Chinese food-delivery giant Meituan to debut in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh as international expansion quickens

The company’s foray into Riyadh will pit Meituan against local rivals including Jahez International Co, Delivery Hero’s Talabat and HungerStation and Uber Technologies-backed Careem. The move comes as Saudi Arabia, already the region’s biggest economy, devises plans to invest trillions of dollars to become a tourism and commercial hub. The skyline of Riyadh, the capital … Read more

TikTok owner ByteDance earns praise from Chinese social media for rejecting US sell-or-ban ultimatum

Beijing-based ByteDance late on Thursday rejected a report by US digital publication The Information, which said that it was “exploring scenarios” to sell a majority stake in TikTok’s US operations to firms outside the technology industry and without the algorithm that powers the platform. In a statement posted on its Jinri Toutiao news platform, ByteDance … Read more

Chinese Students Are Attending ‘TikTok School’ To Learn How To Sell Clothes Abroad

At an e-commerce school, Chinese students practice selling clothes to overseas TikTok users. To understand their target audience, they record themselves on camera wearing hijabs and abaya gowns over casual clothing. It’s the final day of a two-week course on selling products abroad via the short video app TikTok. Despite being blocked in China, this … Read more

People are only just realising what the olive oil bottle tab is for

People are only just realising what the little plastic tab on olive oil bottles is for – and it’s been labelled a “game changer” in the kitchen. The olive oil bottle can often cause a fuss for home cooks, with many often finding themselves pouring too much oil into their pan while cooking dinner. Moreover, … Read more

TikTok ban: ByteDance would rather shut app down than sell, insiders say

A shutdown would have limited impact on ByteDance’s business while the company would not have to give up its core algorithm, said the sources, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media. ByteDance declined to comment. It said late on Thursday in a statement posted on Toutiao, a … Read more

US sell-or-ban law against TikTok stirs unease in China as Beijing, social media giant ByteDance stay mum on next moves

An article published by the Beijing Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s Beijing Municipal Committee, said the measure against TikTok is tantamount to a “robbery” that would “completely destroy American national credibility, which is already flawed”. United States President Joe Biden speaks after signing into law the foreign aid bill and a … Read more

Wall Street and tech billionaires race to buy banned TikTok

A handful of American finance and tech tycoons are gearing up for multi-billion bids to buy TikTok after President Joe Biden signed an act which will force its Chinese owners to sell the app. The Wall Street and Silicon Valley figures are led by Steven Mnuchin, the former treasury secretary who has openly said he … Read more

The Dada Era of Internet Memes

Last December, a factory in the Chinese province of Hebei called Donghua Jinlong posted a marketing video to TikTok showing aerial clips of its campus set to a jaunty tune. A caption proudly declared, in English, “Since 1979, Glycine comes from here.” Glycine is a niche industrial product, used as an additive in certain packaged … Read more