Newsletter: Female Passenger Murdered after Hitching a Ride on DiDi, and Here is DiDi’s Response

Welcome to this week’s newsletter. This week, we have some unexpected news to share with you including a murder case, a blockbuster and a tweet from Trump.

Market Briefings

Foxconn Industrial Internet Co Ltd (FII), a subsidiary of Foxconn Technology Co. applied to list in the Shanghai Stock Exchange on May 14.

Tencent will partner with Oxford University to offer eSports courses for the first time, as part of a newly announced trade deal between Tencent and the U.K. government.

On May 13, Xiaomi released an internal letter announcing the establishment of an independent camera department to strengthen R&D for smartphone cameras.

The flames of the trade war between China and the United States have long spread to the field of science and technology. Here is an analysis of Chinese smartphone makers in the U.S. market after the ZTE & Huawei incidents.

However, on May 13, Trump tweeted to lift the ban on ZTE that suspended its major business after being stopped from using the components made in the US. Resuming supplies to ZTE is mutually beneficial for ZTE and its U.S. suppliers.

New Releases

ZUK, a a smartphone brand under Lenovo, announced its official return with a new flagship product.

On May 9, DJI officially released the new Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 drone starting at $1,499.

Automobiles

Shanghai has granted BMW a license for self-driving vehicle road testing, making it the first multinational company with whole vehicle manufacturing capabilities to test autonomous cars on roads in China.

Tesla recently registered a new car company in Shanghai with 100 million yuan, or around $15.7 million, while Faraday Future states in its internal letter that it will expand to China with headquarters in Guangzhou and the Guangzhou plant will soon start construction as scheduled.

Pop Culture

As of May 13, the Marvel movie “Avengers: Infinity War”, also known as Avengers 3, has grossed 1.29 billion yuan, or over $203.5 million, during its opening three days of release in China. However, a sexist announcement by Wanda cinemas at the movie premiere got all the female fans rallied up.

Fan Chengcheng, the younger brother of Fan Bingbing, one of the biggest stars in China today, recently published a “pay-to-view” photo on Weibo that stirred up the biggest controversy overnight on social media.

Incident

On the evening of May 5, a 21-year-old flight attendant named Li Mingzhu was killed after she booked to hitch a ride via DiDi-Chuxing. The incident has aroused public awareness for the safety of online ride-hailing services. In response to this, Didi published safety enhancement plans on May 16 after taking down DiDi Hitch on May 12.

Podcast

This week on TechBuzz China by Pandaily, our hosts Ying-Ying Lu and Rui Ma talk in-depth about a story that sparked great controversy across China’s technosphere – the debate on whether Tencent has still got its mojo. It all started with a veteran tech journalist’s 13,000 word piece titled “Tencent Has No Dream,” which lead to thousands of responses and a #fakenews scandal involving Tencent CEO Pony Ma himself. To listen to this episode, you can go on our website, SoundCloud, or iTunes.