INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Hello and welcome back toTechCrunch China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people
The coronavirus outbreak is posing a devastating impact on people life and the economy in China, but there a silver lining that the epidemic
might have benefited a few players in the technology industry as the population remains indoors.
The SARS (severe acute respiratory
syndrome) virus that infected thousands and killed hundreds in China back in 2002 is widely seen as a catalyst for the country fledgling
People staying indoors to avoid contracting the deadly virus flocked to shop online
Alibaba Taobao, an eBay-like digital marketplace, notably launched at the height of the SARS outbreak.
Although it sickened thousands and
killed almost eight hundred people, the outbreak had a curiously beneficial impact on the Chinese internet sector, including Alibaba,& wrote
China internet expert Duncan Clark in his biography of Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
Nearly two decades later, as the coronavirus outbreak sends
dozens of Chinese cities into various kinds of lockdown, tech giants are again responding to fill consumers& needs amid the crisis
Others are providing digital tools to help citizens and the government battle the disease.
According to data from analytics company
QuestMobile, Chinese people average time spent on the mobile internet climbed from 6.1 hours a day in January, to 6.8 hours a day during
Chinese New Year, to an astounding daily usage of 7.3 hours post-holiday as businesses delay returning to the office or resuming on-premises
operation.
Here a look at what some of them are offering.
Remote work apps: Boom and crash
China enterprise software industry has been slow
to take off in comparison to the West, though it slowly picking up steam as the country consumer-facing industry becomes crowded, prompting
investors and tech behemoths to bet on more business-oriented services
Now remote work apps are witnessing a boom as millions are confined to working from home.
The online education sector is experiencing a
similar uptick as schools nationwide are suspended, according to data from research firm Sensor Tower.
The main players trying to tap the
nationwide work-from-home practice are Alibaba DingTalk, Tencent WeChat Work, and ByteDance Lark
App rankings compiled by Sensor Tower show that all three apps experienced significant year-over-year growth in downloads from January 22
through February 20, though their user bases vary greatly:
DingTalk:1,446%
Lark: 6,085%
WeChat Work: 572%
DingTalk, launched in 2014 by an
Alibaba team after its failed attempt to take on WeChat, shot up to the most-downloaded free iOS app in China in early February
The app claimed in August that more than 10 million enterprises and over 200 million individual users had registered on its
platform.
Dingtalk became China most-downloaded free iOS app mid the coronavirus outbreak
Data: Sensor Tower
WeChat enterprise version WeChat Work, born in 2016, trailed closely behind DingTalk, rising tosecond place among free
iOS apps in the same period
In December, WeChat Work announced it had logged more than 2.5 million enterprises and some 60 million active users.
Lark, launched only in
2019, pales in comparison to its two predecessors, hovering around the 300th mark in early February
Nonetheless, Lark appears to be making a big user acquisition push recently by placing ads on its sibling Douyin, TikTok China version
Douyin has emerged as a marketing darling as advertisers rush to embrace vertical, short videos, and Lark can certainly benefit from
exposure on the red-hot app
WeChat, despite its colossal one-billion monthly user base, has remained restrained in ad monetization.
The question is whether the sudden
boom will develop into a sustainable growth trend for these apps
System crashes on DingTalk and WeChat Work due to user influx at the start of the remote working regime might suggest that neither had
projected such traffic volumes on its growth curve.After all, most businesses are expected to resume in-person communication when safety
conditions are ensured.
Indeed, the work-from-home model has been widely ill-received by employees who are frustrated with intrusive company
rules like &keep your webcam on while working from home.& In a more unexpected turn, DingTalk suffered from abacklash after it added tools
to host online classes for students
Resentful that the app had spoiled their extended holiday, young users flooded to give DingTalk one-star ratings.
Face mask algorithms
To
curb the spread of the virus, local governments in China have mandated people to wear masks in public, posing a potential challenge to the
country omnipresent facial recognition-powered identity checks
But the technologies necessary to handle the situation is already in place, such as iris scanning.
Travelers whom I spoke to reported they
are now able to pass through train station security without taking their masks off — which could sound an alarm to privacy-conscious
But it unclear whether the change is due to more advanced forms of biometrics technologies or that the authority had temporarily loosened
security on low-risk individuals
People still have to scan their ID cards before getting their biometrics verified and travelers whose identities have been flagged could
trigger stricter screening, people familiar with China AI industry told me
They added that the latter case is more probable, for it will take time to implement a nationwide infrastructure upgrade.
Digital
passes
Local governments have also introduced tools for people to attain digital records of their travel history, which has become some sort
of permit to go about their daily life, be it returning to work, their apartment, or even the city they live in.
One example is web-based
app Close Contact Detector developed by a state-owned company
Users can obtain a record of their travel history by opting to submit their names, ID numbers and phone numbers
So far the app has drawn more scorn than praise for containing the virus, bringing people to the questions: If the government already has a
grip on people travel history, why didn''t it react earlier to restrict the free flow of travelers? Why did it only introduce the service a
few weeks after the first big outbreak?
All of this could point to the challenge of collecting and consolidating citizen data across
departments and regions, despite China ongoing efforts to encourage the use of social credits nationwide through the use of real-name
registration and big data
The health crisis appears to have accelerated this data-unification process
The pressing question is how the government will utilize these data following the outbreak.
Eg migrants who&d been in Hubei slipped
through the cracks while 10s of thousands Hubeiren outside the province are left stranded (what all that use of SIM card location tracking
+face scans?) and SH gov''t late to disclose affected neighborhoods (data supposedly easy to attain)
mdash; Rita Liao (@ritacyliao) February
12, 2020
Many of these digital permits are powered by WeChat on the merit of the messenger ubiquity and broad-ranging functions in Chinese
In Shenzhen, where WeChat parent Tencent is headquartered, cars can only enter the city after the drivers use WeChat to scan a QR code hung
by a drone — for the obvious reason to avoid contact with checkpoint officers — and digitally file their travel history.
Photo: Xinhua
News
Citizen reporting
As the fast-spreading virus fuels rumors, individual citizens are playing an active role in combating misinformation
Dxy.cn (丁香园), an online community targeting medical professionals, responded swiftly with a fact-checking feature
dedicated to the coronavirus and a national map tracking the development of the outbreak in real time.
Yikuang, the brainchild of several
independent developers and app review site Sspai.com, is one of the first WeChat-based services to map neighborhoods with confirmed cases
using official data from local governments.
Young citizens have also joined in
A Shanghai-based high school senior and his peerslaunched a blog that provides Chinese summaries of coronavirus coverage from news
organizations around the world.
Dining and entertainment
The nationwide lockdown is almost guaranteed a boon to online entertainment
The short video sector recorded 569 million daily active users in the post-holiday period, far exceeding 492 million on a regular daily
Video streaming sites are gathering musicians to virtually performand movies are premiering online as the virus forces live venues and
cinemas to shut.
Many Chinese cities have gone as far as to ban eating in restaurants during the epidemic, putting the burden on food and
grocery delivery services
To ensure safety, delivery companies have devised ways to avoid human interaction, such as Meituan Dianping &contactless& solution, which is
in effect a self-served cabinet to temporarily store food orders awaiting customer pickup.
China food delivery company @meituan launched
this &contactless& service that provides zero physical contact between customers and delivery folks amid #coronavirus
pic.twitter.com/6BPXPPnI0K
mdash; Keith Zhai (@QiZHAI) February 3, 2020
