February 1
Alibaba Group announced that the "Alibaba Foundation" co-established by Alibaba Group and its subsidiary company had been approved by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and would be directly administered by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
February 6
China Mobile Hong Kong Company Limited won the bid for TTD band in Hong Kong, and became the telecom operator with both FDD 4G frequency and TDD 4G frequency.
February 14
MIIT issued the " Twelfth Five-Year Development Plan of Internet of Things", which proposed the objective that by 2015, China would make prominent achievements in the R&D and industrialization of core technologies, research and formulation of key standards, establishment and improvement of industrial chains, and demonstration and propagation of major applications, and would preliminarily form an IoT development pattern that features innovation-driven, application-led, coordinated development, and safely controlled.
March 21
Zhumadian Intermediate People's Court in Henan Province issued the second-instance judgment on the case of Jiangxi Wonderful Life Investment Development Co. Ltd (hereinafter "Wonderful Life") suing against the administrative penalty of Zhumadian Bureau of Industry and Commerce. The Court upheld the first-instance judgment that "Wonderful Life" was performing a pyramid scheme. Till then, the three-year-long suspicion that the Pacific Direct Purchase Official Website (the e-commerce website of "Wonderful Life", hereinafter "Pacific Direct Purchase") was conducting a pyramid scheme was finally confirmed by a final verdict of the Court.
March 27
National Development and Reform Commission together with other six ministries formulated the Opinions on Construction and Development of Next Generation Internet during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan Period, which specified that the Internet penetration rate in China shall reach more than 45%, and the number of households with IPv6 broadband access shall exceed 25 million in the 12th Five-Year Plan Period.
March 29
The National Development and Reform Commission, MIIT, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering, and National Natural Science Foundation of China jointly issued the Opinions on Construction and Development of Next Generation Internet during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan Period. The Opinions put forth the guiding thoughts, basic principles, objectives, roadmap, and timetable of the development of next generation Internet in China.
March 31
The Cyberspace Administration of China closed down 16 websites that fabricated and spread rumors, and criticized Sina Microblog and Tencent Microblog by name for accommodating intensive rumors.
April 15
Youku received an Internet publication license from China's General Administration of Press and Publication, becoming the first commercial website in video area to receive a publication license covering Internet and mobile Internet in China.
April 13
An iPhone smuggling case was found on Taobao: Shenzhen Customs found that an online store on Taobao named "Lanyou Digital" was selling a large quantity of iPhone 4S at a low price when it was not yet officially launched in the mainland market. The Customs' anti-smuggling department suspected this online store of selling smuggled cellphones, and conducted investigation. "Lanyou Digital" mainly bought or received goods in Hong Kong, and employed "parallel traders" to smuggle them into Chinese mainland little by little; then it publicly sold them online. The 68 criminal suspects involved were all held in criminal custody.
Apirl 18
An intellectual property case in which Qihoo 360 sued Tencent for abusing its dominant position in the market to practice monopoly and infringement and claimed more than 150 million yuan was brought to trial in the higher people's court of Guangdong Province.
May 9
Premier Wen Jiabao of the State Council chaired and held the executive meeting of the State Council, which studied and deployed the advancement of information-based development and safeguarding of information security. The meeting passed "Some Comments on Energetically Promoting Information-based Development and Thoroughly Protecting Information Security".
May 18
The National Development and Reform Commission issued the Special Notice on Organizing and Implementing R&D and Industrialization of Internet of Things Technology in 2012. The Notice focused on the following aspects: making breakthroughs in key and core technologies that restricted the development of Internet of Things in China, and providing effective industrial support for large-scale development of Internet of Things; formulating basic common technological standards; building a public service platform on the current basis, and solving issues of inspection, certification, and identity management; strengthening the construction of independent innovation capacity of the industry, and fostering a group of enterprises superior in R&D of Internet of Things technologies and manufacturing of products and equipment.
May 30
The executive meeting of the State Council discussed and passed the " Twelfth Five-Year Plan for the Development of National Strategic Emerging Industries". The Plan proposed the key development directions and major tasks of seven strategic industries on the basis of the major needs of economic and social development.
