Opposite to common belief, Chinese people donât care much about politics unless itâs directly threatening their livelihood or everyday life (think zero-Covid), so they have no good reason to care about the âTwo Sessionsâ thatâs jamming up every China watcherâs timeline, or post a nerdy thread as I did below.
They only want to jump in when experts make a ridiculous proposal or statement. Case in point, when Dong Keyong, some expert with white hair, said young people should cut spending on coffee to save up for their pension (that sounds familiar đ¤ to the no avocado toast âtipâ in 2017), it went viral immediately and everyoneâs like: shut up expert!
Anyways, when someone who works at my gym asked, âIs âTwo Sessionsâ happening?â I gave him a look thatâs usually reserved for mansplainers. But what he said afterward piqued my interest, âMy Alipay landing page turned into the dome of the Peopleâs Great Hall, so I guess some political event is happening.â
In fact, that seems to be the tradition in recent years for not only AliPay, but all major social media apps including Weibo, Xiaohongshu (!) and WeChat to pay tribute to the Party, especially on occasions like the countryâs national day. I suppose this is how China keeps tabs on peopleâs minds in the digital era.
1. EV darling NIO's messy PR đśâđŤď¸
A former female intern of NIO recently accused the company of discriminatory practices as a hiring manager called her a âriskâ that could âharm the corporate imageâ months after she reported her male colleagueâs attempted rape. She did not get a full-time position after her internship ended.Â
First surfaced on Xiaohongshu, the womanâs post was quickly picked up by the media and commentators over the weekend. Much to my surprise, the vast majority of comments on Weibo under NIOâs response stood with her, but the WeChat content I saw was mostly speaking for the company.Â
A public relations veteran under the pen name âAlmighty Uncleâ said this incident reflects the contradiction between group consciousness, individual awakening, and corporate values. I tend to think that this also shows womenâs rights are still down on some peopleâs priority lists. For example, someone called supporters extreme feminists and itâs not the companyâs fault that the girl almost got raped.Â
The former intern started a new account on Xiaohongshu because her old one got deleted, and made her demands clear: sheâs not asking to stay at NIO, she doesnât want to ask for money, nor does she want HR to lose his/her job.
What she wants is for the company to apologize and improve the internal system to deal with sexual harassment. Honestly, isn't this the very least that the company should do?Â
The larger picture: Itâs not the only PR crisis that NIO has recently. Just before Valentineâs this year, a potential customer in Shanghai hit a mother and a son while testing driving, and the mother died.Â
For the internâs case, some Weibo users recalled how âcold-bloodedâ NIO was in reacting to the deaths of two test drivers last June. Back then, the company said âit had nothing to do with the carsâ qualityâ in its initial response and then morphed to a more compassionate tone as a result of public scrutiny.Â
2. A postmortem of Chinaâs largest crypto scam đ¸
An elderly who didnât know how to use smartphones, a janitor who didnât graduate primary school, a retired teacher, these are the victims of a 2020 rug pull of crypto investment app Mark in Suichang, a county in southwestern Zhejiang Province, per a 36Kr investigation.
The team behind Mark reaped a whopping 180 billion yuan (US$25.9 billion) across China, and it perhaps partially triggered Beijing to fully ban all crypto transactions in 2021.
What the scammers do have caused consequences â in a way, much like what former execs at Luckin Coffee did to Chinese companies seeking IPO with fabricated transactions â regulators have been relevant technology and applications closely, and the case also tainted the name of crypto and fed into the publicâs perception of a volatile asset thatâs likely to be a scam.
3. Chinaâs answers to Dungeons & Dragons đ˛
I absolutely hate Live Action Role Playing games, a popular pastime for young people to spend a weekend afternoon, in which they find out whoâs who alongside a script guide at a business establishment. During that one time that I played, I found the script ridiculous (it was about spying around as a communist party member) and the whole thing a complete waste of time.
I could be spending those three hours getting to know these people I hung out with better, and engaged in an emotionally connected conversation. Instead, we were in a window-less, airtight room, saying random things that have no meaning whatsoever. What for?
But the trend about Tabletop Role Playing games (the most famous one must be D&D) seems a lot more interesting. For example, this one that mocks the banquet drinking culture in northern Shangdong province looks super fun. The creator Chen Gaoyuan hated the traditional drinking culture, which is essentially a game of power, and wanted his peers to see how absurd it is. Iâm in!
From a business perspective, LARP establishment owners may be relieved that TRPG is here. With increased censorship since last June on the game scripts and a lacking of exciting new scripts, will young people come back if the game allows more creativity and freedom?
What else Iâm reading:
A group interview with four consumer investors from GenBridge Capital, Tomato Capital, Harvest Capital and Challenjers Venture on where Chinaâs consumer markets are going 36Kr Future Consumption, tech publication 36Krâs consumer vertical
The burst of the bubble of animal healthcare as Ruipeng Pet (with investors like Nestle and Tencent) put a hold on its Nasdaq IPO Big Wave, a WeChat business publication
Some homegrown brands including AIMA are making mopeds cool again, but whatâs really making them popular is Sanlian Life Lab
Sanlian Life Lab said that the latest core users of mopeds are young women in lower-tier cities. Image source: Sanlian
