China's Digital Currency Tested Online

China Marketing Weekly

Join Tait and Lawrence as we take you through the top news this week that affects companies selling into China.
China’s digital currency works online.

The latest test of China’s digital currency started last week. This time around, the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) could be spent in both physical stores in Suzhou and on JD’s e-commerce platform.

Plus, it now works even if both the buyer and seller don’t have an active Internet connection.

How will the final version of the DCEP be for users? We don’t know yet, but we’re hearing that it’s going to be very user-friendly. - Read more (English)

Pinduoduo (and every other Chinese company) releases their own wallet.

Pinduoduo is the latest Chinese tech company to release its own payment solution to compete with Alipay or WeChat Pay.

Will it be successful? Probably not. Users are cool with one or two different payment solutions...maybe even three, but they certainly don’t want eight different ones on their phone. A quick poll of our team revealed that 12 out of 14 didn’t want another payment solution, and the other two said that they would be willing to try it. - Read more (English)

If you want to host in China, you need an ICP license.

We updated our guide to ICP licenses. Overall, the most common reason people get an ICP license is to help them host a website in China and improve its speed and reliability. However, it can be confusing to figure out how to get one, so we created a straightforward guide to help you and your colleagues. - Read more (English)

Douyu and Huya merger in question.

China’s two biggest game streaming platforms, DouYu and Huya, are both partially owned by Tencent. They planned to merge into one entity, but that’s no longer certain because of antitrust concerns.

The Chinese government has made it known that they’ll be taking antitrust issues seriously. They’ve already levied major fines against Alibaba and Tencent as well as issued draft guidelines for “anti-monopoly in the platform economy.”

This should help keep the industry competitive, so we’ll continue to see lots of innovative upstarts to help us all with our marketing efforts. - Read more (English)

Who is Ding Zhen?

Ding Zhen is one of China’s newest Internet stars. He randomly came to fame after a news crew tried to interview his brother. As it happened, his brother was gone, so they spoke to him instead, took a short video, and shared it online.

The video went viral because of his cute face and innocent looks. Some of China’s urban youth think Ding Zhen has an authentic rural lifestyle that is less stressful than the lives they’ve had. - Read more (English)