June 12
Jinhua Municipal Government held a press conference to give a detailed account of the reasons why it decided that "Wanjia Shopping" was suspected of online pyramid selling. This was the largest online pyramid selling case ever known to the public, covering more than 2300 counties and cities of 31 provinces (regions, or municipalities).
June 28
Beilun District People's Court, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province set up a shop on Taobao, becoming the first court in China to try judicial auction at an online shop on Taobao. The online judicial auction platform co-built by Zhejiang High People's Scourt and Taobao was officially put online. Henceforth, the lawsuit-involved assets of all Courts in Zhejiang Province would be auctioned on Taobao. Taobao said that during the period of auction notice for the subject matter, interested bidders could learn about the details of the subject matter.
July 1
The Interim Measures on Management of Internet Commodity Exchange and Related Services came into effect.
July 9
The "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" Period for the Development of National Strategic Emerging Industries" issued by the State Council proposed to implement the broadband China project, requiring that in 2015, urban and rural households shall have >20M and >4M broadband access capabilities.
July 17
Chinese Government Network issued "Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Energetically Promoting Information-based Development and Thoroughly Protecting Information Security", which proposed to take more forceful policies and measures to energetically promote information-based development and thoroughly protect information security. Efforts must be made to energetically promote the application of encryption technology in the protection of secret-related information systems and important information systems, and to enhance the supporting role of cryptogram in safeguarding electronic government affairs and electronic business security and protecting citizens' personal information.
August 1
Miao Wei, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, visited Hang Zhou to investigate a scale trial of TD-LTE use and experience the performance of TD-LTE in Hangzhou; he spoke highly of the breakthroughs China Mobile had achieved in promoting TD-LTE development.
August 6
China Mobile and Commander Department of the Navy signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Beijing to actively promote integrated military and civilian development.
September 18
The Ministry of Science and Technology announced the "Plan on Cloud Technology Development in China during the 12th Five-Year Plan Period" to facilitate technological innovation and industrial development for cloud computing.
September 18
The Internet Roundtable for Emerging Countries was held in Beijing. Representatives from related government departments, academic institutions, and renowned Internet companies in China, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa attended the meeting. This was the first time emerging countries carried out dialogues and exchanges on Internet issues.
September 28
Huawei, National Cultural Information Resource Center of the Ministry of Culture, and Tianwen Digital Media Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. signed the Strategic Partnership Agreement of the National Cultural Sharing Project in Beijing, aiming at promoting the construction and development of the national public cultural service system.
October 14
At the TD-LTE Technology and Spectrum Workshop held by China Mobile, the Chinese government officially announced the decision to allocate the full 2.6GHz in 2500-2690 Hz frequency range as the spectrum for TDD.
November 1
Organized by the Internet Society of China, 12 search engine providers including Baidu and Qihoo 360 signed the "Self-Regulation Norms for Internet Search Engine Service Companies" to promote industry standardization.
November 3
"China Public Procurement Network" was put online to monitor the online procurement process of government institutions. Government procurement would be more transparent. The online procurement process of all government institutions would be monitored all along; if the price deviated from the public procurement price index, the system would sound an alarm. The "China Public Procurement Network" was sponsored by China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing, invested by China Public Procurement Ltd listed in Hong Kong, and operated by its wholly-owned subsidiary Gongcai Network Technology Company Limited located in Wuhan.
November 6
The "Cross-Straits Optical Fiber Cable No. 1" project stretching across the Taiwan Straits was officially launched. This was the first direct communication circuit connecting Chinese mainland and Taiwan, which was co-invested and co-built by telecom operators of Chinese mainland and Taiwan. This submarine cable connects Fuzhou, Fujian and Danshui, Taiwan, spanning about 270 kilometers, with a design capacity of 6.4 T for the first phase.
December 28
The 30th session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress adopted the "Decision on Strengthening Network Information Protection". The Decision demanded that efforts must be made to protect personal electronic information, prevent junk electronic information, implement the network identity management system, and give necessary supervisory power to related departments in charge.
2012
The mobile phone overtook the PC for the first time to become the first terminal choice for Chinese netizens to access Internet.
