Archive for ‘Alibaba Group’

21/10/2019

6th World Internet Conference opens in China’s Zhejiang

CHINA-ZHEJIANG-WUZHEN-HUANG KUNMING-WORLD INTERNET CONFERENCE (CN)

Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, attends the opening ceremony of the sixth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, east China’s Zhejiang Province, Oct. 20, 2019. Before delivering his speech, Huang read Chinese President Xi Jinping’s congratulatory letter to the conference. (Xinhua/Liu Bin)

WUZHEN, Zhejiang Province, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) — The sixth World Internet Conference opened Sunday in the river town of Wuzhen in east China’s Zhejiang Province.

With the theme of “Intelligent Interconnection for Openness and Cooperation — Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace,” the three-day conference will bring together more than 1,500 participants from over 80 countries and regions, including members of the Internet Hall of Fame, Nobel Prize winners and Turing Award winners.

Executives from major tech companies from home and abroad such as Microsoft, Qualcomm, Alibaba Group and Huawei will share their insight on the future development of the internet at 20 sub-forums, covering popular and cutting-edge topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G and industrial digitization.

Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the conference.

Fifty years after the birth of the internet, efforts should be made to seize new opportunities and address risks and challenges to build cyberspace into a shared community that benefits all humanity, Huang said.

The senior official also called for enhanced efforts to develop the digital economy, unleash the digital dividend, and protect the security and order of cyberspace.

During the conference, reports on China and world internet development will be released to forecast the future trend of internet development.

The reports will review global internet development over the past five decades and the history of Chinese internet during the last 25 years.

Around 15 top scientific and technological projects in the internet sector will also be unveiled, covering AI, 5G, big data, cloud computing, digital manufacturing, industrial internet and other internet-related fields.

The number of internet users in China hit 854 million in June 2019, with the internet availability rate reaching 61.2 percent, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

Source: Xinhua

10/09/2019

Chinese police detain 100 over US$7 million ‘fortune-telling’ scam

  • Suspects rounded up after people complain of being duped into making donations to support non-existent temples
  • One woman says she handed over US$4,600 after being told that charitable gesture would help her live to be 400
One victim of the alleged scams said she was told she could live for 400 years if she handed over her money. Photo: Thepaper.cn
One victim of the alleged scams said she was told she could live for 400 years if she handed over her money. Photo: Thepaper.cn

Police in southeast China have detained 100 people on suspicion of being part of a criminal network that cheated members of the public out of 50 million yuan (US$7 million) by preying on their superstitions and generosity.

Authorities in Ningguo, Anhui province launched an investigation in May after receiving a number of complaints about the activities of several groups posing as fortune-tellers on social media platforms like Weibo, financial news outlet Caijing reported on its website on Tuesday.

One of the groups, which operated on the Twitter-like service under the name “Kanxiang Zen Master”, was run by a local man surnamed Zhang and had 12 million followers, the report said.

Adverts for online fortune-telling services are common in China. Photo: Thepaper.cn
Adverts for online fortune-telling services are common in China. Photo: Thepaper.cn
In one alleged scam, members of the group were told they would receive good luck if they made a donation to support a “famous temple”. But when a man who gifted 10,000 yuan via WeChat Pay checked on the address of the recipient, he found it was a residential address in the city of Xuancheng and not a place of worship, the report said.
When police investigated, they found Zhang had links to seven criminal groups in Anhui and neighbouring Jiangsu province, which between them operated about 60 fortune-telling accounts on Weibo, several of which had more than 10 million followers. The Kanxiang Zen Master account has since been removed from the platform.
Six Chinese wanted for internet scam arrested in Vanuatu

A number of the gangs were registered as media companies and operated as semi-professional organisations with formal recruiting procedures and regular conferences to plan their fraudulent activities, the report said, adding that they had been operating for at least two years.

Police in July staged a series of raids to round up the suspects and confiscated associated equipment, including computers, vehicles and mobile phones, the report said.

Authorities in Ningguo have appealed for more victims to come forward.

A separate report by Shanghai-based news outlet Thepaper.cn said that some of the suspects also used e-commerce sites such as Taobao and the messaging service WeChat to promote their fortune-telling services.

Taobao is owned by Alibaba Group, which also owns the South China Morning Post.

In one case, a woman from the city of Changshu in Jiangsu said she made multiple payments – totalling about 33,000 yuan – to a fortune-teller she met on WeChat who said the money would be used to buy incense for use in offerings to the gods.

She said she reported the alleged fraud after starting to doubt the fortune-teller’s claims, including one that said if she made the donations she could live for up to 400 years.

Alibaba, Weibo and Tencent, which owns WeChat, have been contacted for comment.

Source: SCMP

05/09/2019

Chinese teenager who lost her hair from stress of chasing grades sparks debate about pressure on young people

  • Doctor who helped 13-year-old girl recover says demands on her to do well at school induced condition
  • Weibo poll reveals that 68 per cent of participants had hair loss in school
Studies and polls suggest stress leading to hair loss is a big health concern in China. Photo: Alamy
Studies and polls suggest stress leading to hair loss is a big health concern in China. Photo: Alamy

When the 13-year-old girl walked into the hospital in southern China around eight months ago, she was almost completely bald, and her eyebrows and eyelashes had gone.

“The patient came with a hat on and did not look very confident,” Shi Ge, a dermatologist at the Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, told the Pear Video news portal.

The girl had done well in primary school but her grades dropped in middle school, Shi said.

Under parental pressure to do well, the girl pushed herself harder, but the stress resulted in severe hair loss.

With time and medical treatment, the teen’s hair grew back but her story left a lasting impression, raising awareness of the increasing number of young people in China seeking treatment for stress-induced hair loss, according to Chinese media reports.

Jia Lijun, a doctor at Shenzhen Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, told state-run Xinhua News Agency in May that aside from genetics, factors such as stress in work, study and life would result in endocrine imbalances which affected the cycle of hair growth.

And in January, a survey of 1,900 people by China Youth Daily found that 64.1 per cent of people aged between 18 and 35 said they had hair loss resulting from long and irregular working hours, insomnia, and mental stress.

Hits and myths: stress and hair loss
Shi said that an increasing number of young people had come to her for treatment of hair loss in recent years, and those working in information technology and white-collar jobs were the two biggest groups.

“They usually could not sleep well at night due to high pressure or had an irregular diet because of frequent business trips,” Shi said.

A Weibo poll on Wednesday revealed that 68 per cent out of 47,000 respondents said they had had serious hair loss when they were in school. About 22 per cent said they noticed after starting their careers, while only 5 per cent said it happened after they entered middle age.

More than half of the Chinese students who took part in a China Youth Daily survey said they had hair loss. Photo Shutterstock
More than half of the Chinese students who took part in a China Youth Daily survey said they had hair loss. Photo Shutterstock

Research published in 2017 by AliHealth, the health and medical unit of the Alibaba Group, found that 36.1 per cent of Chinese people born in the 1990s had hair loss, compared to the 38.5 per cent born in the 1980s. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.

The teenager’s experience sparked a heated discussion on Weibo, with users recounting similar cases and some voicing their panic.

“My niece’s hair was gone while she was in high school and has not recovered, even after she graduated from university. This makes her feel more and more inferior,” one user said.

Hong Kong’s schoolchildren are stressed out – and their parents are making matters worse

Another said: “I lost a small portion of my hair during the high school entrance exam, but that is already scary enough for a girl in her adolescence.”

“I had to quit my job and seek treatment,” said a third, who adding that he also suffered from very serious hair loss a few months ago because of high pressure.

Source: SCMP

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