For the latest news on U.S.- and Hong Kong-traded Chinese stocks, visit our new Bamboo Works site.
Journalist China
Business news from China By Doug Young.
Doug Young, journalist, has lived and worked in China for 20 years, much of that as a journalist, writing about publicly listed Chinese companies.
He is based in Shanghai where, in addition to his role as editor of Young’s China Business Blog, he teaches financial journalism at Fudan University, one of China’s top journalism programs.
He contributes regularly to a wide range of publications in both China and the west, including Forbes, CNN, Seeking Alpha and Reuters, as well as Asia-based publications including the South China Morning Post, Global Times, Shanghai Daily and Shanghai Observer
The following is the 7th and final part in a multi-part series about the rise of WeChat, the popular mobile instant messaging service owned by Tencent.
By Lanie Nie
WeChat builds an ecosystem
While China might be behind the US in many key areas of Internet development, it is quite advanced in the use of smartphones as the primary device for accessing the Internet. Tech guru Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet Trends Report showed that China has more than 500 million mobile Internet users, accounting for 80 percent of its online population, the highest level worldwide. With the nation’s smartphone prices in freefall and high-speed 4G access expanding, it’s likely that a majority of Chinese people will be on the mobile Internet in the next 5 to 6 years. Read Full Post…
Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) hugely popular WeChat and QQ instant messaging platforms are once again hogging the headlines, reflecting the increasingly important role the 2 services are playing for the future development of the Internet giant. This time WeChat is in the news after coming under new government restrictions aimed at censoring some of its content. Meantime, QQ has formally launched an official shopping channel in partnership with e-commerce giant JD.com (Nasdaq: JD), laying down a big challenge for sector leader Alibaba. Read Full Post…
After a failed bid at buying the world’s largest aircraft leasing company last year, China appears to be gearing up for a second attempt to enter the lucrative space with plans to bid for European giant Avolon. In this instance, the report is coming from a major Chinese newspaper that says China Investment Corp is teaming up with Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC) in the bid, which could be worth some 12 billion euros ($16 billion). That would easily make it the largest global acquisition by a Chinese firm outside the resource sector, reflecting the country’s growing financial might as many European firms continue to struggle with after-effects of the continent’s debt crisis of several years ago. Read Full Post…
Update: Since originally writing this post, several reports have appeared saying Apple’s name wasn’t included on the latest government procurement list because it failed to submit the necessary paperwork.
I really didn’t want to write again about another major multinational getting bashed in China, but it seems hard to ignore the latest reports that gadget giant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has formally joined the list of companies being banned from selling to the government due to national security concerns. At this rate, Chinese government agencies won’t be able to buy technology products from any foreign companies soon, and will be forced to do all their buying from domestic firms. That’s somewhat ironic, since many of those domestic firms are far less experienced than big global names like Apple and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), and thus are far more likely to unknowingly design products with major security flaws. Read Full Post…
I recently wrote how smartphone price wars may be claiming one of their first major victims in ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063), and now we’re getting word that crosstown rival Huawei may also be getting crunched in the ongoing battle for supremacy at the low end of the market. The latest reports cite Huawei’s mobile device chief saying the company is formally ducking out of ultra low-end smartphones in its home China market, in what can only be seen as a major retreat for one of China’s biggest tech companies. Read Full Post…
I’m normally quite upbeat on leading online travel site Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP), but I really don’t understand the logic behind its new decision to sell 10 percent of itself to US peer Priceline (Nasdaq: PCLN). On the surface, the deal looks reasonable enough, pairing Ctrip’s strength in China with Priceline’s in the US and other western markets. But anyone familiar with Ctrip knows the company is fiercely independent and doesn’t work very well with other strategic partners. What’s more, this deal will put even more money into Ctrip’s already bulging cash pot, giving it more funds than it needs.
Mercedes under microscope for after-sales practices
It’s a new day, which means it’s time for yet another government investigation into foreign firms that are coming under increasing scrutiny for both their products and business practices. This time it’s luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz (Frankfurt DAIGn) that’s coming under the microscope for anti-competitive pricing in China. Word of this latest probe comes just a week after software giant Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) revealed it is being probed for monopolistic business practices. (previous post)
Other major western multinationals have been probed for similar anti-competitive behavior in the latest year-long campaign, and still others have been targeted over allegations of corruption. Yet another group has been blacklisted from selling to to government organizations over concerns their products could create national security risks. Read Full Post…
Top executives from software security maker Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) and struggling game operator The9 (Nasdaq: NCTY) were getting chummy in the blogosphere last week, filling the airwaves with chatter as they prepared to announce a new alliance at the country’s top gaming trade show in Shanghai. Meantime, executives from PC giant Lenovo (HKEx: 992) took time out from their usual tech and marketing chatter to make some low-key criticism against the government, including a microblog post in defense of the beleaguered McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) as it grapples with one of its worst-ever food safety scandals in China. Read Full Post…
Online real estate services empires that took years to build are suddenly coming unglued, with word that Shanghai property firms are joining a list of clients who have stopped giving their business to sector leader SouFun (NYSE: SFUN). I’ll be quite blunt and say that anyone who didn’t see this coming must be living in a cave, even though I was somewhat surprised that the stocks of SouFun and its peers quickly recovered from a sell-off after similar reports emerged last month and in June. We’ll have to wait and see if the stocks rebound again this time, though perhaps this latest news will finally make investors realize that SouFun and its peers could be looking at a prolonged downturn as China’s real estate market finally goes through a much needed correction. Read Full Post…
Media-savvy smartphone maker Xiaomi was in the headlines for the wrong reasons last week, facing a fine and embarrassing negative publicity after being exposed for inflating its sales figures in Taiwan. The news marked the latest in a steady string of accounting scandals and other financial misreporting that have plagued overseas-listed Chinese companies for the last 3 years, undermining their credibility and casting a negative shadow on China’s own stock markets. Read Full Post…
The following is Part 6 in a multi-part series about the rise of WeChat, the popular mobile instant messaging service owned by Tencent.
By Lanie Nie
WeChat builds up payment capabilities
WeChat has played a key role in Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) recent efforts to build a “federal republic” on the mobile Internet. That interpretation comes from Cheng Lingfeng, a China tech reporter and former Tencent employee, describing Tencent’s strategy of selling stakes to close partners who promote WeChat Payment, a new service that allows users to link their bank cards to their WeChat accounts to facilitate online transaction payments. Such linkage gives WeChat users easy access to selected paid add-on services like shopping, mobile top up and taxi booking. Read Full Post…
