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Xinmei Shen

China’s technology scene has been in for a wild ride over the last year. From the US-China tech war to the Covid-19 pandemic, the landscape has been changing fast. The South China Morning Post’s third China Internet Report is an annual look at the state of the country’s tech industries. Here are the biggest takeaways from the report:
1) People are spending more time online during the pandemic
As in many other places around the world, China has seen a surge in internet usage and online media consumption during the Covid-19 pandemic. As of March of this year, Chinese internet users were spending an average of 7.2 hours online every day, sharply up from 5.6 hours a day in the previous year.
The pandemic has also been bringing more people online in the country, as more work and services need to be accessed remotely. People above 40 years old were the primary drivers of that growth.

The pandemic also led to new technology applications to help fight the spread of Covid-19. Most notably, colour-coded QR health codes meant to signal who might have had contact with the virus were widely adopted. These and other applications could remain in place even after the pandemic subsides.
2) Office apps boom as millions work from home
With so many people stuck working from home during the pandemic, the use of office apps has jumped. While Zoom was the big winner in the US, workers in China largely turned to Alibaba’s DingTalk, Tencent’s WeChat Work and Tencent Meeting. Work productivity apps gained more than 308 million users during this period, nearly equal to the population of United States.
(South China Morning Post is owned by Alibaba.)
China’s digitisation has been accelerated by Covid-19: SCMP CIR 2020
3) More people are seeing doctors online…
The online health care market was already booming in China before the pandemic, but millions of more people concerned about the coronavirus sought out doctors online. The leading players include Ping An Good Doctor and Tencent’s Trusted Doctors, which saw a surge in the number of online consultations. China is projected to see more than a billion online health consultations this year.
4) …and going to school online
The number of online education users is expected to grow 62 per cent to 420 million this year. Students and teachers turned to online platforms when the coronavirus outbreak led to the cancellation of classes. But the space is crowded with more than a dozen players, including a powerful new entrant: ByteDance, the company behind TikTok.

5) China is trying to reduce its dependency on US components
China is accelerating steps to move towards self sufficiency in tech thanks to the bruising US-China trade war. Since China’s tech industry is still dependent on foreign chips, the government is pushing to develop the domestic semiconductor industry with the hope of having it cover 70 per cent of all domestic demand by 2025. China is expected to surpass US R&D spending this year when adjusted for purchasing power.
6) 2020 is the year of 5G
As China has rapidly rolled out 5G infrastructure across the country, more people have been buying moderately-priced 5G smartphones from Chinese brands. Most people don’t yet have a compelling reason to upgrade from 4G to 5G plans. But Chinese consumers are still more willing to pay to upgrade to 5G than mobile users in other countries. China is also seeing industrial use of 5G, such as facilitating remote medical procedures and drone deliveries.
7) Shopping is giving a boost to live streaming
After taking off in China in 2016, live streaming is still going strong in 2020. But growth in this segment isn’t being driven by entertainment, it’s being driven by shopping. Small e-commerce merchants, online personalities and big brands have all jumped on the bandwagon, marketing their products over live-streamed video. Viewers say they’re tuning in for a more interactive online shopping experience and to avoid FOMO: a fear of missing out.

8) There are plenty of online video platforms, but few paying users
China has more than 850 million users of online video platforms, with most relying on Tencent Video, Baidu’s iQiyi and Alibaba’s Youku. But only a small per cent of users are actually paying for these services. Given the steep cost of producing content, none of these platforms are profitable. iQiyi now has 118 million paying subscribers, Tencent Video has 112 million and Youku has 96 million. Bilibili, a YouTube-like video platform, has also grown rapidly, but it currently has just 13 million paying subscribers.
9) China is making huge strides in self-driving cars
For the first time last year, Baidu beat Google’s Waymo in the number of times drivers took over the wheel in their self-driving cars. While experts said the metric doesn’t necessarily mean much, China has certainly been moving fast in autonomous driving. Robotaxi services are being rolled out in areas of several different cities, and more road test are being conducted in the country. The government aims to have 30 per cent of all cars sold in China come with some level of automation by 2025.
10) Chinese smartphones gain global market share
China’s biggest smartphone brands are steadily getting bigger despite the Covid-19 pandemic’s negative impact on global smartphone sales. Xiaomi and Oppo, now two of the world’s biggest smartphone brands, both saw their market share increase in the past year. The growth was partly powered by competitively priced devices from their budget sub-brands.
Huawei’s global market share dropped slightly from 18.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2019 to 18 per cent during the same period this year after the company got caught up in the US-China tech war and lost access to Google apps and services. But its market share is still significantly larger than the 11.7 per cent it had in 2018.
For more insights on China’s internet trends in 2020, you can read the full report here.




