Chinese airlines to allow mobile phone use and offer wifi

This week, thirteen Chinese airlines announced that passengers could use mobile phones on their planes after a regulatory easing.

• All the major Chinese airlines including Hainan Airlines, China Eastern, and Air China  will allow passengers to use mobile phones inflight.
• Airplane mode must be used — to allow wifi but not cellular communication.
• Today Airmedia, a Nasdaq-listed company, announced a deal to put a lot of wifi on a lot of China Eastern airplanes. It’s likely other Chinese airlines will follow suit.

• In 2016, China Eastern became the first Chinese airline to offer inflight wifi, but initially only on international routes.
• Now if only they could fix the food!

• WeChat payments going global
  WeChat Pay now allows users to bind overseas credit cards / TechNode
  “This is the first time users are able to use WeChat Pay without having a Chinese bank account or credit card.”
• Insurance
  Tighter regulation dents insurers’ premium income growth / Caixin (paywall)
  “China’s insurance companies saw growth in their combined premium income slump by a third last year amid a regulatory campaign to rein in financial risk that included a crackdown on the sale of risky products.” Read on The China Project about some of the measures in that campaign.
• Protests over dodgy online investments, housing, and labor conditions
  China faces protests after investment scheme collapses / AP
  “The implosion of Qianbao.com adds to a string of failures of Chinese financial ventures blamed on fraud or mismanagement that have prompted protests and complaints of official indifference to the suffering of small investors.”
  China’s middle-class in revolt / Index on Censorship
  Chinese staff paid in bricks to top up unpaid wages / BBC News
  Leiyang workers return to Shenzhen to demand long overdue compensation / China Labour Bulletin
• Box office
  China’s box office is back thanks to piracy crackdown / Nikkei Asian Review (paywall)
  “After coming to a screeching halt in 2016, the Chinese box office is back. Annual ticket sales returned to double-digit growth in 2017, helped by new rules that purge pirated movies from the internet, leaving no other option but to go to the movies for new releases.”
• Gray rhinos (?)
  Chinese media told to tone down coverage of giant firms’ debt, finance woes  / SCMP
  Wanda chief vows to repay all overseas debt / Caixin
• Ecommerce + bricks and mortar
  Tencent to back Carrefour in challenge to Alibaba in retail / Bloomberg
  JD.com eyes fundraising, listing for logistics unit / Caixin
• Blockchain and cryptocurrencies
  China’s banking regulator pushes blockchain adoption for credit market / Coindesk