Alibaba’s Second Quarter Revenue, Special Number Plates for NEVs – China Market Watch

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Alibaba’s second quarter revenue surpasses estimates

e-Commerce giant Alibaba has reported a 56 percent revenue increase since the first quarter of this year, surpassing forecasts made by Wall Street. This growth is driven by the surge in numbers of Chinese consumers buying a wide range of products online.

Alibaba’s profits reached RMB 50.1 billion (US$7.51 billion) during the second quarter. 86 percent of this revenue came from its e-commerce services, up from 73 percent during the same period last year. While the increase in Alibaba’s stocks were driven mostly by its e-commerce services, expansion in cloud computing and entertainment ventures diversified its core business.

Revenue from its cloud business grew by 96 percent to reach RMB 2.4 billion this quarter, with paying customers reaching one million, up from 577,000 last year.

China’s healthcare industry expansion and opening up plan

China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) has announced its aim to boost its health related industries, estimating that the country’s health services market will reach RMB 16 trillion (US$2.4 trillion) by the year 2030.

China has been making efforts to strengthen the integration and the expansion of its health services industries with fitness, food, elderly care, tourism, and internet industries.

China’s private hospitals numbered 17,000 as of May 2017, accounting for 57.5 percent of hospitals nationwide, receiving 180 million medical visits, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.

Recent legislation has attempted to lift investment barriers in the healthcare sector. For example, regulatory approval for elderly care clinics has been replaced with the record filing system, and the proportion of foreign investment into outpatient clinics has been increased to 70 percent.

China’s healthcare industry has been a particular investment hotspot over the last ten years, with private investment increasing by 3.7 percent over this period.

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NEVs nationwide to receive special registration plates

After having successfully piloted a program in Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Jinan, and Shenzhen, China is to roll out the issuance of special number plates for new energy vehicles (NEVs) on a national level.

The new plates will help publicly identify NEVs, raising awareness and driving development of the new energy industry.

The special number plates feature an extra digit. Additionally, they are are wider by four centimeters, and are green for smaller vehicles and green and yellow for larger vehicles.

For new registrations, NEV owners can either go to local traffic management departments, or visit certain websites or apps which allow owners to choose a custom number or generate a random number.

China has released policies promoting the industry since 2013 and offered NEV number plates freely in places like Shanghai, where number plates for conventional vehicles are heavily restricted.

Recent policy has proposed battery and plug-in hybrid cars account for at least one-fifth of vehicle sales by 2025, staggering in quotas from 2018 on. There are already one million NEVs on the road across China.


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