2012
CNNIC’s 31st Statistical Report on Internet Development in China showed that by the end of December 2012, China had 564 million netizens, a 42.1% Internet penetration rate, and 420 million mobile Internet users, with people using mobile phones to surf the Internet outnumbering those using desktops.
January 5
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced that it had officially reached a cooperation agreement with UC Mobile. UC Mobile also became the first mobile Internet company in China to join W3C as invited.
January 5
Qihoo 360 announced that its Board of Directors had approved an ADS repurchase plan of USD 50 million. The company planned to accomplish this repurchase program at an appropriate price through the open market or private negotiated transaction according to the market conditions. The capital used for this repurchase would be provided by the cash reserve and continuous cash flow of Qihoo 360.
January 7
Ge Binbin, founder of ibuying , confirmed to the media that the e-commerce website ibuying owned by Shanda would be closed mainly because of insufficient financing.
January 9
360 acquired uuu9 , a game portal site.
January 11
The 2011 China Internet Industry Annual Conference was held in Beijing. Gao Xinmin, Vice President of the Internet Society of China, revealed that according to the estimated data of CNNIC in November, China already had 505 million netizens and a 37.7% Internet penetration rate.
January 11
The Taobao Mall owned by Alibaba was officially renamed Tmall, separated from the Taobao brand, and adopting an independent brand to expand the online retail market.
January 12
China Mobile (Luoyang) call center project was launched. The project was planned to accommodate 20000 seats, and to be a comprehensive base integrating customer service, management, exchange, and public services. When established, it would be one of the call centers of China Mobile to serve the whole nation.
January 14
China Network Television and LETV announced their strategic partnership in Beijing to officially march into the Internet-TV-box market. Both sides would utilize their own advantages in policy, content, product, technology, and resource to jointly promote Internet TV over a one-year period.
January 18
TD-LTE, proposed by Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Group and developed by China in the main, was listed as one of the fourth-generation mobile communication technology standards by the International Telecommunication Union.
January 29
360 joined the HTML Working Group, the most important part of W3C, and thus became the first Chinese Internet company to join this group.
February 7
The iOS products of Qihoo 360 were completely banned by the App store of Apple Inc.
February 8
The US Securities and Exchange Commission accused the Chinese affiliates of five accounting firms, including Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, PwC and BDO, of breaking securities laws of the US after they refused to provide related auditing drafts and other related documents that the SEC had requested as it was investigating accusations of accounting fraud on American investors at the US-listed Chinese companies. Impacted by this incident, China-related stocks plummeted; especially TMT and education companies were greatly impacted.
February 9
Alibaba Ltd., the Hong Kong-listed company of Alibaba Group, announced the suspension of its stock.
February 15
Shanda Interactive Entertainment announced that at the extraordinary general meeting of the company, the majority of shareholders voted for and approved the proposal that CEO Chen Tianqiao's family shall repurchase all the Shanda shares issued in the US for USD 2.3 billion. Thus, Shanda accomplished its privatization, turning from a listed company to a private company owned by Chen Tianqiao's family, and was successfully delisted from the Nasdaq Stock Market.
February 16
China's first IoT new technology experience center - Guangdong Shunde IoT Experience Museum was opened in Shunde, Guangdong.
February 17
Vip filed an IPO application form to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), intending to raise no more than 125 million US dollars.
February 20
Walmart announced a further investment in Yhd , a Chinese e-commerce website, increasing its stake to 51%. This means that Walmart gained control of Yhd in less than a year.
February 21
Alibaba Group and Alibaba Ltd. jointly announced that Alibaba Group had proposed a privatization offer to the Board of Directors of its Hong Kong-listed company Alibaba Ltd. It would repurchase about 26% of the shares of the listed company at HKD 13.5 per share. The program was estimated to cost 19 billion Hong Kong dollars. On February 22, when Alibaba resumed trading, it closed at HKD 13.20, up HKD 3.95 per share or 42.70% from its previous close on February 9 when it suspended its stock.
February 22
Alipay announced a new open platform strategy for the travel industry, under which it would open its industry payment API ports to allow travel ticket systems in the market to integrate with the Alipay's payment function.
