For luxury brands, mastering social media in China is a must for connecting to consumers and making sales. WeChat and Weibo dominate China’s social media scene, but are only part of the story. The digital environment in a market with more smartphone users than any other is constantly changing – one social media app eclipsed its competitors within little more than a year of its launch, for example. More than 80% of Chinese luxury shoppers are on social media, according to a recent report by ParkLu, a marketplace for key opinion leaders. They are also using networks on their favorite platforms to research products and brands before they buy.

Online censorship prevents Chinese consumers easily accessing popular overseas social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, so brands and marketers have to use other platforms. WeChat is a complete ecosystem, and one of the most important.“Within WeChat, brands can provide anything from content, payment methods, and social interactions to live streaming, customer service, a customized e-commerce experience, and more,” says Thomas Graziani, Co-founder of WeChat marketing agency Walk the Chat. Graziani says platforms like WeChat offer luxury brands the opportunity to “claim back the ownership of customers and their data” in a digital space that was once dominated by e-commerce platforms like Tmall and JD.com. “By setting up websites within the WeChat ecosystem, they can provide a much more customized and personal experience to their followers and customers,” he says.

Around 443 million Chinese consumers will shop on their smartphones this year, and their purchases will account for more than 75% of total online retail sales, according to eMarketer.

Every luxury brand in China should know four platforms, as reported by the South China Morning Post:

• WeChat, on which nearly every major luxury label has an official account and now reaches one billion monthly active users. Mini programs, sub-apps that exist within WeChat, allow brands to offer a service without the customer needing to exit the app and access a separate one.

• Weibo, China’s Twitter, which supports viral content, based on hashtags. Brands target the platform’s 411 million monthly active users often by working with celebrities, whose large followings tend to drive conversation.

• Douyin, better known as Tik Tok overseas, is a lot like Musical.ly, as it lets users upload 15-second clips of themselves lip-syncing to music, creating video that they can edit with Snapchat-like filters and share with their followers. Content creators with a certain number of followers can also live-stream on Douyin. It is a key platform for reaching China’s Generation Z, or consumers under 24 years old.

• Red, or Little Red Book, is focused on beauty brands. The app got its start helping millennial Chinese shoppers, mostly women, educate their friends and followers about products sold overseas. It now boasts nearly 100 million users and has its own cross-border e-commerce platform.

U.S. healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, parent company of Janssen Pharmaceutica, has launched its first Johnson & Johnson Institute with virtual reality technology for the Asia-Pacific region in China, as the company said it sees the country as one of its most important markets. Launched on June 14 in Beijing, the Institute serves as the company’s flagship facility in the Asia-Pacific region. It is one of Johnson & Johnson’s five institutes worldwide equipped with VR technology. With cutting-edge technologies and flexible training designs, the Institute said it aims to raise the national level of professional and systematic development in medical education.

“For a medical technology company, China is the future. We will partner with professional societies and senior healthcare professionals to build education programs for the country’s healthcare professionals, especially young professionals,” said Gavin Fox-Smith, Vice President of Global Education Solutions at Johnson & Johnson Medical Asia-Pacific. “Johnson & Johnson has a very strong commitment to building education programs that supplement medical school training in China, by offering a physical environment, the latest technologies and the best people that are able to facilitate the training,” he said. Tens of millions of dollars have already been invested in the Institute.

“The Institute is estimated to accommodate 60,000 visits annually, while we offer live streaming classes to cover a broader area in China,” said Kevin Chen, Vice President of Operations and Education Solution at Johnson & Johnson Medical (China). The institute in Beijing currently includes three unique VR training modules for orthopedic surgery where doctors can simulate operations with the help of VR technology. With the help of VR, young professionals can acquire skills in a more efficient way, the China Daily reports.

