Weekly Business Roundup June 30

News from Tencent, Amazon, Haidilao, Miniso, Temu, Pinduoduo, Novo Nordisk, Alibaba, Baidu, Kuaishou,....

Monday, June 24

• Tencent-backed WeBank has been approved by the National Administration of Financial Regulation to establish a wholly-owned technology firm in Hong Kong, with a total investment of USD 150 million.

• Shares of Haidilao International Holding dropped after the Chinese hotpot chain’s CEO resigned to take charge of its overseas business.

• Miniso reported that its flagship store on Champs Elysées, Paris, achieved a record revenue of CNY 576,800 (USD 79,431) on its opening day, June 22. The Chinese discount retail chain’s GMV in Europe rose 80% in the first quarter compared to the previous year.

Tuesday, June 25

• Indonesia’s trade officials said Temu’s business model conflicts with local regulations requiring a distributor. The Indonesian government will monitor Temu’s potential entry due to concerns about its impact on local small- and medium-sized merchants.

• Pinduoduo plans to introduce new tools to maintain its low-price advantage, following the automatic price adjustment feature launched before the 618 shopping event. Competitors are increasingly offering lower prices for the same items. The new tools aim to reduce merchants’ operating thresholds and decision-making costs to achieve lower commodity prices efficiently. Zhao Jiazhen, co-CEO of Pinduoduo’s parent company PDD, has recently refocused some attention on Pinduoduo.

• Danish insulin and weight loss drug manufacturer Novo Nordisk has received regulatory approval to sell the world’s first weekly insulin icodec injection in China.

Wednesday, June 26

• The National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) of China granted licenses to 104 domestic games for June, including Tencent’s action RPG Rock Kingdom and Lingxi (Alibaba) Interactive Entertainment’s female-romance RPG Ashes of the Kingdom.

• Alibaba’s DingTalk announced a partnership with six Chinese large language model makers to enhance its AI capabilities for task automation. The partners include MiniMax, Moonshot AI, Zhipu AI, 01.AI, OrionStar, and Baichuan. This partnership is expected to expand possibilities for developers building AI agents on DingTalk.

• China’s Zhipu AI has offered OpenAI API users 150 million tokens to switch to its domestic AI models, including unlimited token bonuses for high-volume users and equivalent concurrency.

• Chinese tech firms, including Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu, are swiftly attracting new clients after OpenAI announced it would stop allowing local developers to integrate ChatGPT with their mobile apps in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau within two weeks.

• Kuaishou announced that it will be the short-video platform partner for the 2024 Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from July 3 to August 25, broadcasting short videos and live streaming the event.

• Longi Green Energy’s market capitalization has dropped 21% in the past month due to market pessimism that its second-quarter performance could be worse than the first. This decline is linked to the falling price of polysilicon, the raw material used for solar panels.

Thursday, June 27

• Chinese AI firm iFlytek unveiled Spark 4.0, the latest version of its AI model, claiming it outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo in five aspects, although it lags in coding and multimodal abilities.

• Alibaba Cloud will stop providing data center services in Australia and India after reassessing its global infrastructure investment strategy

• Leading down jacket makers like Bosideng and Canada Goose are benefiting from new industry standards that are consolidating the Chinese market.

• Amazon plans to add a low-priced goods and clothing section to its e-commerce site to compete with Temu and Shein, which ship items directly from China.

• Xiaomi experienced an 8% drop in the afternoon session, the steepest decline since October 2022. Vice Chairman Lin Bin violated his 2020 pledge not to sell his shares for five years by offloading 10 million Xiaomi shares for HKD 179 million (USD 22.9 million) this month.

Friday, June 28

• SF Tongcheng, a subsidiary of SF Express, will launch the “SoFast” on-demand delivery service in Hong Kong in July, focusing on documents and small parcels. In mainland China, the company offers city-wide 30-minute deliveries.

• Porsche has announced a global recall of all Taycan models due to potential brake system issues, including the risk of brake hose rupture and fluid leakage, which could impact braking performance. Moreover, Porsche has cut prices on Macan models in China by up to 40%, with the luxury SUV now starting at 448,000 yuan, down from the original 578,000-858,000 yuan. The electric Taycan also sees discounts, with prices as low as 629,000 yuan in Shenzhen. This also has implications for the troubledChinese auto retailer Meidong.

• Ruqi Mobility, the Tencent-backed ride-hailing platform operator, plans to raise up to HKD 1.4 billion (USD 179.3 million) in its IPO. It will start trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on July 10.

• The Chinese mainland will raise the duty-free limit for visitors from Hong Kong and Macao to CNY 12,000 (USD 1,650) from CNY 5,000 (USD 690), the Ministry of Finance announced today

Saturday, June 29

• The Communist Party of China will hold the third plenary session of its 20th central committee from July 15 to July 18 in Beijing. The session will focus on deepening reform and advancing Chinese modernization.