December 2021: The Latest from Tech Buzz China
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December 2021 Tech Buzz China Newsletter
Hey everyone, hope you had a great Thanksgiving! We appreciate you are still around, and we’re so lucky to have you! For those of you looking to join our Insider community, we have a special coupon for you, where we have a forum, active Discord channel, and members-exclusive events, enter “APPRECIATION” for $10 off! Start by taking our Quiz or getting a fellow Insider to refer you.
Besides several posts in the forum every week and our active Discord channel, we had LIVE webinars on China Gen Z and China gaming throughout the month. Also our Podcast channel is updated, check it out!
Finally, the last thing that we're working on: I'm opening up select opportunities for investment in great private companies inspired by China tech, and it's going to be open for accredited investors only. If that describes you and you want more details on that, email me at rui@techbuzzchina.com.
Tech Buzz China Livecasts are usually recorded live in front of our Tech Buzz China Insider audience, and later edited and made available to the public. They are conversations with investors and operators in China tech, and think of them as our effort to open-source our network so you can be a part of the conversations that we would typically have when we do our research! Don’t miss these! Please subscribe below!
Podcast ep84: 2021 China Internet Report with SCMP CEO Gary Liu
Episode 84 of Tech Buzz China features co-host Rui Ma in conversation with Gary Liu, CEO of the South China Morning Post on the hottest five trends shaping the China internet industry in 2021: tightening regulations, bumpy roads for IPOs, overseas expansion plans, shifting demographics, and growing private domain traffic.
SCMP is a leading news media company that has reported on China and Asia for more than a century with global impact. If you would like to read the full 2021 China Internet Report, download it at https://sc.mp/cir-2021, and it’s free!
As always, our transcripts are available on our website, as well as at pandaily.com. Thank you to our teams at SupChina and Pandaily, and especially to Bryce Ye, and Kaiser Kuo. If you enjoy our work, please leave us an iTunes review! They do matter and we appreciate it so much!
Join our paid, premium community for serious China tech nerds Tech Buzz China Insider! Designed for investors and operators, we go in depth on China tech analyses that don’t typically make it into English language coverage. If you want to join us, click here to take our Insider Quiz or get referred by a current Insider! Insider has multiple posts per week, and we’ll be sharing with you at least two selections every month. If you like this content, you know what to do, join us!
Well, before I went to bed in the middle of China's Single's Day, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Alibaba would not be releasing their GMV numbers this year. In fact, this was referred to with near certainty by most folks within the tech community, and one of my favorite analysts did an entire livestream on that and what it all signifies. Officially, of course, CEO Daniel Zhang hadn't exactly said he wouldn't reveal the number, but had left it up in the air. The only thing Alibaba had announced as of mid-afternoon, when JD revealed a GMV that was already 15% greater than last year's, were inscrutable pieces of news like 382 companies had already achieved ~$15mm in sales each in the first 45 minutes. I certainly wasn't feeling confident that they would reveal any numbers. And throughout the day, rumors kept on leaking that the GMV for many of the top brands were in fact drastically below last year's record shattering $75Bn haul, or that the max bandwidth being used by the major banks is a fraction of last year's peak. But then, a bit past midnight, Alibaba and JD both announced "record" Single's Day GMVs for the year: Click here to read the full article.
I won't bore you with the numbers here, but basically, this was a lackluster (the market might have thought: disastrous) report card for the tech giant. Only 14% growth for its core China business, 16% overall (so excluding Sun Art), the lowest ever. But the biggest reaction is probably to the proactive downward adjustment of FY2022 revenues. The original guidance at the beginning of the year was +29% from last year, but now it's more like 20-23%. The primary reason given was lower growth overall for all of Chinese retail (just 3.3% & 4.5% for this August and September).
When asked how much of the core business performance can be attributed to macro factors versus competitive factors, Daniel (as expected) said it was mostly macro. A lot of you are expressing skepticism about that statement, which is warranted, given this lower growth is coming on the heels of some operational changes from the new regulation, and given JD's much better performance in comparison. Click here to read the full article.
Besides these posts, we also wrote about Live shopping, Meituan & Kuaishou Reorgs, ByteDance Model, China’s Climate Tech Opportunity, and China’s status quo of “Metaverse”. Want to learn more? Join us!
As you know, we are regularly featured in media. Here is a selection of our appearances in the last month! Take a read or listen and let us know what you think!
ASPI Sydney Dialogue, November 2021. Building a More Resilient Economy: How China is Leveraging Digital Infrastructure and Manufacturing.
Wired, November 22, 2021. TikTok’s Next Big Move? To Become Facebook.
BBC, November 11, 2021. Singles Day: Alibaba's annual event sees slowest ever sales growth.
The Guardian, November 3, 2021. TechScape: Xi Jinping’s ‘Little Red Book’ of tech regulation could lead the way.
Bloomberg, November 2, 2021. ByteDance Founder Zhang Exits Board as Challenges Mount.
Jing Daily, November 1, 2021. Is LinkedIn or Beijing to Blame for the Brand’s Pivot in China?
Rest of World, November 1, 2021. GitHub is China’s ‘last land of free speech’ – but for how long?
Tortoise Media, November 29, 2021. TikTok: The China Problem.
Stylus: Future Thinking, November 25, 2021. China Tech Trends for 2022.
Asia Matters, November 14, 2021. China Tackles Its Tech Titans.
Bruegel, November 10, 2021. Why is China cracking down on Big Tech?
Columbia University Venture Community, November 16, 2021.
That’s all everyone! Thanks for reading this December issue of our newsletter. Let us know if you have any questions or comments, and we’ll see you in a few weeks!