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Brief Consumer Economics & Policy Politics & Society

China’s New Year spending rebounds from stimulus boost

China’s consumer spending rose 8.6% year-on-year in the first four days of this year’s Chinese New Year holiday, reports Caixin. This was backed by an extended holiday and fresh government stimulus that lifted outlays on services and technology. The increase offers a sign of resilience as policymakers roll out renewed support measures, including a consumer incentive […]

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Consumer Economics & Policy Politics & Society Takeaway

Holidays and subsidies

This year’s Chinese New Year holiday period saw both an 8.2% increase in domestic travel, and an 8.6% increase in consumer spending compared to the year before, according to official figures. The holiday for this year was increased from eight to nine days, and a range of stimulus policies were implemented by the Ministry of […]

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Brief Consumer Tech, Media & Telecom

ByteDance’s Doubao AI app sees 1.9BN interactions during New Year Gala

ByteDance’s conversational AI app Doubao seized a prime marketing position during China’s Spring Festival Gala, reports Caixin. The app logged 1.9 billion interactions as the company leveraged the nation’s most-watched television broadcast to accelerate mass adoption. Although ByteDance’s cloud-computing arm, Volcano Engine, served as the official AI cloud partner for the 2026 gala, the consumer-facing Doubao […]

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Brief Consumer Economics & Trade Law & Regulation

China imposes anti-subsidy tariffs on EU dairy

China will impose anti-subsidy duties on certain dairy imports from the European Union for five years, reports Caixin. This comes after the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) concluded that government support had harmed the domestic industry. The MOC said Thursday that the final ruling covers products including cheese and fresh cream and will take effect Friday. The […]

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Brief Consumer Tech, Media & Telecom

ByteDance, Alibaba launch new AI image tools to rival Google

TikTok parent ByteDance has unveiled its latest generative AI image model that it says undercuts the popular Nano Banana image editor from Alphabet’s Google, reports the South China Morning Post. This comes on the same day as rival Alibaba Cloud releases its own Qwen-Image-2.0. Chinese short-video giant ByteDance said its Seedream 5.0 image model ships with stronger reasoning […]