February 29
The world-famous anti-virus test institute AV-Test announced that the Chinese-made 360 anti-virus software was successfully approved by the AV-Test again, and received all the certificates of the three phases it participated in in 2011. With this, 360 anti-virus became the only Chinese-made anti-virus software approved by AV-Test with an excellent performance of 100% passing rate.
March 2012
China organized and implemented the CNGI mass commercial application and industrialization project, thus inaugurating the mass commercial application of next-generation Internet.
March 1
China Mobile launched the 4G experience campaign on the bus rapid transit line in Hangzhou, where passengers could experience high-speed Internet access via 4G network for free.
March 12
Ifeng and Qihoo 360 announced the official signing of the strategic cooperation agreement. The two sides would conduct in-depth cooperation in both content and platform.
March 16
Sohu Microblog, together with Sina Weibo, Netease Microblog, and Tencent Microblog, officially implemented the real-name authentication system on Microblog.
March 19
Alipay launched the logistics POS strategy, as it announced the launch of its logistics POS payment scheme, and investment of RMB 500 million to promote the development of Chinese e-commerce COD (cash on delivery) system.
March 22
58 announced that its TaoFang had received a first-round venture investment of USD 10 million from Recruit, a Japanese classified information company. The funding would be mainly used to improve and enhance the product architecture and technological level of the website.
March 23
Baidu held a developer's conference, at which it officially launched its Baidu cloud strategy.
March 23
Vip was successfully listed on New York Stock Exchange, thus becoming the first e-commerce company in South China to be listed on NYSE.
March 28
Guo Jiang, CEO of a B2B company hc360 , revealed that the website, originally positioned as an online information platform, planned to enter into online trading, and related products were expected to come out in August or so.
March 28
The meeting of Study Group 13 of International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) reviewed and passed the draft standard of "An overview of the Internet of Things" formulated by China, numbered Y.2060. This was the first overall standard of the Internet of Things in the world.
March 29
Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent, announced via Microblog that the number of WeChat users exceeded the threshold of 100 million.
March 29
The Board of Directors of China Telecom was founded.
April 1
Tencent began the attempts to introduce WeChat to the international market. In order to localize it to the European and American markets, it renamed the 4.0 English version as "WeChat", and later enabled multi-language support.
April 10
Zhejiang Daily Media released an announcement that it would acquire Hangzhou Bianfeng and Shanghai Haofang, two game companies owned by Shanda Group, for RMB 3.49 billion.
April 11
Lashou completed Series C round of financing of USD 111 million. It had raised a total of USD 166 millionthrough the three rounds of financing. There were signs that Lashou might set foot in luxury group-purchase business.
April 12
A female vertical group-purchase website Miqi.cn announced the obtainment of a 10-million-yuan Angel investment. Its CEO Ma Qiang said that the funding would be used for expansion of the supply of goods, acquisition plans and human resource building.
April 15
Kaixin001 launched a brand-new mobile private social application - "Meike", becoming the first platform company in China's Internet area to launch a private social application.
April 18
The Ministry of Agriculture and China Telecom signed the "Cooperation Framework Agreement on Jointly Promoting Information-based Development in Agriculture and Rural Areas" in Beijing, to jointly promote the application of modern information technologies such as Internet of Things, cloud computing, and mobile Internet in agricultural fields.
April 19
The Information technology – Sensor networks – Services and interfaces supporting collaborative information processing in intelligent sensor networks submitted by China was approved by ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 7, and was expected to become an official international standard at the end of 2012.
April 20
The China Cloud Industry Alliance ("Cloud Alliance" for short) co-initiated by Beihang University, Baidu, yonyou, China Union, LongFor Real Estate, TCL, Lenovo, Alibaba, Tencent, and Peking University was founded in Beijing.
April 21
KUTV announced that it had reached a consensus with the shareholders of Hangzhou Soushi Networking Co., Ltd. (pipi.cn) on the trading of pipi.cn. Pipi.cn was to sell all of its shares to KUTV, while KUTV was to issue an additional 2212114527 KUTV common shares to the shareholders of pipi.cn. After the transaction, pipi.cn would become a wholly-owned subsidiary of KUTV.
