In brief: Alibaba revealed as creator of Communist Party’s favorite app

• A Chinese government propaganda app that recently became a huge hit was developed by Alibaba, two people at the company told Reuters. This comes at a time when the nation’s tech firms are under global scrutiny over their ties to Beijing.
• It’s called Xuexi Qiangguo: literally translated as “study to make China strong,” it’s a play on the government propaganda theme of applying president Xi Jinping’s thoughts. It overtook TikTok and WeChat to become the country’s most popular app on Apple’s China app store last week.
• Xuexi Qiangguo, which includes short videos, government news stories, and quizzes, was developed by a largely unknown special projects team at Alibaba known as the “Y Projects Business Unit.” Alibaba chairman Jack Ma is a member of the Communist Party.

Source: Reuters