A few things on my radar #10
Nezha 2; ByteDance; Apple; WPP
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Nezha 2 ( 哪吒 2）
Nezha 2, the Chinese animated blockbuster, accounts for over half of China's total box office earnings during the Lunar New Year holiday
Despite last year's Chinese box office was quite dismal, with revenue dropping 22% year-over-year, domestic box office revenue has hit $1.32 billion (¥9.5 billion) since the CNY holiday began this year — a 18% increase over last year's holiday period, according to Maoyan, China's leading entertainment services platform.
Enlight Pictures'（光线传媒; SHE: 300251), animated sequel Nezha 2 is driving these impressive numbers. The film, directed by Yu Yang, has earned est ¥5.49 billion during CNY holidays and looks set to surpass the war film The Battle at Lake Changjin (¥5.69 billion in China; $913 million worldwide) as China's highest-grossing film ever.
Nezha 2 is a film that serves as the direct sequel to the 2019 film Ne Zha. The series draws inspiration from the classic novel Investiture of the Gods (封神演义).
"Thematically, while the previous film focused on breaking destiny, this one explores breaking rules—there's a clear connection between the two episodes," Liu Wenzhang, the producer of Nezha, told The Paper. "The tough situations he faces, such as deception and injustice, all shape his growth."
Besides, what really sparked the discussion online lie in its geopolitical metaphor: villains who appear righteous reside in a Pentagon-like building, while demons—who are labeled as evil monsters despite being good-hearted and simply trying to survive—are hunted down by the Pentagon's team under false charges. These underlying messages deeply resonated with Chinese audiences.
According to official announcements, the film will launch globally, including major markets such as North America, South Korea, and Japan, as well as regions including Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Whether the strong start of Chinese New Year films signals that Chinese cinema is about to emerge from its slump is hard for me to say. But Nezha 2 is certainly a pleasant surprise. The work impresses audiences with its visual style, gripping narrative and themes of individualism and anti-authority.
However, whether this story, especially the underline political metaphor, can capture the interest of overseas viewers, remains uncertain - we cannot rule out the possibility that its ideology might face push-back from Western audiences.
ByteDance
ByteDance accelerates healthcare expansion with plans for building a new hospital in Beijing
ByteDance is expanding rapidly into healthcare, with its subsidiary Amcare Medical Management (美中宜和) receiving approval in mid Jan 2025 to build an 800-bed joint venture hospital at Zhongguancun Chaoyang Park in Beijing.
Until now, ByteDance owns multiple physical hospitals - from Xiaohe Clinic (小荷门诊）to acquiring the high-end women's and children's hospital Amcare, followed by investing in Amcare Group, Pinecone Clinic (松果医疗)、Canban(参半)、Good Mood (好心情)、Honda Airui (宏达爱瑞), covering general hospitals, cancer hospitals, mental health treatment, postpartum care centers, and more.
According to LinkedIn posts reviewed by Forbes, ByteDance has been recruiting American experts in computational biology, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, and physics since last year for its "AI for Drug Design" and "AI for Science" teams.
Zhang Yiming has previously stated that he places great importance on the collaboration between AI and biomedicine, believing this intersection will be a very promising direction. Their ultimate goal in this area is to revolutionize biological science through the development of large-scale foundational models that can be applied to a wide range of biological systems and tasks, as mentioned in one of their job postings.
While ByteDance's plans to integrate its healthcare resources aren't yet clear, its activities suggest the development of a comprehensive AI-powered healthcare ecosystem that connects theoretical research with real-world applications.
However, the healthcare industry in China remains complex and challenging—filled with intricate networks of interests and gray-area profit chains. Even Chinese citizens themselves are skeptical about internet companies making meaningful progress in healthcare — after all, Baidu's healthcare ads scandal remains a fresh warning — Can ByteDance maintain ethical standards while delivering real solutions for patients? We shall see.
Apple
Tim Cook commends DeepSeek's contributions on driving efficiency, during the recent earning call
During the recent earnings call, Tim Cook addressed analysts' questions about Apple's AI strategy— “In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing. And, you know, that’s what you see in that model (DeepSeek), our tight integration of silicon and software, I think, will continue to serve us very well….And from a capex point of view, we've always taken a very prudent and deliberate approach to our expenditure, and we continue to leverage a hybrid model, which, I think, continues to serve us well.…I think you can conclude from that that there are compelling reasons to upgrade. And in the markets where we had launched Apple Intelligence, they outperformed the markets that we did not. ”
Aaron Levie, Box CEO, told Fortune that DeepSeek is fantastic for Apple's AI strategy. "Apple wasn't in the business of training their own models," he said. "So Apple wants as many breakthroughs to happen in the open-source space as possible because they can just run those on their phones and then deliver...intelligence to all their users without them having to have the kind of capital expenditures of the other companies."
Cook emphasized that Apple's OpenAI partnership remains non-exclusive while acknowledging DeepSeek's innovative contributions. Although he didn't show any integration intentions, DeepSeek's open-source and cost-efficient models seems fit Apple's approach of leveraging existing models rather than developing their own, at least presenting Apple with an additional partnership option, particularly in China.
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WPP ( NASDAQ：WPPGY）
Three WPP China executives face prison as major bribery case unfolds
In 2023, The Economic Investigation Division of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, in collaboration with market supervision authorities, uncovered a case of commercial bribery and arrested three Chinese suspects, including a senior executive named Rycan Di, from WPP, a British advertising giant.
As of January 2025, trial proceedings have revealed that those corrupted executives allegedly transferred up to $110 million ( est. 800 million RMB) to their personal accounts. Prosecutors are now seeking life imprisonment for GroupM China's former chief investment officer and substantial prison sentences for two other executives, reported by Campaign, a media outlet in advertising industry.
"This corruption case only involves media agencies, but there are also many corrupt individuals working within social, creative, and PR agencies, as well as in-house marketing departments to investigate. I hope our economic investigation colleagues continue their work and bring these criminals to justice soon," a comment said online.
The good news is—from what I know—plenty of local corrupt officials working in foreign companies have been brought to justice: some were imprisoned, others placed under house arrest, depending on the severity of their corruption and the extent to which stolen funds could be recovered.
The bad news? There are many still at large or continue to engage in corruption without facing sanctions. For example, in this case, only 3 bribe-takers were arrested - what about their in-house accomplices upstream? What about the bribe-givers downstream? A kickback bribery system surely can't be operated by just the agency middlemen alone, right?