April 24
The three major video platforms, iQIYI, Sohu Video, and Tencent Video, launched the "Video Content Cooperation" (VCC) for the first time.
April 25
The 2015 (Third) China Internet of Things(IoT) Conference was held in Beijing. The meeting focused on international cooperation and application practices, and took technical exchange and industrial interaction as its starting point. About 2000 participants including Chinese and foreign experts and scholars, local government officials, senior enterprise leaders, and researchers from scientific research institutions discussed the advanced IoT technologies in the world, application situation of the industry, and prospects of the industry.
April 26
Eachnet announced that it was no longer a website of eBay in China, but a wholly-owned subsidiary of TOM Group, and that all the services provided on eachnet would not be affected by this change. All the business of eachnet was separated from eBay to be operated independently.
April 27
360 was invited to attend The Symposium on Security for Asia Network (SyScan).
April 27
People.cn was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
May 6
Alibaba Group published an open letter, which for the first time revealed a list of online shops in the Taobao system that were permanently closed for misconduct and were going through judicial process.
May 8
Alipay, together with BOC Credit Card, launched quick payment service for users in Hong Kong and Macao for the first time. Hong Kong and Macao users who shop on Taobao and Tmall within China would enjoy the same convenient payment experience as users in the Chinese mainland.
May 16
Tencent gained control of yixun ; the two sides jointly invested 500 million yuan of profits and marketing resources in 3C digital and electronic products.
May 18
Tencent Holdings Limited announced its plan to adjust the organizational structure of the company.
May 21
Alibaba Group and Yahoo! jointly announced that the two sides had signed the final agreement on equity repurchase, and that Alibaba was to buy back 20% of the shares from Yahoo! for USD 7.1 billion. On 25, the Shareholders Meeting of Alibaba Ltd. passed the privatization offer. On 28, the B2C platform Tmall owned by Alibaba Group reached strategic partnership with nine express delivery companies in China.
May 24
360 anti-virus received top-level certification by West Coast Labs in the United Kingdom. On 30, 360 anti-virus had received AV-Test international certification 5 times in a row. The international anti-virus test AV-Test released its latest results, showing that 360 anti-virus 3.0 had successfully passed the second-phase test in 2012, and thus had received AV-Test certification 5 times in a row with 100% passing rate.
June 1
JD officially launched the June "Normandy Promotion", announcing price reduction with zero profit for all product categories including books & audible, household appliances, computers & digital, cellphones & automotive, clothing, and grocery. A day ago, dangdang also announced a promotion on books, clothing, household appliances, and digital products in the first three days of June.
June 7
Oak Pacific Interactive established a new subsidiary Meili Chuanshuo Co., Ltd. with full investment. The assets of its subsidiary mop were all put under this new subsidiary.
June 8
The trading of Alibaba's stocks was officially halted. On 17, Alibaba released an announcement at the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, revealing that the Grand Court of Cayman Islands had approved the privatization plan of Alibaba Ltd. on June 15 local time, and had revoked the listing status of Alibaba Ltd. on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, effective at 4 pm on 20 of June. On 20, Alibaba released an announcement at the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong that the privatization plan came into effect, and its listing status would be officially revoked after the market closed on the same day.
June 8
Microsoft and Tencent SOSO signed a strategic partnership agreement that made Tencent SOSO the external exclusive partner of Microsoft Bing Chinese search in display advertising and contextual advertising.
June 12
Www.net.cn announced its strategic partnership with Sina Weibo and CNNIC, and launched a Microblog product for small- and medium-sized enterprises, i.e., "Wanwang Weizhan", which allowed small- and medium-sized enterprises to generate official interactive webpages using Microblog content, and also enabled them to quickly open a corporate Microblog on Sina and efficiently complete real-name registration.
June 14
Alipay and Microsoft announced that they would carry out cooperation in developing and deploying the "Device Health Model" and strengthening Internet security and privacy protection.
June 15
Alibaba Group announced that it had signed a cooperation agreement with China Development Bank and it would seek financing from the latter. According to the agreement, the two sides would also conduct financing cooperation in the privatization of Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed B2B company and the equity repurchase program previously reached between Alibaba and Yahoo!, and they would jointly deepen the cooperation in state-subsidized student loan.
