9 Must-Read Tech Stories in China This Week

Tching prayed on the mountain and

wrote MAKE IT NEW

on his bath tub

Day by day make it new

cut underbrush

pile the logs

keep it growing.

— Ezra Pound, in Canto LIII

1. WeChat Now Has 50 Million Users Outside of China

That 50 million figure is from a registered total WeChat user-base that will soon exceed 400 million.

2. Mobile Commerce Worth $4.29 Billion in Q1 in China, But One Company Dominates

Moving onto the subject of e-commerce, we found some interesting new statistics that show how China’s top e-stores are performing among smartphone-toting online shoppers.

3. This Report Shows That Chinese Startups Need to Get the Hell Out of Beijing

In this opinion piece we argue that if a startup wants to build up a happy workforce at a reasonable price, then entrepreneurs seriously need to avoid the capital city. Like the plague.

4. Chinese City Bans Taxi Finder Smartphone Apps, Threatens to Punish Drivers Who Use Them

Quite a few Chinese startups are making location-based taxi finder apps, but they were dealt a major blow this week when one massive city banned them outright. As if it’s not tough enough to find a taxi already!

5. Line App is Primed and Ready to Censor Politically Sensitive Chinese Words

This week, one eagle-eyed Chinese hacker and tinkerer poked around inside Japan-made Line social messaging app and found strings of code and a whole database of politically sensitive words that show the app is ready to censor Chinese users. That prompted my colleague Willis to ask if Line is right to do so in China.

6. Who Owns Your WeChat Posts?

Speaking of the dubious behavior of social messaging apps, Chinese netizens are concerned about a clause in the WeChat ‘Open Platform’ (public/brand accounts) user agreement. It got everyone thinking who really owns the images and videos that are posted via the app.

7. Qihoo Works With Alibaba to Launch a Product Search Engine

It’s not often that Chinese web giants work together (in this case it’s Qihoo and Alibaba), but it happened at the beginning of the week with this quite significant launch.

8. Why Alibaba’s Future Looks Bright

Alibaba’s charismatic founder Jack Ma is no longer CEO, but we have a few reasons to believe that the massive e-commerce platform will not crumble in the hands of a new generation of execs.