On 17 February, it was reported that Tencent’s WeChat had deployed DeepSeek AI with its AI search function, including “quick answer” and “deep think” modes. It was quickly confirmed by Tencent that the deployment of DeepSeek AI in the unofficial “national app” was in the grey box testing phase. This caused Tencent share prices to soar in Hong Kong. It was up 8% to over 510 HKD (65.55 USD) per share, before stabilising at 493.60 HKD (63.44 USD) per share.

The topic “WeChat and DeepSeek trump card combo” (#微信DeepSeek王炸组合#) swiftly topped the Hot Search list on WeChat with a whopping 170 million views on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent. Similarly, the hashtag “Tencent market value surges 300 billion RMB (41.36 billion USD)” (#腾讯市值暴涨3000亿) topped the Hot Spot list on Rednote with 9.21 million views on the platform and ranked number 6 on Weibo’s Hot Search list with 67.42 million views on Weibo.

As of Q3 2024, WeChat boasts 1.38 billion users. With this user base, many pundits believe DeepSeek will democratise AI and make AI-assisted searches available to all. When asked about its proprietary Hunyuan model, which was introduced to WeChat last year with underwhelming results, Tencent stated that the decision is to provide the best AI experience. What Tencent plans to do with the AI search function in its WeChat ecosystem is more important.

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It is a WeChat Mini Program version of the classic video game Snake. In it, the player controls a line resembling a snake, which consumes dots in the field to grow its length while trying to avoid colliding with itself and its surroundings. The game is designed in a Y2K-esque pixel art style that reminds players of old mobile phones. Users who complete the 8 stages the quickest can get on a ranking board and be in with a chance to win rewards.

Balenciaga released a video on social platforms to tease the mini-game. This time, it seems to have captured more attention. Since its launch on 18 January, the topic “Balenciaga CNY collection” (#巴黎世家新年系列#) has gained an impressive 40.99 million views on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent.

A current version of the genre, Snake Off also teamed up with Yonghui Superstores for a CNY campaign that has perks both online in the game and offline at the supermarket. Interestingly, back in the last Year of the Snake in 2013, 12 years ago, KFC launched a mini-game version of Snake on renren.com, a social media platform similar to Facebook that suspended its services last December.

With luxury brands making huge progress in their localisation campaigns for CNY this year, Balenciaga’s playful game is creative and nostalgic while ticking the box of the snake motif. By taking inspiration from snakes that consumers have seen before, instead of abstract symbolism, the Snake mini-game is likely to provide more “emotional value” to generations who grew up playing mobile games.

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It is about Apple addressing the growing rumour that due to disagreements regarding in-app transactions and “Apple tax”, this has led Apple to reportedly threaten to stop updating WeChat via its App Store. “Apple tax” refers to Apple charging 30% on all transactions, either paid apps or in-app purchases. The saga started when Apple urged Tencent and ByteDance (parent group of Douyin and TikTok) to stop mini-games on their apps leading users to other platforms for payment, bypassing “Apple tax”.

The most recent rumour claims WeChat would not be supported on iPhone 16 and if you upgrade your iPhone to iOS 18.2, the system would not support the Tencent messaging app. The rumours sparked many a Hot Search topic on Weibo. These include “If Apple really removes WeChat” (#如果苹果真的下架了微信的话#) which is ranking number 1 with 150 million views. Some netizens expressed their dislike for the American tech company while others say that because WeChat is such a necessity for everyday usage, they will have to swap phones if it really happens. Some are sceptical about the rumours, considering that both Apple and Tencent cannot afford to lose each other.

Both Apple and Tencent denied the rumour on 2 September. Apple responded that future support for the app depends on the negotiation outcome between Apple and Tencent. Tencent, on the other hand, denied it has commercialised mini-games by allowing in-app transactions, and the idea is still under internal discussion. It is worth watching if Apple will make a allowances for Tencent regarding Apple tax.

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• Dao Insights recently conducted a survey on Chinese travellers’ experience of ordering food abroad.
• The survey found that WeChat Mini Programs is the go-to ordering method for most, as well as the preferred method, followed by ordering at the counter/with staff and on HTML5 (H5) websites.
• Many cite the ability to overcome language barriers as a key reason for using Mini Programs to order, while preferring it to H5 because it can store order history and is convenient.

For those living in China, there’s nothing surprising about ordering your food in a restaurant via a dedicated WeChat Mini Program (officially known as Weixin Mini Program). WeChat Mini Programs are “mini-apps” built into Tencent’s all-in-one app WeChat. But for those travelling abroad, of which there are now more and more of them, can they also enjoy the same convenience like at home? We have recently conducted a survey to find out just that.

