Alibaba Group Holding has won the sponsorship for the 2025 Spring Festival Gala show, China’s most-watched event of the year, as the e-commerce giant reaches out to consumers to regain growth momentum. The Hangzhou-based company signed a deal with China Media Group (CMG), which owns state broadcaster China Central Television, to be the “exclusive e-commerce … Read more
Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group Holding, on Friday visited the company’s campus in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province, in a show of support for the e-commerce empire he created a quarter of a century ago, according to employees. Ma’s visit was his first known trip back to to his hometown since March 2023, … Read more
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, whose China president is under investigation, was previously investigated for medical insurance fraud cases involving cancer medication sales, according to new Chinese media reports. The news comes after the British-Swedish company announced on its official website last week that its China chief Leon Wang was cooperating “with an ongoing investigation”, and its … Read more
1. North Korean defectors push for Ukraine deployment to wage psychological warfare A group of nearly 200 North Korean defectors living in South Korea is pushing to deploy to Ukraine so they can launch a psychological warfare campaign against their former comrades, now reportedly assembling in Russia. 2. ‘A lot of unknowns’: China-born scientists face … Read more
Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay, one of China’s dominant digital payment platforms, saw a jump in transactions during the “golden week” national holiday, as consumer spending shows signs of recovery after Beijing rolled out its biggest stimulus package since the pandemic. Known as Weixin Pay on the mainland, the digital wallet recorded a 20 per cent … Read more
New data released by Meituan, China’s largest on-demand services provider, showed that its food delivery crews working in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen earn more on average than the local population. According to the report, Meituan delivery people who work in major cities and meet the company’s minimum work time requirement took … Read more
Advisers to the Shanghai government have called for restrictions on international performers to be relaxed, while likening superstars like Taylor Swift to “walking GDP”. China’s financial hub has hosted many large-scale, commercial performances in recent years, but “it lacks stars that are weighty, internationally influential or truly appealing to young people”, the counsellors’ office of … Read more
The ministry vows to actively work with the global basic research innovation community by taking part in major international projects, such as Digital Earth, research on negative ocean emissions technology, deep-sea habitats and seamless forecasts for the ocean and climate. It said China would actively take part in important international science programmes – such as … Read more
The US Justice Department won’t pursue allegations that ByteDance’s TikTok misled US consumers about their data security in a forthcoming suit accusing the company of children’s privacy violations, according to people familiar with the decision. The department is preparing to file a consumer protection lawsuit against TikTok later this year on behalf of the US … Read more
According to the study, published online on May 27 by the Journal of Contemporary China, trust in the central government fell sharply in September 2022 – after Shanghai’s two-month lockdown – compared to March that year, weeks before the city shut down. The sudden decrease in support – from 8.6 in March to 7.8, even … Read more
