Hi folks, we are back with our weekly edition of China’s Digital Digest, wherein we bring you weekly updates on China’s digital space. The report takes a quick glance at China’s complex and rapidly evolving social media landscape by providing updates on the latest happenings across the social media industry. Here are the major highlights of the report.
1. Chinese Officials Consider Elon Musk Takeover of TikTok US
Chinese government officials have reportedly been exploring the possibility of Elon Musk taking control of TikTok in the U.S., as a means to keep the app available to American users, if the government’s forced sell-off bill is upheld by the Supreme Court, as expected, this week.

Reportedly, Elon may take control of TikTok as an alternative to the app being banned in the U.S. TikTok quickly denied the speculation, and dismissed the report as “pure fiction.” But further reporting has supported the concept, while also noting that neither TikTok itself nor Elon Musk may have any involvement in a potential deal at this stage, with Chinese government officials apparently floating the idea as a means to keep the app in the U.S.
2. TikTok Launches Updated Video Editor App
TikTok has launched an updated Video Editor platform, which is now part of its Symphony creative tool set, to enable more editing options and functions within a single management dashboard.

TikTok’s Video Editor offers advanced editing tools, as well as access to newer creative features, such as digital avatars, narration with auto-captions, one-click translations with voiceovers and AI-generated soundtracks. The updated Video Editor UI now makes it easier to access and use these various functions, while also incorporating new guidance on how to create better clips, based on what’s already working in the app.
3. TikTok Shop Rival Whatnot Raises Funds at US$5 Billion Valuation
Whatnot, a live streaming shopping platform that competes with TikTok Shop, raised US$265 million at a valuation of US$4.97 billion in a funding round led by Greycroft Partners, DST Global and Avra.

The start-up, which was founded in 2019, has emerged as an alternative to TikTok’s shopping features. Last year, more than US$3 billion worth of goods were sold on Whatnot, including sneakers, collectibles, vinyl records and handbags. Whatnot, based in Los Angeles, has thousands of sellers across eight countries including the US, Canada, France and Germany. Over 175,000 hours of live-streams are hosted on the platform each week, according to the company.
4. Shein Lawyer Evades Questions On China Cotton At UK Hearing
A lawyer for Shein summoned to a British parliamentary hearing evaded questions on whether the fast-fashion giant sells products containing cotton from China, angering lawmakers seeking answers on the retailer’s labour practices and allegations of forced labour in its supply chains.

Executives from Shein and its rival Temu were grilled on their labour rights compliance and how they source their products at parliament’s business and trade committee. The hearing came amid reports that Shein, which was founded in China but is now based in Singapore, is preparing for a £50 billion (US$62 billion) listing on the London Stock Exchange in the first quarter of this year.
5. Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Lingma AI Programmer Is Fully Online
Alibaba Cloud has officially announced that the Tongyi Lingma AI programmer is fully launched, supporting VS Code and JetBrains IDEs at the same time. It covers both front-end and back-end development, claiming to achieve “full conversation collaboration to complete complex coding tasks from 0 to 1.

The official statement mentioned that, taking the example of developing a front-end page with user login, data management functions, and beautification from 0 to 1, in the past pure manual development required collaboration between front-end and back-end engineers, which would take at least half a day. Now using Tongyi Lingma AI programmer, a programmer can complete the entire development process in just 10 minutes.
6. Apple Sets up A New Company in Shanghai to Promote the Landing of AI Smartphones in China
Apple has established a new company in China called Apple Technology Development (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 35 million US dollars.

According to public information, the business scope of this company includes software development, big data services, data processing services, and storage support services.
As early as September 2017, Apple had established Apple Technology Service (Guizhou) Co., Ltd. in Guizhou, China and invested $1 billion to build a main data center. The establishment of Apple’s new company coincides with Apple actively introducing artificial intelligence (AI) services into the Chinese market for iPhone sales.
However, this plan is still awaiting regulatory approval, and it is uncertain whether Apple Intelligence can be implemented in China. It is reported that Apple is negotiating with Chinese tech companies such as Tencent and ByteDance to explore how to integrate the models of these two major companies into the iPhone system to meet the needs of Chinese users.
7. US Trade Office Removes Tencent’s WeChat from Counterfeit Sellers List
Tencent Holdings’ super-app WeChat has been removed from a list of “notorious” sellers of counterfeit goods by the US trade office, days after the defence department designated the tech giant as a “Chinese military company”.

WeChat is not listed in the 2024 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy published by the US Trade Representative’s office (USTR). The Chinese social media app’s e-commerce ecosystem was added to the list two years ago. WeChat was among six online Chinese platforms and nine bricks-and-mortar sellers added to the list in 2022. At the time, the USTR accused the Tencent app of becoming an increasingly convenient conduit for buying imitation products through its “seamless” links to third party e-commerce sites selling fake goods.
8. AI Assistant DeepSeek Launches Its Official App
Chinese startup DeepSeek Inc. has launched its official app called DeepSeek app, which will be providing users free access to interact with the world’s leading AI models.

The app combines two core functions of deep thinking and online search, supporting users in completing tasks such as conversations, language translation, creative writing, programming, problem-solving, document interpretation, travel planning and more. It is equivalent to various functions found on web pages. Importantly, the app is completely free and has been praised by users as one of the best free alternatives to ChatGPT. Currently, the app only supports iOS version while an Android version is highly anticipated.
Wrapping Up
The vast and diverse nature of the Chinese Social Media space makes it incredibly challenging to keep a tab on the rapid developments taking place. However, China’s Digital Digest brings you all the latest updates from there to keep you abreast of all the evolving trends.
To delve deeper into the findings of our latest report, click here.
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