Travel in China has been recovering steadily since the end of the Coronavirus pandemic, including international travel. The latest data from this May Day holiday shows that international flight numbers had risen to 70% of 2019 levels. Indeed, Bloomberg went so far as to predict it will reach over 90% of 2019 capacity before the end of the year. Between 27 April and 5 May, international travel orders from Mainland China were only 7% lower than 2019 levels. Flights to some visa-free destinations surpassed 2019 levels by 30%.

The survey we conducted received over 200 valid responses between 10-12 June. The respondents are from 27 provinces in China with one located abroad in the UK. The gender of respondents is about even with 50.25% being male and 49.75% being female. 45.77% of the participants are aged between 18 and 25 years old, while 30.35% are between 26 and 35, therefore, 76% of the answers from the post-90 generation and younger, loosely correspond to Millennials and Gen Z.

All respondents have experience travelling abroad while nearly three-quarters of them travel abroad at least once annually (46.77% travel each year and 26.37% travel more). Over 70% consider themselves frequent international travellers. 68.16% would choose local restaurants while 69.16% would dine at local Chinese restaurants.

Most of the respondents would use WeChat Mini Programs as the go-to ordering method, more than those who regularly order at the counter/with staff and through HTML5 (H5) websites combined. Among the respondents who use Mini Programs as their frequent ordering method, 71.93% prefer restaurants that provide Mini Program ordering (29.82% strongly agree and 42.11% agree) to those that don’t. In comparison, about two-thirds of these participants prefer restaurants with the H5 website ordering function to those without. Over 71% regard restaurants with Mini Program ordering more highly. Nearly 70% of frequent Mini Program users feel more welcome when ordering with it abroad. Interestingly, over 65% say that ordering with Mini Programs makes them feel like ordering more (31.58% strongly agree and 34.21% agree).

Among all participants, 61.69% feel that ordering via WeChat Mini programs helps solve language problems with dining while travelling abroad. Among participants who don’t order in English or local languages and those who don’t understand menus very well, the Mini Program is the preferred ordering method, with 42.86% and 50% respectively.

Our survey found that WeChat Mini Programs is the preferred way for Chinese travellers abroad, especially those who are already frequent users. It is followed by ordering at the counter or with staff, ordering at self-service kiosks and via H5 websites. Most respondents feel the advantage of WeChat Mini Programs compared with websites is the ability to check past order history (68.66%) and convenience (61.19%). When asked how Mini Programs can improve, over 98% of respondents say to incorporate more language support. 94% want more diverse payment methods. Notably, 85.07% of answers want it to be more widely adopted. This is a suggestion we can fully get behind.

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On Weibo, China’s Twitter-equivalent, the topic “You can join DingTalk meeting on WeChat” (#微信上能用钉钉开会了#) shot to number 6 on the Hot Search list with 52.24 million views. Some netizens feel that without the need to download means great convenience, especially when having meetings with clients. However, others are concerned that integrating DingTalk with WeChat can mean switching off after work becomes more difficult.

For Alibaba’s DingTalk, being able to tap into WeChat’s large user base means great potential. According to Tencent’s data, in Q3 2023, monthly active users of WeChat reached 1.34 billion, increasing 2% year-on-year. At the same time, the convenience brought by the update makes DingTalk more flexible and hence competitive as a workplace app. On the other hand, WeChat can leverage DingTalk’s over 700 million users, including 25 million enterprises, schools and other organisations, making it a win-win situation for both parties.

Alibaba and Tencent are tearing down barriers between them at a rapid pace. Since the request from the authorities in 2021, Alibaba started incorporating WeChat Pay into many of the company’s services such as Ele.me and Youku. Earlier this year, Alibaba’s second-hand marketplace Xianyu also appeared on WeChat as a Mini Program. This is partly due to official policy, as well as platforms realising future growth is in connecting, since they started to see bottlenecks in growing their user base after building barriers between them. 

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Taobao’s customer service later clarified that the function is currently being trialled and is only available to certain users on specific items. Also, users won’t know if they can pay with WeChat until they are at the checkout page.

The news comes after Taobao allowed scanning QR codes as a form of payment in WeChat Pay last October. At the time, a newspaper journalist received confirmation from Taobao after an initial enquiry. Like the latest development, it was a trial for some users and on some items. The topic “Taobao gradually opens up for WeChat Pay” (#淘宝逐步开放微信支付#) shot to number 5 on Weibo’s Hot Search list with 110 billion views before the latest news boosted it up to 160 million. However, users needed to save the QR code before being able to scan it, so the function was not exactly convenient.