June 15
Tudou, Youku, Tencent Video, iQIYI, and PPTV jointly created the "Five-Star for First Show" group buying model for copyrighted films and TV dramas during Shanghai Television Festival.
June 18
The fourth workshop of the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) was held in Hangzhou. China Mobile launched the world's first roaming between TD-LTE and FDD LTE.
June 18
China Mobile and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank held a strategic cooperation product launch, at which five products including China Mobile-SPD Bank co-branded card and NFC cellphone, marking that the cooperation between the two sides in cellphone payment had achieved substantial breakthroughs.
June 19
Tencent Holdings Limited announced that it agreed to acquire a minority stake in Epic Games Inc. Epic develops world-leading 3D game engines and a variety of award-winning PC, stand-alone, and mobile Internet games.
June 19
At the press conference concerning Internationalized Email Address , Qian Hualin from Chinese Academy of Sciences sent the first internationalized multilingual mailbox e-mail in the world with the address 钱华林@中科院.中国 to Internet experts in Beijing, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, Australia, Canada and America.
June 28
China Construction Bank launched two online shops, proclaiming its plan to set foot in e-commerce.
July 2
Sohu issued an announcement that it had bought back about 10% of Sogou's shares from Alibaba.
July 5
Alibaba Group released an announcement that Yan Limin, former General Manager of Juhuasuan was arrested by Hangzhou Police for accusation of taking bribes, and that he case was under investigation. This was the first outcome of Alibaba Group in investigating its internal corruption.
July 7
China-related stocks generally plunged. Mecox Lane dropped 10.20% and closed at USD 0.88; Tudou dropped 5.44% and closed at USD 27.44; Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation dropped 5.06% and closed at USD 1.50; Youku dropped 4.81% and closed at USD 18.01; Sohu dropped 4.51% and closed at USD 37.23; Never Quit dropped 4.31% and closed at USD 7.99; Qihoo 360 dropped 4.14% and closed at USD 15.75; Shanda Games dropped 4.08% and closed at USD 3.76.
July 20
China Telecom (South Korea) Corporation Limited was founded, with which China Telecom entered into the South Korean market.
July 23
Alibaba Group announced that the business of its subsidiaries would be reorganized and upgraded into seven business group, i.e., Ali international business, Ali small enterprise business, Taobao, Tmall, Juhuasuan, eTao, and Ali Cloud.
July 24
Focus Media, Juhuasuan, and Alipay jointly set foot in O2O. Consumers were able to purchase products and services provided by Juhuasuan on Focus Media displays by taking a picture of the two-dimension code using a cellphone with the Alipay app.
July 30
China Union and Tencent jointly released the WeChat Wo SIM Card, which began the ice-breaking journey of operators and OTT.
August 4
MOMO, a mobile social app, was put online.
August 14
Liu Qiangdong, CEO of JD , announced on Sina Weibo that JD would have zero gross margin from large household appliances in the next three years, and that all large household appliances sold at JD would be guaranteed to be more than 10% cheaper than those in Gome and Suning chain stores. In response to this challenge, on the afternoon of August 14, Li Bin, vice president of Suning Egou, posted an announcement on his Sina Microblog promising that the prices of all products would be lower than those at JD . Later, Liu Qiangdong declared that JD would sell at a lower price than both Suning offline stores and online stores. "If Suning dares to sell at 1 yuan, JD would sell at 0 yuan". On the evening of 14, Gome electric appliances online store also posted a Microblog claiming that "all product prices shall be 5% lower than those at JD ". Dangdang and yixun also responded that they would held large-scale overall promotions with better offers than JD would make. Various e-commerce companies including JD , Suning, and Gome upgraded this war of words into a price war, thus beginning the "Warring States Era" of household appliances.
August 14
The Ministry of Commerce officially approved the application of Walmart to acquire 33.6% of the shares of Yhd , allowing Walmart to hold a 51% stake of Yhd , and thus gaining control of the latter.
August 16
Qihoo 360 comprehensive search service was put online, thus inducing a search battle between Baidu and 360.
