China ICT (Info Communications Technology) Industry, Infra, Commerce, Exports: News & Discussions

[ahojunk]

Number of Chinese Internet users surpasses 700 mln
2016-08-04 11:37:03 | CRIENGLISH.com | Web Editor: Guan Chao

Pie charts show 603 million Chinese netizens access the Internet for communications, followed by 524 million for searching information, 518 million for news feeds, 443 million for listening to music, and 440 for watching videos. [Charts: Xinhua]​

A new report shows that the number of Chinese web users had climbed to 710 million by the end of June this year, ranking the first in the world for nine consecutive years and 3.1% higher than the world average, people.cn reports.

The report on the country's Internet development was released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) on Wednesday, August 3, 2016.

More Chinese netizens tend to access the Internet through mobile devices. China has 656 million mobile network users, which accounts for 92.5% of the total web surfers and 2.4% higher than in 2015.

The report also indicates that more people manage their wealth through the Internet. By the end of June, netizens who shop online and use online payment services amounted to 448 million and 455 million, respectively. Well over 100 million people had purchased online financial products during the first half of the year.

2016 has also seen a sharp increase of webcast service users. Webcast services for personal use became popular in the first half of 2016. By the end of June, the number of webcast users already amounted to 325 million, accounting for 45.8% of the total number of netizens.

 

[Jlaw]

Hope nobody got to be listed in here

**

China launches website for bankruptcy cases
(Xinhua) 19:13, August 01, 2016

BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Information Website for National Bankrupt Enterprises Recombinational Cases went live Monday, according to the Supreme People's Court (SPC).

The new site provides services to investors, including debtor company information, investment requirement posting and communication channels with bankruptcy administrators.

Through the website, creditors, debtors, investors and other related parties can exercise their legal rights online, including filing cases, reporting claims, filing objections, attending creditors' meetings and voting.

The website will expedite bankruptcy proceedings and support legal procedures in bankruptcy cases, the SPC said.

Bankruptcy is not a sign of failure. People who are risk taker and willing to start a business should not be labeled as a failure should their business fail. In fact, bankrupty is just an opportunity for a new start.
In Canada, when one files for bankruptcy there are options that one can use. Most common is creditors will forgive most of the loans as high as 60% or more. So if one cannot pay back 100,000, they can reduce it to 40,000

 

[ahojunk]

This merger is facing a hiccup! Its competitors are crying foul.

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Experts say Didi-Uber merger may constitute a monopoly,call for government intervention
By Yuan Can (People's Daily Online) 14:05, August 05, 2016

Experts at a seminar on Aug. 3 said that the Chinese government should investigate the Didi-Uber merger, as many suspect that the deal may cause a monopoly in the future. Discussions began after Beijing-based Didi, the dominant ride-hailing service provider in China, said in a statement on Aug. 1 that it would buy Uber's China operation.

According to a report by Beijing Evening News on Aug. 2, Didi said that its market penetration rate is only 1 percent in Beijing, which will not cause a monopoly. However, experts attending the seminar argued that it should be made clear whether the market included taxis, buses and the metro.

The government should focus on Didi's relevant market to decide whether or not it will cause a monopoly in the future, rather than focusing only on its market share, said experts at the seminar, discussing whether the merger should be stopped by anti-trust authorities.

Speaking from a law perspective, Cui Fan, a senior advisor at Beijing Dacheng Law Office, said that the key factor in merger cases is not the relevant market but the business volume. Dong Zhongwei, a partner at another Beijing-based law office, said that the Ministry of Commerce should undertake an anti-trust investigation. If the company's market share after the merger is expected to be over 90 percent, authorities should stop the deal, Dong added.

According to Chinese law, all businesses with large-scale operations that could potentially monopolize the market must submit business declarations to the Ministry of Commerce for record, as well as submit to anti-trust investigations. Afterward, companies without clearance are not allowed to carry out mergers and acquisitions in China.

