This week’s China action was dominated by gaming, startups, and mobiles. And, as the first story shows, the country’s reputation for shameless copycatting goes on with what looks like the reverse-engineering of an entire game!
1. Chinese studio blatantly copies foreign indie game, developers pissed [UPDATED]
A breathtaking ripoff (“copycat” seems too tame a word) of a game was spotted and put on Reddit. We soon talked to the developer and got an official response from Tencent as well.
2. Chinese startups are slowly moving away from Beijing [CHART]
Yes, Beijing is still China’s startup hub, but we see a lot of startups emerging in the country’s poorer provinces too – and that’s got to be good.
3. A well-kept secret: China’s Tencent has games on Facebook, doing nicely
Tencent has been developing games in the US for a while, but has been stealthily doing so via a different name.
4. Nearly 3,000 Chinese group buy sites have closed so far in 2012
Meanwhile, in the nation’s e-commerce industry, smaller daily deals sites are imploding in vast numbers.
5. China has produced 620 million mobile phones this year
Speaking of insane figures, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has revealed stats that show rising output of phones and other telecoms equipment.
6. Walmart now owns a controlling share of Yihaodian
Finally – it’s all wrapped up and official. The giant US retailer now has a 51 percent stake in China’s biggest specialist food e-commerce site.
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