World champion of trademark applications – China’s latest business and technology news
A summary of the top news in Chinese business and technology for May 23, 2017. Part of the daily The China Project news roundup "Does India have more people than China?"

Tencent, China’s most powerful internet company, filed 4,100 global trademark applications in 2016, according to (paywall) the Financial Times. The company is behind China’s most popular social and messaging app, WeChat, and with a market value currently at around $106.18 billion, is often at the top of brand rankings in China. Other Chinese technology conglomerates such as LeEco and Alibaba were also among the list of top 20 trademark applicants, with 2,200 and 1,700 applications, respectively. The FT says that in November 2016, “China became the first country to secure more than one million patent applications in a single year — a record the World Intellectual Property Organization said reflected ‘extraordinary’ levels of innovation.”
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HNA’s Hainan Airlines to buy 19 planes for $4.2bn / FT (paywall)
“China’s Hainan Airlines plans to buy 19 planes for about $4.2bn, expanding its fleet to 257 aircraft as its parent company HNA Group pushes aggressively into airline services, airports and hospitality.” -
Big Brother comes for foreign firms in China / WSJ (paywall)
“Beijing aims to harness big data to monitor and rate companies.” - China spins a global food web from Mozambique to Missouri / Bloomberg
- UrWork takes on WeWork in fight for China’s shared office spaces / Bloomberg
- China’s troubled LeEco said to plan cutting most of U.S. workers / Bloomberg