The Ministry of Transport released the country's first nationwide regulation on car-hailing services on July 28, finally offering the booming industry a legal status. The new regulation actually encouraged car-hailing services in China. The merger, meanwhile, may not be in the best interests of customers, leaving them with fewer choices for their car-hailing travel, said Cong Lixian, a law professor from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Cong hoped that the Ministry of Commerce Ministry could do something to help customers.

In the mean time, Fang Xingdong, a professor from Shantou University, said the government should not interfere in matters of the Internet, as "Internet should be a free space." Fang held the opinion that the merger may have a negative impact on global Internet competition. He said that after Uber sells its China operation to Didi, the two companies could partition the global car-hailing market. He worried that two business magnates might rise in the wake of the merger.

 

[ahojunk]

Beijing police launch operation against cyber crime
(Xinhua) 13:36, August 10, 2016

BEIJING, Aug. 10 -- Beijing police have launched a two-month crackdown on cyber crimes, according to authorities.

The operation is being carried out to restore online order and security, Beijing police said in a statement.

It will target cyber crime that damages political security, while also cracking down on online terrorism and other types of illegal information.

Police will pursue crimes related to pornography, gambling, guns, explosives and drugs.

The special operation also targets infringement of private information, telecommunications fraud, hacking, the spread of violence and terrorism, and damage to the social order.

Websites, online service providers and employees will also be subject to police inspection, it said.

 

[TaiShang]

Alibaba Cloud to build new headquarters in Singapore for global expansion
By Shi Jing (People's Daily Online) August 11, 2016

On Aug. 9 and 10, Alibaba Cloud held a cloud computing conference in Beijing. At the conference, Alibaba announced its plan to build an additional headquarters in Singapore to manage overseas business. The company already has a headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

Now, Alibaba will found a local group to follow various data security rules set by other countries across the world and establish an Internet Data Center (IDC) in Singapore. Together, the two headquarters will be in charge of all data on the Alibaba cloud.

“Data from all countries and the oversight of networks will be operated by the two hubs,” explained by Yu Sichen, vice president of Alibaba Group and general manager of Alibaba Cloud Global.

“Alibaba Cloud’s services need to meet the standards of different markets since most customers tend to adopt local data. EU, Southeast Asia, Japan, North America and even China—different countries apply different standards. Dual hubs can better manage these rules. ” explained Li Jin, director of R&D for Alibaba Cloud, in an interview with thepaper.cn.

As for the location of the new hub, Li explained that although the North American and European markets are relatively mature, the largest emerging market is Asia, and especially India. Alibaba Cloud hopes to reinforce its presence in emerging markets. Singapore is a place with strict rules for cloud computing and data management. Given this strict foundation, Li said, it will be easier to enter other countries.

Singapore may be just a beginning, with more hubs for Alibaba Cloud to come in the future. At present, Alibaba Cloud has Internet Data Centers in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the west and east coasts of the U.S. By the end of the year, Alibaba Cloud will launch new IDCs in Europe, Australia, the Middle East and Japan.

Hu Xiaoming, president of Alibaba Cloud, sees an opportunity to provide service for enterprises at home and abroad since so many overseas companies want to come to China, while many Chinese companies want to compete in international markets. In the next year, Alibaba Cloud plans to invite over 50 international software service providers to their platform, including SAP and SUSE, to diversify Alibaba Cloud’s software service. The company also plans to help over 100 Chinese service providers enter international markets.

 

[TaiShang]

**
HTC, Alibaba Cloud to work together on virtual reality
CNA
August 11, 2016, 12:11 am TWN

TAIPEI -- Taiwan-based smartphone brand HTC Corp. (宏達電), which has intensified its efforts to broaden its product portfolio, has teamed up with China's Alibaba Cloud in a strategic partnership to explore the booming virtual reality (VR) business.