August 16
Shenzhen Asia-Pacific Media Co., Ltd. joined hands with Tencent to found the "Tencent Asian-Pacific Home Furnishing" website.
August 17
360 launched its comprehensive search engine.
August 20
Youku held the annual shareholders meeting in Hong Kong, at which shareholders took the final vote on Youku's acquisition of Tudou, and decided to set up the Youku Tudou Inc. The acquisition was approved; thus Tudou became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Youku, and Youku Company was renamed Youku Tudou Inc.
August 22
Baidu struck back at 360 by alerting users who visited through Qihoo search.
August 24
Alibaba invested USD 40 million in MOMO, which got a valuation of USD 200 million in Series B round of financing.
August 24
at the 2012 Interim Results Presentation in Shanghai, Ma Mingzhe, Chairman and CEO of Ping An Group, announced that Tencent, Alibaba Group, and Ping An would join hands in experimenting with Internet finance by making a joint investment in founding Shanghai Lujiazui International Financial Asset Exchange.
August 29
Baidu retaliated by directing all 360 search results to the homepage of Baidu.
August 31
Sina appointed Cao Guowei as Chairman and CEO.
September 2
At the 2012 Baidu World Conference, Baidu officially launched the personal cloud service.
September 5
The online payment platform PayPal launched a new foreign trade portal site to help small- and medium-sized enterprises conduct B2C online export business. The foreign trade portal service was initiated by PayPal since 2010. It provides supporting services for small and medium-sized foreign trade merchants in China by cooperating with cross-border e-commerce service providers. PayPal said that more than a thousand small- and medium-sized enterprises had already used this service to start foreign trade online stores.
September 12
Renren Inc announced that it had invested USD49 million to Social Finance (hereinafter SoFi), a company headquartered in San Francisco.
September 14
Letv issued an announcement: as the company is planning a major project, it will suspend trading of the stock since the opening of the market on September 17, and restoring of trading is upon further announcement of the company.
September 17
The WeChat Team of Tencent announced that the number of WeChat registered users had exceeded 200 million.
September 17
Alipay took the lead in founding China's first internet payment security alliance, which aims to enhance the level of security in online payment transactions through security technologies and data sharing. Over 30 e-commerce merchants, such as Meituan, Dianping, 58 , Coo8, and Huiyuan Network, became the first members of the alliance.
September 18
Alibaba Group announced that the 7.6-billion-dollar equity repurchase plan about Yahoo! had been accomplished. Alibaba repurchased 50% of its shares owned by Yahoo! for USD 6.3 billion in cash and USD 800 million in Alibaba preferred stock.
September 25
Suning announced the acquisition of binggo owned by Redbaby. Binggo was a shopping website targeted at female netizens.
2012
JD completed the full acquisition of the third-party payment company ChinaBank Payment, and officially started to build its own independent payment system
October 25
The overseas site (English site) of JD was officially put online for public beta test, marking that JD had made a significant progress in going global.
October 25
Suning announced a full upgrade of its open platform. After the launch of the shop running project of the new open platform, brand-name merchants could file an application for joining in on the open platform; after the application was approved, the merchants would be able to carry out a series of work on the back-end of the website, including shop decoration, product launch, and shop operation.
By the end of October
The number of government Microblog certified on Sina Weibo had reached 60064, up 231% as compared to the same time in 2011. On November 11, the number of government Microblog certified on Tencent Microblog reached 70084.
November 2
Lenovo announced that Liu Chuanzhi left his post as Chairman of Lenovo Group, and CEO Yang Yuanqing would take over.
November 5
Cellphone magazine VIVA announced the completion of a new round of financing from Qihoo 360, while the Round-A investor co-invested.
November 9
Hu Lei, vice-president of GGV Capital, confirmed during an interview that the female shopping guide community Meilishuo invested by GGV Capital in Series C round had acquired the Series D financing, in which Tencent participated as the lead investor and GGV Capital continued to co-invest.
November 11
Tmall and Taobao hit a new record for China's online shopping turnover with RMB 13.5 billion and RMB 5.9 billion respectively, adding up to RMB 19.1 billion.
