China Tech News

China Development Bank and Tencent signed a strategic cooperation agreement on "Internet plus" for development of finance services.

The term "Internet plus" refers to projects and businesses that connect various traditional non-Internet sectors with advanced technologies.

The two parties will work together in various sectors, including "Internet plus" poverty alleviation, Internet finance innovation, credit financing, technology innovation enterprise cultivation, and information technology applications.
For "Internet plus" poverty alleviation, Tencent will us its advantages in cloud computing, big data, social networking, and mobile payment to continue exploration with China Development Bank. The two parties will jointly promote new types of student loans to make up the shortage of financial services on campuses.

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China's leading drone maker DJI has appointed Roger Luo, current operating vice president of DJI, as new president of the company, leading DJI's daily operations and international business expansion.

Luo joined DJI as operating vice president in September 2015 and he was responsible for procurement, production, and logistics of the company. Under his leadership, DJI's market demand satisfaction rate in the production sector was reportedly improved; the company's domestic and international logistics efficiency was enhanced; and its information and automation levels of procurement and production were increased.

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Xiaomi's first offline experience store in the northwestern region of China opened in Wangfujing Outlets, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia.

On the first day of the opening of this new store, it welcomed 12,000 customers and realized sales of CNY596,000.
This is the eighth store under the cooperation between Wangfujing Group and Xiaomi and it is also the first Xiaomi store that opens in Wangfujing Outlets.

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VIPKID, an online education company that matches Chinese students with North American teachers, announced in Beijing that the company has completed its series D round financing of USD200 million.

This investment round was led by Sequoia Capital China. Tencent participated as a strategic investor and former investors like Matrix Partners China, Yunfeng Capital, and ZhenFund continued to participate in this round.
VIPKID will use the new investment to further enhance its advantages in self-developed teaching materials, North American teacher growth, and product technology improvement. On the other hand, they will promote their Chinese-language platform business.

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Chinese B2C e-commerce group JD is reportedly negotiating with Thailand's leading retailer Central Group as it aims to establish an e-commerce joint venture with expected total investment of USD500 million.

This joint venture will help JD expand into other Asian overseas markets and better compete with Alibaba and Amazon.
At present, nearly all of JD's overseas investments are focused on Indonesia, including the investment in Indonesia's e-commerce platform Traveloka.

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Seven Chinese regulatory bodies issued initial coin offering rules that totally ban the practice by cryptocurrency and Bitcoin wannabes.

ICOs are often compared to initial public offerings. Wherein the latter refers to a private company hoping to raise funds via a public sale, an initial coin offering is an unregulated method of crowdfunding by using a cryptocurrency.

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Truly International Holdings Limited is using the courts to go after a subsidiary of embattled Chinese tech firm LeEco.
Truly states that due to LeEco's alleged violation of a related investment agreement, the company will sue Letv Zhixin and LeEco, and is asking the defendants to return its CNY240 million

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Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is doing recruitment in China as it seeks development in this marketplace.

The recruitment page lists at least 20 positions with working locations in Beijing, including engineering, marketing, and product managers. There are multiple positions that involve machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Li Jia, head of Google's machine learning and artificial intelligence R&D unit, previously revealed some of the recruited positions at a summit held in Wuzhen in May 2017.

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Chinese drone maker DJI is looking for security loopholes in their flight control software and programmers who find the loopholes could gain a bug bounty up to USD30,000, which is about CNY194,000.

A programmer recently found that DJI's mobile application can bypass the review of Apple and Google via a hot patch. Commenting on this, DJI's spokesperson Adam Lisberg said they have updated the application and removed the errant code. He also said that they are inspecting all code to check if there is anything else they are not aware of.

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Finland's department store Stockmann signed an agreement with ePassi, a mobile payment company in Finland, to formally introduce Alipay as a payment method in the department store.

Anna Salmi, chief customer officer of Stockmann Group, said that Alipay is not only a payment method, but also represents a method to attract Chinese tourists. This service will first available at Stockmann's flagship store in the center of Helsinki and gradually expanded to all Stockmann department stores across Finland. They may also expand it into their department stores in Baltic countries.

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