Under the bilateral cooperation agreement, the two partners will leverage the advanced computing technology commanded by Alibaba Cloud to make a breakthrough in innovative solutions for the VR business. Alibaba Cloud is the cloud computing arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group (阿里巴巴集團).

HTC said that the two companies are expected to tackle bandwidth allocation, data transmission and data processing needs in a wide range of areas, such as VR video production and VR broadcasting.

In addition, HTC said, its alliance with Alibaba Cloud is expected to bring together developers in the VR industry to build a VR cloud ecosystem. HTC added that Alibaba Cloud will provide cloud services in HTC's VR Viveport app store.

Just on Saturday, HTC announced the launch of the Viveport for its VR headset HTC Vive to provide users with a wider range of content.

The HTC Vive is one of HTC's gambits to diversify away from its core smartphone market, which is saturated and intensely competitive, and create an additional revenue stream to turn around its business.

The VR headset, jointly developed by HTC and U.S. video game supplier Valve, was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress show in March 2015.

Released globally in April, it is equipped with tracked controllers that allow wearers to inspect objects from every angle and interact with their surroundings. HTC reportedly will unveil the next generation HTC Vive by the end of this year or in early 2017.

"We are excited to partner with Alibaba Cloud, as we believe it will be a landmark collaboration between the VR and cloud computing industries," HTC's China regional president of HTC Vive Alvin Wang Graylin said in a statement.

"By utilizing the cloud computing expertise and enabling a 500,000-strong developer community built on Alibaba Cloud, HTC Vive will be able to provide more reliable resources to VR content developers, while delivering smoother access and richer content to VR consumers on our Viveport content store in China," Wang said.

HTC has made a big push for the Vive in several major consumer markets in the world, including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Japan and its home market of Taiwan.

According to HTC, Alibaba Cloud has successfully helped a VR development team at Zhejiang University render a three-minute 360-degree 3D VR video in only three days. The video required a computing capacity of 100,000 processor cores, which was equivalent to non-stop processing by a 12-core high performance server for more
than 8,000 hours.

**

One China!

 

[ahojunk]

I wonder if this will impact those selling home cooked food from their house.

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Watchdog orders massive cleanup of unlicensed online restaurants
2016-08-11 10:58 | Ecns.cn | Editor: Mo Hong'e

(ECNS) -- The Beijing Food and Drug Administration has urged online food-delivery platforms to make aggressive efforts to clear out unlicensed restaurants, the Beijing News reported.

The newspaper disclosed that many illegal restaurants lacking necessary hygiene and safety approvals offer takeout services via online platforms such as Baidu Waimai and Meituan.

Following the report, the food and drug watchdog published information on 60 restaurants that failed to provide licenses, with 20 each on Meituan, Baidu Waimai and ele.me.

Those restaurants were asked to suspend services immediately, and by Oct. 1 all restaurants on the three food-delivery platforms must publish their licenses, according to the administration.

Tang Yunhua, spokesperson for the administration, said it will provide information on unlicensed restaurants to the media every week and strengthen supervision through cooperation and technical means.

 

[ahojunk]

These guys have so much money. I wonder how they spend it.

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19 Chinese among world's 100 richest tech tycoons
2016-08-12 13:46 | chinadaily.com.cn | Editor: Xu Shanshan

Forbes released its 2016 annual list of the 100 richest tech billionaires in the world on Wednesday. Worth a combined $132.7 billion, 19 tech tycoons from the Chinese mainland are on the list, one fewer than last year.

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, and Pony Ma, founder and CEO of Tencent Holdings Ltd, are ranked at 8th and 9th on the list, worth an estimated $25.8 billion and $22 billion respectively.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corp, remains the world's richest tech billionaire as well as the world's richest person, with an estimated fortune of $78 billion.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com Inc, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook Inc, are ranked second and third on the list.

Out of the world's 100 richest tycoons in tech, 51 are from the U.S., accounting for nearly two-thirds of the group's total wealth, while China has the second highest number of tech tycoons (19).