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China technology

The top 10 takeaways from the China Internet Report 2020

E-commerce is now a major driver of live streaming growth. Photo: Xinhua

Sha Jie, 10, a primary school student, attends an online Chinese class as he sits at home during the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Shanghai, China, March 3, 2020. "I go out once a day at most, just hanging around our neighbourhood. My parents told me to wear masks if going outside and to wash hands carefully after coming back home," said Jie. REUTERS/Aly Song SEARCH "COVID-19 LIFE ONLINE" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "WIDER IMAGE" FOR ALL STORIES. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

(200220) -- ZHENGZHOU, Feb. 20, 2020 (Xinhua) -- A resident scans a QR code at an entrance to a supermarket in Zhengzhou, central China's Henan Province, Feb. 19, 2020. Zhengzhou City of Henan Province launched a QR code system on Wednesday, which is connected with the health condition registration system operated for residential communities. Residents in the city can now use QR codes to take transportation and do shopping. All the information will be collected and transmitted to an integrated data platform for epidemic prevention and control in real time, to help fight the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and protect the health of the residents in the city. (Xinhua/Li An)

(200607) -- GUANGZHOU, June 7, 2020 (Xinhua) -- A network anchor presents the goods to be sold during a live video stream in Baiyun District of Guangzhou City, south China's Guangdong Province, June 6, 2020. A three-day livestreaming event, during which over 200,000 webcasts are expected to be held, kicked off Saturday here to promote the sales of products and service related to retail, food, tourism, education, legal advice among others. (Xinhua/Lu Ye)

By forcing internet providers to block Chinese apps, India takes a page out of China’s playbook

Chinese-made TikTok, Shareit, UC Browser, Baidu Maps and WeChat are among 59 Chinese apps India banned this week, citing "security of state and public order,” among other reasons. (Picture: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg)

India has asked its ISPs to block app servers from Chinese apps that have been banned from the country. (Picture: NOAH SEELAM / AFP)

The border clash in the Galwan Valley in June reportedly led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers. China has not reported its casualties. (Photo by Prakash SINGH / AFP)

DingTalk is China's answer to Slack -- and the stuff of office nightmares

Unlike Slack, DingTalk will not allow you the grace of pretending you didn’t see your boss’s message. (Picture: DingTalk)

Many workers in China are now back in the office, but apps like DingTalk are likely to stay and multiply. (Picture: Tingshu Wang/Reuters)

“I’m just a five-year-old child, you are all my dad,” cries little DingTalk in its apology video uploaded to the streaming video site Bilibili. (Picture: DingTalk via Bilibili)

The world’s biggest online population is staying home and China’s internet can’t cope

A teacher gives an online class for students at a high school in Zhengzhou, Henan province, on February 2. (Picture: Li Jianan/Xinhua)

Shopping in live streaming apps is booming in China thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic

China’s live streaming shopping market is projected to grow to 916 billion yuan (US$129 billion) in 2020. (Picture: SCMP)

Famous live streamer Li Jiaqi trying to salvage eggs stuck on a “non-stick” frying pan during a live stream. (Picture: Sanyan Finance)

Did Baidu really do better than Google’s Waymo in California’s self-driving report? 

Baidu launched its robotaxi services in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, with a fleet of 45 cars on  September 26, 2019. (Picture: Baidu)

A Waymo self-driving car cruising on a street in Silicon Valley. (Picture: Shutterstock)

Tech


US-China trade tensions and the Covid-19 pandemic are reshaping China’s internet landscape
5G adoption and self-driving tech have also seen significant gains



US-China trade tensions and the Covid-19 pandemic are reshaping China’s internet landscape


The top 10 takeaways from the China Internet Report 2020

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} US-China trade tensions and the Covid-19 pandemic are reshaping China’s internet landscape 5G adoption and self-driving tech have also seen significant gains

1) People are spending more time online during the pandemic

US-China trade tensions and the Covid-19 pandemic are reshaping China’s internet landscape

5G adoption and self-driving tech have also seen significant gains