Xiaomi has postponed an application for listing its China depositary receipts (CDR). The world’s fourth largest smartphone maker had plans to list the company separately in Hong Kong and mainland China. “We will let the company list in Hong Kong first, and we will look for an opportunity to list the shares via CDRs in China,” the company said in the announcement dated June 18. Xiaomi has not revealed the reasons but sources said that since the CDR is a new product the Chinese authorities needed more time to finalize the scheme before launching. Xiaomi was expected to be the first Chinese technology firm to float CDRs, a new fundraising tool adopted by Beijing to facilitate share flotations by overseas-funded mainland companies. The Chinese watchdog had sent Xiaomi a list of more than 80 questions raising concerns about the pricing of the CDRs. Chinese media reported that Xiaomi is unhappy with the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s requirements about the CDRs.

Xiaomi, founded by Chinese billionaire Lei Jun, was earlier reported to be seeking to net USD5 billion from issuing the CDRs in China and was also targeting a similar amount from a hotly anticipated Hong Kong IPO. Six of China’s largest tech companies – Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, JD.com, NetEase, Baidu – could raise USD60 billion between them through the issuance of CDRs, Goldman Sachs said, assuming each company would raise the equivalent of 5% of its market value. Add the fundraising plans of China’s 164 unicorns – tech companies valued at more than USD1 billion, including Didi Chuxing – as much as USD700 billion could be drained from the markets, the report said.

Xiaomi is likely to raise about USD6.1 billion, far less than the originally expected USD10 billion, from its Hong Kong IPO on July 9, valuing the company at between HKD54 billion and HKD70 billion. That would make it Hong Kong’s largest IPO since Postal Savings Bank of China’s USD7.4 billion float in September 2016, and also the world’s biggest tech listing since Alibaba’s USD25 billion IPO in 2014. Founder and CEO Lei Jun was given a CNY9 billion stock reward before the IPO.

China’s Geely Holding has assumed ownership of a 14.9% voting stake in Swedish truck maker AB Volvo, completing a deal which had been pending since December. Geely bought the stake from Cevian Capital’. Under the terms of the deal, Nomura International and Barclays Capital Securities first acquired Cevian’s shares, with an undertaking to sell them on to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, as the company is formally known, when the necessary regulatory approvals had been received. The Chinese company’s shares in AB Volvo will be held by Geely Sweden Industry Investment AB, according to a disclosure notice.

Geely also announced in February it had bought a stake of almost 10% in Germany’s Daimler, AB Volvo’s main rival.

A historical building that once housed China’s first modern chamber of commerce has reopened after seven years of renovation, with an inaugural exhibition of its own history. The former office of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce is located on the northern bank of Suzhou Creek, an area that was the cradle of commerce and finance in the city about a century ago. The Chamber was founded in February 1912, and once stood among 21 warehouses and 205 companies. It assisted in efforts to draft China’s first business law, and it opened the nation’s first arbitration office, its first commodity exhibition center, its first business library and the first retail mall selling diverse domestic merchandise.

“The chamber strove to drive the prosperity of the local business sector, along with supporting various patriotic campaigns,” said historian Jiang Yihua. The office building was completed in 1916. Some years later, a giant gateway was erected on the south of the building. The compound was the work of Atkinson & Dallas, a British architectural company that thrived in Shanghai in the early 1900s. The gateway’s design was based on the Arch of Titus in Rome, featuring four pillars in the typical Corinthian style of ancient Greece. The three-story red-brick office building itself was in the style of Western classicism. The centerpiece of the facade contains two Ionic pilasters, commonly seen in classical Greek temples. Stone steps lead to the building’s main entrance. A colorful handcrafted mosaic floor adds vintage touches to the foyer, including a giant floral pattern based on a mandala-style design. Wooden stairways feature exquisite decorations.

The highlight of the structure, according to local architectural expert Zheng Shiling, is the two-story high conference hall, which can hold 800 people. It features an 18.3-meter-long ceiling dome, dark wood paneling on walls, and corridors with ornate decorations and elegant railings. The building is located at 470 Beisuzhou Road, the Shanghai Daily reports.