What people did on Mobikes over the May 1 holiday weekend – China business and technology news from May 9, 2017

Technode reports on data released by bike share company Mobike analyzing user behavior during the Labor Day holiday weekend from April 29 to May 1. Some of the findings are:

• Usage of Mobikes was up 17.2 percent from the weekend before nationwide.
• The largest spikes in usage were in tourist destinations: bike use in the pleasant coastal city of Xiamen shot up 51 percent, while in scenic Hangzhou, it increased by 47 percent.
• The five places that attracted the most Mobike users were Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu.
• Many Mobike users who live in Beijing and Shanghai headed to Chengdu for the holiday weekend, while Guangzhou and Shenzhen residents head to Haikou and Xiamen.  

In March, The China Project published “Bike sharing done right: A real Chinese innovation” together with a video showing how the bikes work.  

• China’s exports remained resilient as global demand recovers / Bloomberg
  See this tweet for a summary of the numbers from Bloomberg journalist Haidu Lun and also a panda video.
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  “Taiwan’s HTC, which has linked up with Alibaba on VR shopping and cloud services, has emerged as a leading contender in China’s VR market… However, Tencent’s high profile in the gaming market and the vast reach of its WeChat messaging app would give its VR headset an advantage.”
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• Cheap Chinese aluminum is a national security threat / Foreign Policy
• Buying spree brings attention to opaque Chinese company / NYT (paywall)
• The Kushner project touted in China is in trouble at home / Bloomberg