Ding Lei, founder and CEO of NetEase Inc, climbed from 26th to 17th, having an estimated net worth of $11.7 billion.

Lei Jun, CEO and founder of smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp, is ranked at 22th, worth $9.8 billion.

Liu Qiangdong, CEO of JD.com Inc, has an estimated fortune of $5.6 billion, ranked at 37th on the list.

Jia Yueting, chairman and founder of LeEco Holdings Ltd, is ranked at 45th, worth $4.7 billion.

==============================
Americans, Chinese dominate Forbes' 2016 list of 100 Richest In Tech
2016-08-12 13:33 | Xinhua | Editor: Gu Liping

Against the backdrop of weak global economic recovery, the world's tech industry seems unaffected, especially in the United States and Asia.

Forbes' newly released 2016 list of 100 Richest In Tech shows that 75 percent of the titans on the list are from the United States and China, with 51 and 24 tech founders and investors respectively.

The combined worth of the list is estimated at 892 billion U.S. dollars, representing a 6-percent growth on a year-on-year basis.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates continues to be the richest billionaire in tech, as well as the richest person in the world, with a fortune estimated at 78 billion dollars.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is listed as the second with 66.2 billion dollars, followed by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who climbed from fourth to third place with 54 billion dollars.

Jack Ma, the founder of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, retains his title as Asia's richest tech billionaire with 25.8 billion dollars.

With Ma Huateng, the founder and CEO of the internet media company Tencent, the two Chinese tycoons are the only two non-American citizens among the top 10 on the list.

There are altogether 24 tech entrepreneurs from China, including 19 from China's mainland, three from Hong Kong and two from Taiwan.

 

[ahojunk]

That's good news from Alibaba.

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Alibaba reports fastest growth since IPO
2016-08-12 08:57:54 Xinhua/CRIENGLISH.com Web Editor: Guo Yan

Founder and CEO of the internet company alibaba Group, Jack Ma delivers a speech at the opening of Cebit 2015 technology fair in Hanover, Germany, 15 March 2015. [Photo: Imagine China]

China's e-commerce giant Alibaba has announced revenue growth of 59 percent in the first fiscal quarter ending June, the fastest since its Initial Public Offering.

The report says the higher-than-expected increase in revenue gives testament to the overall acceleration of Alibaba's different businesses such as e-commerce, entertainment, as well as new start-ups.

Total revenue reached over 32 billion yuan or 4.8 billion U.S. dollars.

Cloud calculation, in particular, grew 156 percent in the first quarter thanks to a hike in the number of paying clients and an increasing demand for using the service.

Another milestone for the group is that mobile clients' gross merchandise volume surpassed that of non-mobile clients for the first time, a big win for the group's strategy tilting toward mobile clients.

 

[ahojunk]

AI to reserve business potential in Chinese market
2016-08-13 08:18 | chinadaily.com.cn | Editor: Mo Hong'e

A companion AI robot named Boyan dodo is on display during the China Computer Federation Global Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Summit (CCF-GAIR) held on August 12, 2016 in Shenzhen. (Liu Zheng/chinadaily.com.cn)


Artificial intelligence, or AI - recognized as an international "geeky" buzzword - once again drew the Chinese media's attention on Friday at the ongoing Global Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Summit held in Shenzhen.

Zhang Hongjiang, chief executive of Kingsoft, told China Daily the market' s potential and bonus in the country would continue in coming years, while more capital would be expected to flow into the AI sector, despite over-heated investments.

"Minorities' business failure or homogeneity competition hit on the market somehow reveal the technology's strong forward momentum," Zhang said.

"The innovation and leaping development reserve in China's mobile internet sector have generated attentions from both western media outlets and overseas investors, such as the latest tech magazine Wired's story about Xiaomi and New York Times' WeChat coverage."

