China Digest – 16 Jul

Here you can find some interesting startup news from China, not only in its capital, Beijing, but also other startup hubs such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, and many more.

(1) Tradesparq.com makes sourcing social. Want to source dried goji berries from China? Tradesparq tells you who in your network (suppliers, agents, or fellow traders) has the hookup in dried fruit.

(2) Japan is a more neutral battlefield (than the US) in which to test Weibo’s chances against Twitter, which has been highly successful there (unlike Facebook).

(3) Sina Weibo’s new user verification program DaRen, which means “expert” in Chinese is in beta. It offers incentives for users to verify their personal information, marking the beginning of Sina Weibo’s push towards a real-identity social network.

(4) Alibaba Group is reportedly planning to release its own mobile phone in the third quarter. And it’s not the only internet service provider which is interested in smart phone market.

(5) Baidu, the largest Chinese search giant, announced a restructuring plan of its business lines including sales, commercial operations, user products and technologies, commercial products and technologies(cloud computing and mobile included), and said it will implement an executive rotational program in an attempt to spur innovation and efficiency.

(6) Early this month, mobile payment Aliplay revealed its own mobile payment solution called Barcode Pay.

(7) In February, mobile social game Papaya Mobile had 10 million users, but now it has more than 20 million users.

(8) Alipay, the online payment offering of Chinese B2C giant Alibaba, announced its “instant access” program in an effort to make the initiative an openID-like service for various ecommerce sites to consolidate its market position and compete against other rivals.

(9) According to local report, Shanda is investing over RMB 2 billion (US$ 309 million) in ecommerce site iBuying.com with two other undisclosed participants.

(10) Tencent agreed to buy a 15.68 percent stake in Kingsoft Corp for HK$ 892 million (US$ 115m) and invest US$ 20 million in the Kingsoft’s internet security Subsidiary.

(11) There is no official announcement from Sina so far on how and when Sina Weibo will introduce its e-commerce system. But, interestingly enough, Sina just updated its development document which leaks the information about its Weibi currency.

(12) After Google’s pullout from mainland China, the world’s biggest Internet market last year, it left a vacuum for many competitors looking for a piece of the lucrative pie. Sogou, the search engine unit of Chinese portal Sohu.com, is aiming to overtake Google Inc by market share in China within a year, according to Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan.