China Digital
The battle in Online Payment Channels Continues
The battle to control China’s online payment channels just got bigger. In latest reports JD.com has just made the move of ending its cooperation with Sina Weibo and Alipay, this is an even larger hit then recent moves involving blocking two Tencent products; Tenpay and WeChat. JD.com said in its announcement that the company's cooperation with Alibaba's payment subsidiary Alipay will soon expire and users will not be able to login or pay for orders on JD.com with Alipay accounts in the future. The company said they regret the inconvenience and advise the registration of new accounts on JD.com. As an alternative JD.com is offering a channel for users who previously used Alipay accounts for payment on the website. This option will involve users being able to sign up for a new JD account which mirror the Alipay accounts and information will be transferred.
Source: China Tech News
China Digital
China aims to expand luxury goods, property tax
China’s leaders are looking to reshape the economy to one driven more consumers than by exports, big industries and credit. The world’s second-largest economy is expected to expand a pilot property tax beyond Shanghai and Chongqing. According to the official Xinhua news agency, the Finance Minister Lou Jiwei announced that the nation would levy consumption tax on goods that results in exploitation of resources and environmental damage.
Source: CNBC
China Digital
Chinese Digital Video Viewers go Mobile
When it comes to watching digital videos, Chinese viewers prefer to spend their time in front of the PC. At the same time, mobile seems to quickly supplant some of that activity, according to a research from iResearch Consulting Group. In September 2012, mobile accounted for only 4.5% of total time spent with digital video in China and nine months later that share had almost doubled to 8.8% . A report released in March 2013 revealed that the time spent viewing videos on the PC reached 5.3 billion hours that month. However, that was down from the 5.4 billion hours spent viewing online video in October 2012. Experts suggest that mobile could account for this declaim since more and more users prefer watching short and long-form video content on their mobile.
Source: Tech In Asia