According to Zhang, algorithms, big data and computing are the three major, but basic, technologies that can enable the implementation of AI.

Progress achieved in technology such as machine learning, which is associated with AI, reflects the rapid growth of the country's AI industry.

 

[TaiShang]

Peoples Daily counters social media threat through multimedia integration
By Fredrick P. W. Gaye (People's Daily Online) August 15, 2016


The traditional media all over the world today faces one threat – the new or social media that attempts to send it out of existence.

But while the world fears for the future of the sector, China’s largest print media, the People’s Daily (Ren Min Ri Bao) has been advancing and pushing the frontiers to remain not just in business but also relevant.

The People’s Daily Tower

At the People’s Daily Tower and campus, the resilience of the group has led to spawning various and diverse platforms that keep abreast with the trend of the times and still place the organization ahead of the challenge and advancements of media communication. The first was the online people.cn.

Two years and two months ago, the media organization took another step to stay on the beat by establishing the Peoples Daily mobile app in Chinese language and has yet another plan to soon commence the English language version of it.

Currently, the media group apart from the traditional newspaper, the flagship of the organization, has fanned out into 29 products or publications, including subsidiaries and also operates about 44 online platforms in nine international languages including English, French, Dutch (German), Russia, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese.

It also publishes in seven Chinese minority languages apart from the major medium, the Chinese Mandarin,

The advancement into online after its social media pages in the Twitter, Facebook has also been sustained over time with mega million followership.

At an interactive African journalists on internship at the organization had with Mr. Liang Changjie, Associate Editor of the mobile app medium, he explained that the app has been formidable success since its debut.

In the diversification pursuit, People Daily Online, the English platform (http://en.people.cn) has been on for almost 20 years, and one of the many efforts to integrate various technologies - traditional or new media to get the news to the largest possible audience.

People.cn, beyond the varied language reach is not only disseminating news but presents it in text, picture, video, Weibo and Apps round the clock. So far, it has created extensive readership consisting of users from countries and regions around the world.

It also has corporate blogging, corporate WeChat Public Accounts and People’s Daily Online Mobile. It has been giving attention to innovative technologies and their applications. As a result, it reports with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drone cameras, to record important footage for documentaries.

Additionally, on April of this year, People’s Daily Online (people.cn) established a virtual reality project, which explores the prospect of “virtual reality plus news.” And in May it conducted its first live broadcast that included virtual reality. This success confirms the prospects for the integration of virtual reality in future news delivery.

And there is a melting pot for the integration of all these resource platforms that is stylishly tagged Media Kitchen. With such appetizing name mentioned to you, you would be expecting a treat of Chinese meals, but that is wrong, the only meal prepared and served here is just news in the diverse forms.

Multimedia integration at the People’s Daily Online has been successful under a hardworking team led by media minds and experts.

One of the brains that push the innovations include Mr. Wang Yibiao, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Secretary General of People’s Daily, who has been stressing and stretching the use of modern technologies to bring peoples and institutions together. Speaking at a media forum hosted by People’s Daily in July, Wang, who is also the Chairman of People’s Daily Online said: “Media from around the globe should join hands and take full advantage of Internet technologies. In doing so it is possible to bring governments, companies and media closer together, so as to further assist the Belt and Road Initiative and serve the people in Belt and Road countries.”

People.cn was founded on Jan. 1, 1997, and it is a large-scale news platform built by People’s Daily, one of the top ten newspapers in the world.

As a media organization with international influence, People.cn owns a number of subsidiary companies and has established 31 local branches across China. It strives to promote globalization by setting up bureaus and studios in Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, London, Moscow, Johannesburg, Sydney, Paris, and Sweden, which significantly boost its influence abroad and its ability to disseminate internationally. The People’s Daily Facebook (@PeoplesDaily) and Twitter (@PDChina) accounts, both operated by People.cn, have exceeded 23 million and 1.88 million respectively.

