China Business News Tuesday (2021-02-24)

News

1.Short-selling threatened drone maker EHang made first flight in Beijing.

Last week, there was a report from a short seller that EHang's business is "a sophisticated stock

promotion built on largely fabricated sales based on sham contracts". As a reaction, the

autonomous passenger drone company has now completed its first flights in Beijing, with a

respective range of a single flight of 1.3 kilometers. In the next step, Ehang Intelligent plans to

conduct a public manned flight in Beijing.

2. Douyin announced its monthly active customer base for the first time.

Douyin's (Chinese TikTok) monthly active users reached 550 million. This is also the first time

ByteDance announced the number of active users. Industry analysts believe that video

applications will be a new outlet for competition among internet platforms next year, and many

platforms have indicated that they will focus on video applications.

3. Xiaomi invests 10 billion in its own computer chips.

Xiaomi has invested in more than 40 companies in recent years and will spend 10 billion to

advance its own computer chip development. The investment area covers all aspects of the

industrial chain, such as semiconductor materials, chip design, semiconductor equipment, etc.

In 2017, Xiaomi released its first mobile phone chip, making Xiaomi the fourth independent

mobile phone chip provider after Apple, Samsung, and Huawei.

4. Weibo hires banks for Hong Kong secondary listing.

According to sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Chinese social media platform Weibo

Corp has hired Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and CLSA to work on its planned secondary listing

in Hong Kong in the last half of 2021. The listing could raise as much as $700 million at 5% of its

enlarged share capital.

5. Tencent invests in Italian Fintech Satispay

Founded in 2013, Satispay offers a mobile app that allows users to pay in shops, exchange

money with friends, and pay fines. Square and Tencent, which each plan to invest €15 million in

Satispay, needed permission from the Italian government, as the government has the right to

block unwanted offers in strategic industries such as banking, telecommunications, and health.

That permission has now been granted.