Alibaba and Tencent, the owners of Taobao and WeChat, have been loosening the barrier between the two platforms in recent years. Since the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2021 demanded the problem of blocked links between platforms be solved, we saw Alibaba’s Ele.me, Youku etc starting to adopt WeChat Pay and WeChat allowing links directed to Taobao. In 2023, we saw WeChat allowing Taobao links in articles and Taobao ads during 618 and Double 11.

Both platforms can benefit from the interconnectivity. Taobao will gain more traffic from WeChat’s 1.34 billion daily active users, while WeChat will be able to partner with more brands after its work with Taobao, the largest e-commerce platform. Putting the inter in the internet has been a trend between platforms, as we see Douyin allowing Tencent’s Honor of Kings and other games to return to the streaming platform this January. Alibaba’s Hema Fresh (Freshippo) also opened a shop on Taobao rival JD.com last Double 11. As competition intensifies in each sector, partnerships will be more common as platforms form alliances. Hopefully, the obstacles between them will gradually become a thing of the past.

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For now, the content consists of a few short vlogs from some of the team’s recent educational tourism trips and no plans for live content have been announced. But with Tencent placing more strategic emphasis on WeChat’s live shopping capabilities, it would certainly make sense for Oriental Selection to build a presence on China’s super app.

Oriental Selection pivoted from English tutoring to selling goods via livestream in 2021 after the Double Reduction Policy introduced massive legal grey areas into the private education industry. Since then, the former tutoring company has been dogged in its pursuit of livestream success, rapidly mastering the format with an innovative approach: bilingual content blending cultural education with promotion. Impressively, it claimed the top spot for sales on Douyin during the 618 shopping festival just 6 months after launching.

It was on Douyin that the channel got its start, but over the last year, it has been pushing to branch out across platforms, perhaps wary of downfall after its experience with sudden policy changes. The company began live broadcasting on Taobao last summer and set up its own independent platform, where users can watch content and browse sponsored items (paid members get discounts on goods). Even if Oriental Selection does not start livestreaming on WeChat Channels, the video content will help funnel more users to the independent app for more viewing and purchasing options.

At the same time, Tencent-owned WeChat is upping its commitment to its live shopping feature. The platform managed to generate 100 billion RMB (13.9 billion USD) in GMV in 2023, a significant milestone for a platform that entered the live shopping area relatively late.

Tencent is now expanding its e-commerce team betting on major growth potential from this part of the business– the company’s founder and chief executive Pony Ma even went so far as to call Channels “the hope of the whole company”.

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This impressive figure still falls far short of sales on specialist short video apps Douyin and Kuaishou, which have become many Chinese consumers’ go-to for online shopping. While Kuaishou sold 800 million RMB (112.4 million USD) worth of goods in the first three quarters of the year, Douyin is on track to post 2 trillion RMB (281 billion USD) in sales this year, according to TechNode.

Nonetheless, Tencent is betting on huge growth in this part of its business and has been expanding its e-commerce team over the past few months to take monetisation to the next level. In an internal meeting last year, founder and chief executive Pony Ma even went so far as to call Channels the “hope of the whole company”, signalling that it has become a core strategic focus for Tencent.

WeChat began as a messaging service but evolved into the world’s first “super app”, as more and more features were added to its portfolio. The addition of an in-app payment system was a game-changer, as combining personal finance and social networking in one location made WeChat an essential part of people’s daily lives.

The last of the major features to be added, Channels (also called Video Accounts or 视频号 in Chinese), was launched in beta mode in 2020. Now, WeChat is perfectly positioned to capitalise on the growing market for luxury live shopping, as it has already cultivated a “pretty significant high-income and affluent customer base”, according to Tencent President Martin Lau. WeChat Channels can hopefully carve out a niche as the go-to destination for luxury live shopping, distinguishing itself from everyman apps Douyin and Kuaishou.

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According to China’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA), a microdrama is a web series with episodes between under a minute to 15 minutes each. These series mostly stream on social media platforms, including short-form video platforms like TikTok’s sister app Douyin and Kuaishou, and often on WeChat mini programs.

The origin of genres

The microdrama has been growing on these platforms since as early as 2018 in the form of comedy sketches. Kuaishou, early to see the potential of the microdrama, started a segment on its platform called “Kuaishou Small Theatre” in 2019 to round up this type of content. Kuaishou was also the first to adopt the concept of “microdrama” in 2020 when it launched its own microdrama brand “Xingmang Project”, later renamed “Xingmang Microdrama”. Conventional web series producers Tencent Video, MangoTV and Youku also started releasing microdramas. During this time, the microdrama was mostly 10 minutes per episode, closer to conventional web series.