The People's Daily app news room

The mobile app Associate Editor, Mr. Liang said that technology allows for information to get to many people as fast as possible. So far, Liang said readership on the mobile apps has grown up to 137 million because of the real-time and interactive dissemination of information, news and entertainment in about two years of its existence.

The success of such media integration, Liang said, is based on the creativity of his department in producing appealing information and graphics, especially of interest to the younger generation that constitutes the highest percent of the platform readership. The innovation, largely mobile applications, has attracted many people who use the platform for advertising; which has boosted revenue generation by the department, which he put at about 100 million RMB.

According to him, about 300 journalists contribute to the platform while it gets news and information from other credible sources.

As the new media is outweighing traditional media, Liang pointed out that traditional platforms are still important and have their audience. “Yes, the traditional media is shrinking and will even shrink more in ten years, but will not be completely forgotten as feared,” he assured.

People.cn went public at the Shanghai Stock Exchange (code: 603000) on April 27, 2012, becoming the first news website in China listed on the A share market.

Gaye is the News Editor of the In Profile Daily Newspaper in Liberia, a fellow at the China Africa Press Center (CAPC) and an intern at People’s Daily Online.(fgaye.inprofile@gmail.com)

 

[JSCh]

Tuesday, August 16, 2016, 09:30
PBoC plans clearinghouse for online transactions
By Wang Yanfei and Jiang Xueqing
Goal is to prevent fraud, increase transparency and guarantee funds

China's central bank is building a clearinghouse for online transactions to tame online finance risks and better regulate the expanding industry.

The People's Bank of China has approved preliminary plans for the establishment of the platform and the management plan submitted by the Payment and Clearing Association of China, the nation's regulatory body for the industry, the central bank said.

The platform is expected to be launched early next year, said Cheng Shigang, a senior official with the payment and settlement department of the central bank.

The clearinghouse for online payments would reduce settlement risks by disconnecting the direct clearing business made between third-party payment firms and banks, and by regulating a guarantee fund that can be used to cover losses, the central bank said.

All third-party online payment providers will be under regulation of the clearinghouse, according to the central bank, including Alipay, the largest mobile payments provider of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, and foreign payment providers, if they intend to step into the Chinese online payment sector.

The move comes after the central bank issued a regulatory guideline in July for internet finance, including online payment services, peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunded equity finance.

Officials and analysts said it is a timely and necessary step, taken at the time when the online payment industry, while expanding, is not mature and faces rising risks.

IRsearch Consulting Group, a Beijing-based research firm, estimated that the size of third-party online payments in 2015 reached 11.8 trillion yuan (US$1.8 trillion) in 2015, up by nearly 70 percent compared with the previous year.

In the meantime, about 326,000 new payment viruses emerged and more than 25 million users were affected in China, almost equivalent to the population of Australia, the group said.

Zhao Ying, a senior official with the central bank's Chengdu branch, said that the move would help improve information transparency and security.

"A unified platform would do a better job and will verify the identity of clients," she said, citing concerns about rising risks of fraud and money laundering made by online transactions.

Echoing her statement, Zhao Yao, a research fellow of Hengfeng Bank Co Ltd, a joint-equity commercial bank based in Shandong province, said that such a platform would help develop a standardized payment market and restore market order.

"Currently, the use of money deposited in the third-party payment institutions lacks standardization and transparency. How the money flows remains unknown to commercial banks and regulators, thus leading to risks of embezzlement and capital chain ruptures.

"Establishing a centralized depository system will fundamentally prevent payment institutions from misappropriating the money and using it for loans, investment or wealth management," said Zhao who has been doing research on this subject since 2012.

 

[TaiShang]

Cyber security expert: Chinese Internet highly vulnerable, yet slow to respond
By Jiang Jie , August 17, 2016

(File photo)


China has so far demonstrated poor awareness of its Internet vulnerabilities, a cyber security expert said on Aug. 16.

