Join Tait & Lawrence to hear about the trends affecting marketers in China this week.

Sum-up:

China (mostly) open for domestic Spring Festival travel

Spring Festival is coming up, so it’s time for people to decide if they’ll visit family or not. 

The official holiday date is Feb 11–17, but there’s usually a lot of travel before and after that as well. The 40-day travel rush of 2018 and 2019’s Spring Festivals saw almost 3 billion trips being made.

This year,  travel will mostly go on as normal, but with some restrictions. Those who travel back to their hometowns can expect extra delays or tests, but they will otherwise be allowed to travel as usual. - Source (English)

Vaccines are ready for everyone.

We keep hearing that the vaccine will be soon available to  everyone, and now it seems to be very close to the truth. Vaccines are being produced at a rapid rate. Those who get vaccinated will have it associated with their ID cards, which will presumably make it easier for them to travel or work in the future. - Source (Chinese)

Twenty-two-year-old Pinduoduo employee dies from overwork

A young woman working for Pinduoduo died at a tragic young age, and it’s suspected that China's infamous 996 work culture was to blame. It has reactivated the online discussion about 996, which means working 9 a.m.–9 p.m., six days per week.

It’s not entirely clear that she did indeed die from being overworked. However, her schedule meant she was working basically all day every day. - Source (English)

Jack Ma’s disappearance. 

The founder of Alibaba is China’s second-richest person. After the cancellation of Ant Financial’s IPO, people have seen nothing of him. In fact, he hasn’t made a public appearance since October, which is very out-of-character for him.

It has the public wondering what’s going on. - Source (English)

Trump blocking transactions on Alipay and WeChat Pay.

Trump is still trying to be tough on Chinese apps. On Jan 5 he signed an order to block transactions on eight apps, including Alipay and WeChat. The ban should take effect on February 19, right after Spring Festival.

But will it actually be put into effect? We guess not. He’s been trying to block Chinese apps for some time now, but he’s yet to be successful. - Source (English)

Weibo used heavily during pandemic

During the pandemic and heavy lockdown, various media outlets worked on Weibo 24-hours a day, releasing a total of 2.28 million epidemic-related posts, which received 300 billion views. They also broadcasted more than 10,000 livestreams of epidemic news conferences in various regions. The number of live viewers for these exceeded 3 billion.

We published our updated guide to Weibo marketing today. It’s full of tips for starting advertising and organic marketing efforts on Weibo. - Read it here


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