Alibaba rape allegations through Chinese lens

Dear readers,

The Chinese tech world exists on its own island. Thanks to a language barrier – which Google Translate still does a poor job of solving – much of what is published in China remains opaque to the outside world.

So we tried an experiment: What if we translate good reads from the country into English for our paying readership? This is nothing new, but we believe this will make your subscription more worthwhile.

To kick off this segment, we looked at how the explosive rape allegations at Alibaba sparked an internal firestorm. What stood out was the lengths to which Zhou, the victim, went to make her voice heard after being ignored at first.

Photo credit: 123rf

We also discussed if this incident, along with the arrest of Chinese superstar Kris Wu over rape allegations, will spark China’s #MeToo movement.

While the government has censored the #MeToo hashtag on social media in the past, it has not stifled the furor over the Wu and Alibaba scandals. China itself has said that it seeks to protect and empower women.

The article got some good traction. Some readers have asked if we should make it free-to-read since it covers an important social issue. Our stance remains the same: Coverage of social issues should still be paid for.

The Alibaba piece wasn’t just a simple translation of a story. It was substantially reworked and reads like an entirely new article. We also did a lot of fact-checking (including reaching out to Alibaba), and we removed or toned down the claims that we felt were poorly substantiated. I think that’s worth paying for.

Moving back to business issues, we’ve examined the “anti-Amazon alliance” that’s thriving in the West to see if more of Southeast Asia’s sellers could one day strike out on their own to avoid being too reliant on Lazada or Shopee.

We’ve also featured Bussr, an up-and-coming startup that’s looking to modernize how public transportation in Indonesia is run. It has some prominent angel investors, including Thiel Capital’s Jack Selby who is part of the PayPal mafia , along with the eponymous Peter Thiel.

Here are more premium stories that we published last week:

• A list of fundraising startups from Asia
• What’s next for Razer Fintech after Razer Pay’s demise?
• A list of Southeast Asia’s unicorns and their early investors
• Indian car rental startup Zoomcar plans $100m bet in Southeast Asia

That’s it for this week. For more high-quality stories, do consider becoming a subscriber.