November 17
Baidu won the "International Carbon-value Award" of the World Environmental Conference.
November 21
YY was listed on Nasdaq, and officially changed its name from Huanju Shidai to Duowan YY. It opened at USD 10.5, the same as the IPO price, closed at USD 11.31, and peaked at USD11.7, up 7.71% on the first day, reaching a total market value of 602 million US dollars. For this listing, YY issued a total of 7.80 million ADS shares.
December 3
Gome announced the integration of its two e-commerce platforms "Gome electric appliances online store" and "Coo8 ", to realize unified back-stage management and resource integration. The Gome electric appliances online store was officially renamed "Gome Online".
December 15
After JD and Vancl applied for the license to run express logistics business, Suning also officially applied for the license. Most first-tier e-commerce companies had received the domestic express delivery license. This meant that after acquiring the payment license and starting petty loan business, Suning obtained another effective tool in e-commerce, which would make up for the "last weakness" of its logistics distribution system. Suning was not the first e-commerce company to apply for the express delivery license. JD , Vancl, and Yhd all had started to build their own logistics system and set foot in express delivery.
December 18
KU6 announced the strategic cooperation with Sina Weibo.
December 18
Xujiahui business district, which boasts 60 years of history and a good reputation, transformed from a traditional general merchandise trade to an e-commerce platform, and launched an online shopping mall (www.xjh ), which integrated online and offline business and also integrated independent B2C with O2O.
December 18
China Mobile Hong Kong Company officially announced the launch of the world's first TD-LTE/LTE FDD integrated network service, becoming the first operator in Hong Kong to provide domestic LTE roaming service.
December 25
Netease Company's Internet education course - Netease Cloud Course was put online, providing study management and support functions.
2012
The listing of people.cn was an important progress in the exploration of important State news media in media integration and institutional innovation.
2012
After new generic top-level domain was open to applications, ".网络",".公司",".公益", and".政务" were included into the root DNS and realized global resolution.
By December
According to the data released by Tencent, by December 2012, the number of WeChat registered users had reached 270 million. Since its launch on January 21, 2011, the number of WeChat users had kept a rapid growth.
August 26
A serious road accident in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province killed 36 people and severely injured 2. A picture of Yang Dacai, head of Shaanxi Work Safety Supervision Bureau, smiling at the scene of the accident triggered an Internet mass hunting on him. Netizens found him wearing all kinds of luxury watches, and thus called him the "Watch Uncle". On August 29, Yang Dacai appeared in front of the public for the last time. That day, he talked with the netizens in Sina micro-interview about the smile issue and the watch issue. In the micro interview, Yang Dacai claimed that he bought 5 watches in the past ten years. These watches were bought by himself in difference times, all with his legitimate income. However, after the interview, some netizens sorted out 11 pictures of Yang Dacai wearing different watches. A few days later, netizens successively dug out pictures of him wearing 130,000-yuan glasses and brand-name belts, and thus nicknamed him "Mr Precious All Over".
2012
During the Mid-autumn and National Day holiday, CCTV launched an investigation program Voice of People, which interviewed thousands of people from all walks of life with the same question "Are you happy?" For a time, "Happiness" became a catchword of the media, and also triggered the whole nation's thinking about happiness.
September 11
The 11th "China Internet Conference" was inaugurated at Beijing International Convention Center. The theme of this conference was "Openness, Trust, and Convergence - Meeting the New Era of Mobile Internet".
November 25
J-15 aircrafts made successful landings on China's first aircraft carrier "Liaoning". The gestures of the commanders directing the aircrafts attracted the attention of Chinese netizens. The commander half squat, with index finger and middle finger pointing to the flight deck, signaling "permitted to take off". The handsome, neat, and forceful "take-off gesture" of the commanders became the biggest hit, and was enthusiastically followed and imitated by netizens.
December 3
The Ninth Beijing Internet Media's "Red Hometown - Tour around Hubei" campaign was held in Hubei Province. Various media from China's Internet "giants" such as Sina, Sohu, Netease, Baidu, Qianlong , Tom, China , Yahoo China, and iFeng , as well as local renowned Internet media such as Cnhubei and HBTV all gathered in Hubei.
