chinese)", his professional collaboration application similar to Slack.
The slogan suggests the strategic role that Alibaba wants Dingtalk to play: an operating system built on Alibaba Cloud, the third largest infrastructure in the world as a service behind Amazon and Microsoft. It's a relationship that echoes that between Microsoft 365 and Azure, as Alibaba Cloud chairman Zhang Jianfeng previously suggested in an interview (in Chinese).
Dingtalk, originally designed for corporate communication, has become an all-in-one platform with a myriad of third-party applications suitable for work, education and government services. For example, the Ministry of Education can easily interview students and parents via Dingtalk. The application now serves 15 million organizations and 300 million individual users.
In addition to integrating Dingtalk, Alibaba Cloud said it would hire up to 5,000 engineers this year to fuel growth in areas such as networks, databases and artificial intelligence. The recruitment came after Alibaba pledged in April to spend 200 billion yuan ($ 28 billion) over the next three years to build more data infrastructure amid increased demand for services like than videoconferencing and live broadcasting as businesses adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Apple bans podcast appsJust as podcasts are gaining ground in China, two foreign podcast apps that appeal to independent content creators have been banned from the Apple App Store. The move echoed Apple's crackdown on Chinese podcasts on its own podcast platform last year this time.
Investors' favorite app is backSpeaking of application removal, this week many venture capitalists and product managers in China are celebrating the return of Jike (即刻). The social media app, which has a loyal following in the Chinese tech circle, was removed from app stores nearly a year ago for unspecified reasons, but many have speculated that this was due to censorship.
The application is a kind of hybrid of Reddit and Twitter, allowing users to discover content and connect according to their interests and subjects. Many VCs and employees of Internet companies use it to exchange gossip and share shots. His death and his life are a reminder of the immense regulatory uncertainty hanging over tech companies operating in China.
Two of the largest Chinese companies listed in the United States float their shares in Hong Kong for secondary listings amid the tapered relationship between Beijing and Washington. NetEase, the second largest gaming company in the world after Tencent, jumped 6% of its offer price to HK $ 130 on the first trading day this week. JD.com, the Alibaba archive, would have evaluated its offer at HK $ 226 per share.
Chip company Eswin raised $ 283 millionEswin, a semiconductor company founded by the boss of Chinese display giant BOE Technology, has completed a major round of funding as the Chinese government encourages domestic chip production.