The warning came from Yan Hanbing, a senior engineer and deputy director of the National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center, at a Tuesday forum on the sidelines of the 2016 China Internet Security Conference in Beijing. The conference was organized by IT company Qihoo 360, the Internet Society of China and the Cyber Security Association of China.

Citing data from China's National Vulnerability Database (CNVD), a government-backed Internet security monitoring platform, Yan said that over 200,000 vulnerabilities in general software or individual cases were found between 2009 and 2016. That number saw an especially steep rise between 2009 and 2014.

Yan added that non-governmental security monitoring platforms have been especially active in recent years, as the top three monitoring platforms were not associated with the government.

In April 2015, Qihoo 360’s monitoring platform, butian.360.cn, discovered that tens of millions of Chinese residents registered in the national social security system were at risk of personal information leaks due to system vulnerability, Global Times reported.

Meanwhile, a report published by a security center affiliated with Qihoo 360 showed that 43.9 percent of 2.3 million monitored websites were found to have vulnerabilities, and 12.3 percent had high-risk vulnerabilities as of November 2015, according to Global Times.

“It should be noted that the rising numbers do not indicate a less safe cyberspace, but rather demonstrate that China is now paying more attention to cyber security, dedicating more effort and investment to detecting vulnerabilities,” Yan noted.

However, many experts believe that the response to this large-scale detection of vulnerabilities has been inadequate. According to Yan, many Chinese Internet users and operators are slow to take action to fix the detected problems. Specifically, some 40 percent of government websites’ high-risk vulnerabilities were left unprotected even one month after their detection.

 

[ahojunk]

Tencent overtakes Alibaba as China's biggest tech company
18 August 2016

Tencent has overtaken its rival Alibaba to become China's most valuable tech firm after strong results.

The operator of the WeChat messaging app is worth $249bn compared with $246bn for Alibaba.

Tencent shares jumped by over 6% to a record high in Hong Kong after reporting strong quarterly earnings on Wednesday.

The internet giant said profit rose by 47% to 10.9bn yuan ($1.6bn; £1.2bn) in the three months to June.

Revenues surged due to growth in its online gaming business and advertising.

Out of China's three internet giants, the online gaming and social media company Tencent is now the biggest, but still least known in the West.

Tencent has not attracted the same global attention as its rivals: Alibaba, with charismatic entrepreneur Jack Ma at the helm, and Baidu, the local equivalent of Google.

"Revenues jumped, platforms are booming and it runs the Twitter and Facebook of China," an IG analyst said. "Investors are hoping that, like Facebook, they can turn active users into revenues."

 

[ahojunk]

Alipay to roll out across Europe for Chinese tourists
2016-08-19 19:30:54 CRIENGLISH.com Web Editor: Meng Xue

A file photo shows the logo of Alipay. [Photo: sxdaily.com.cn]

Chinese tourists in Europe will soon be able to use the Alipay payment app to make purchases.

The Paypal-style system is being made available to Chinese travelers thanks to a deal signed between Alipay and the French-based global leader in seamless payments, Ingenico Group.

The agreement allows Alipay to deepen its mobile-payment push into Europe.

Ingenico says the new partnership would allow Alipay to be embedded into Ingenico's in-store payment gateway.

A QR code can be shown on the user's device which the merchant can scan. [File Photo: mydigit.cn]

The Alipay system will recognize where its Chinese users are in Europe and send notifications about where they can spend their money. QR codes or barcodes will be shown on the users' devices which the merchant can scan, just as in China.

As one of China's biggest payment services, Alipay is massively popular among Chinese consumers. It is used to pay for items in-store and for goods and services online, such taxis, food delivery, and also in restaurants.

Currently, Alipay has over 450 million active users. Its parent company Alibaba is hoping that they will continue to use the app abroad allowing it to tap into the spending power of an increasing number of Chinese tourists traveling overseas.