Things changed in 2022 when mini program microdramas burst onto the scene. With an average episode length of around a minute and a huge reach through WeChat, these series try to get viewers hooked with free episodes, before leading them to the mini program to pay for the rest of the series. These series usually have low budgets, and short production cycles and are mostly genre series like rom-coms, period palace intrigues or corporate power struggle dramas. These microdramas usually have viral views and explosive earnings, often grossing tens of millions of RMB within days. The series Unparalleled, for example, earned 100 million within an unparalleled 8 days.

This show is brought to you by

Brands, especially beauty brands, are using the microdrama as a new marketing channel. With a budget comparable to a TV commercial and an average production cycle between 1-2 months, it is a quick and wide-reaching form of brand promotion. A host of brands from C-beauty stars such as Proya and Kans to global giants like Yves Saint Lauren and Clinique have all sponsored microdrama shows in the past 2 years. The forms of collaboration can range from conventional displaying of sponsorship, and product placement, all the way to special commercial episodes, having the team behind the microdrama appearing in livestream shopping or even having brand executives playing a role in the series, as Marubi and Hexze have done with Close to Gemini and Break the Waves, respectively.

The breakout

The 3-part microdrama series Escape from the British Museum garnered over 350 million views on Douyin when first released between August and September and is being made into an animated film. The first episode received over 10 million likes on Douyin, and episodes 2 and 3 got over 8 and 9 million likes respectively. The series also won praise from CCTV6, the film channel of the state-owned TV station. The creators gained more than 5 million followers across platforms in just 7 days after the series went viral.

The story of the show revolves around the journey home from the British Museum of a Chinese jade teapot that turned into a woman. Without resorting to genre stories or stock characters, the series also resonates with the nationalist sentiment about Chinese artefacts in the museum, or outside China, especially due to war or imperialism. The release of the microdrama also coincided with the news of the theft of an estimated 2,000 artefacts from the British institution.

The series, with its relatively long running time of between 2 to 10 minutes per episode and higher production value, has been described as a “catfish” for microdramas, forcing the industry to reach for higher quality in production and content. Linmon Media’s series Twenty-Nine, which gained over 100 million views for just its first 3 episodes, has been described as a milestone of high production value microdrama. Some point out that the commercial strength of the microdrama is its short production cycle and low cost, higher investment would make the format commercially unfeasible. Meanwhile, others argue that the quality of content should be the direction of improvement for the genre, not the quality of production.

Law and order

In time, the exponential growth has attracted the attention of regulators. On the 16th of November, a microdrama titled “黑莲花上位手册” (sometimes translated as Black Lotus Training Manual”, not to be confused with “The Guide to Capturing a Black Lotus”) was released. It was rumoured to have grossed over 20 million RMB (2.82 million USD) within 24 hours. It was pulled by both Douyin, Kuaishou and WeChat 5 days later for “promoting extreme revenge, meeting violence with violence, confusing right from wrong and portraying the evil in human nature”.

It was only the latest of many microdrama series that were removed from platforms. The NRTA started to regulate the fast-growing market of microdramas in late 2022 by pulling more than a million episodes of content and shutting down thousands of accounts. It recently announced new measures, including a proposed “content screening system”. NRTA also pledged to review various aspects of microdrama production, including “casting, production, storylines, marketing and distribution” as well as “social value”. That, indeed, is why Escape from the British Museum received praise from state media and Black Lotus was pulled from all platforms.

However, experts argue that the regulations will filter out some lower-quality series and in turn benefit leading content producers. Along with the popularity of Escape from the British Museum, the future of microdrama may become quality over quantity.

The post The rise and rise of the microdrama appeared first on Dao Insights.

This comes less than a month after Weibo started asking users with more than 1 million followers to disclose their true identities, with the threshold expected to lower to half a million. Most platforms limit the new real-name rules to influencers working in certain topics such as current affairs, military, finance, law or medicine, with minute differences between platforms. Users failing to comply may have their traffic and income limited.

Despite initial concerns about privacy, the real name display policies have expanded to almost all large social platforms. There has also been reports of influencers lowering their following to under 1 million to avoid real name disclosure after Weibo’s initial announcement. Founder and chief analyst of market consultancy firm iiMedia, Zhang Yi, argues that the rules “will strengthen community regulation and governance” on these platforms and ultimately be a greater benefit than drawback.

These new policies come amid the ongoing campaign from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) to create a “healthier online ecosystem”. Part of the campaign is aimed at protecting private enterprises from fake news, rumours and slander, which the real-name policy will help combat. This protection dovetails with a recent initiative to support the private sector, including new legal guidelines from the country’s highest court last month.

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