Summary:

This week’s chart shows the number of active accounts on mobile applications (such as education, office, entertainment, gaming, etc.) in six selected provinces in China from Q4 2019 to Q4 2020.

Highlights:

• Beijing took the lead in this indicator across time and demonstrated an increasing gap with the provinces behind it. The top position might be ascribed to its booming new media industry.
• Zhejiang, Guangdong and Shanghai showed a decrease in this indicator in Q1 2020 and recovered since Q2 2020. The negative changes in their numbers of active accounts seem counter-intuitive, as most economic activities during the impact period had to be conducted online. A plausible reason for the decrease is that the annual migration during the Spring Festival results in a shift of online user distribution across Mainland provinces.
• This argument could be supported by the trend of Henan province. As a labour outsourcing province, Henan experienced a rise in mobile application accounts in Q1 2020, due to the returning labour from the Eastern Coastal provinces during the Spring Festival period.
• As the center of the pandemic, Hubei has demonstrated an inverted V-shaped curve, as most of the activities are conducted online during the lockdown period.

Article By Xuyao ZHANG

Graphic By Yixuan GE