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A man stands outside JD.com’s headquarters during an organised tour in Beijing on November 9, 2021. Photo: Reuters
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JD.com wins Spring Festival Gala partnership, following ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba, in sign of political approval

  • JD.com is CCTV’s official partner for the most-watched television broadcast in the country, when it will give away cash as virtual red packets
  • The partnership has become a sign of both financial power and political approval, which the company has maintained amid China’s crackdown on Big Tech
JD.com
Jane Zhang
Jane Zhang
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Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has secured a deal to serve as the exclusive partner of state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) to give away cash as virtual red packets at this year’s Spring Festival Gala, the country’s most-watched television broadcast.

The partnership is often seen as a barometer of financial power and a political blessing from Beijing. The 2021 partnership went to Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok that is also owned by ByteDance, after being pulled from Pinduoduo at the last minute, as the social e-commerce firm was beset by scandals of employee suicides and long working hours.
JD.com, founded by billionaire Richard Liu in 1998, will give away digital red packets and gifts worth 1.5 billion yuan (US$236 million) during an interactive campaign running from January 24 to February 15, according to a statement the company published on Wednesday on its official WeChat account.

Internet firms wage digital red packet war during Lunar New Year

JD.com has remained largely unscathed by the central government’s crackdown on the technology sector over the past year, apart from having to scrap an initial public offering of its fintech unit JD Technology last April. The company’s support for government campaigns, including the provision of logistics services for Covid-19 control efforts, has helped it win government support.

The latest sign of this goodwill is JD.com’s participation in the gala that has been a Lunar New Year’s Eve tradition for millions of Chinese families since it started in 1983. Last year, it was viewed by more than 1.27 billion people on TV and streamed online in more than 170 countries, according to People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.

Previous partners – including Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings, Baidu, and Kuaishou – have cumulatively spent billions of yuan in virtual red packets that were given away during the show, as they sought to grow their share of online traffic over the Lunar New Year holiday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

This year’s show will mark the fifth consecutive year that CCTV has partnered with a major Chinese internet company to give away red packets.

The show’s viewers are encouraged to interact with the live show through various games and features on the exclusive partner’s app to win cash given away as digital red packets, a modern version of the holiday tradition of gifting cash in red envelopes.

A photo illustration of a WeChat user scanning a QR code to retrieve a digital red envelope on the mobile app during the Lunar New Year period in Beijing on January 30, 2017. Photo: EPA/STR

The Spring Festival Gala has been a promotional battleground among China’s largest internet companies since 2015, a year after WeChat introduced virtual red packets to promote the use of WeChat Pay. That year, WeChat became the first large tech enterprise to sign a partnership with CCTV.

A week before the gala, Alibaba announced that it would give away 600 million yuan in red packets. WeChat quickly followed with its own announcement of a 500 million yuan giveaway. The competition sparked a frenzy among consumers to try to snap up as many red packets as possible on the platforms.

While these giveaways have proven effective at generating engagement, they are no guarantee of long-term success. Tencent-backed short video-sharing platform Kuaishou gave away 1 billion yuan in digital red packets during the Spring Festival Gala in 2020. But the company was hit hard during the tech crackdown last year, pushing its market value down 80 per cent after its IPO last February and forcing massive lay-offs.
Baidu also sought to boost its position in mobile by issuing 2 billion yuan worth of red packets in 2019, but it remains far behind its peers in that area.
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