Updated: China’s tech giants announce plans for hongbao battle ahead of Spring Festival

Updated 7 Feb. 2017: This post is updated to include rumors about Alipay’s plan for launching gold Hongbao.

The Lunar New Year (aka Spring Festival or 春节 chunjie) is just two weeks away and Chinese internet tycoons are poised to enter the latest showdown (in Chinese) in the recurring red envelope (红包 hongbao) war.

Tencent’s plan for instant messaging tool QQ combines the cash-giving tradition with fitness tracking, another popular feature. Like WeChat Sports, QQ can read motion-tracking data from your phone and with every 100 steps, users get a chance to draw their share of RMB 200 million (around $32 million) in cash and RMB 4 billion in virtual coupons. The principle is simple: the more you walk, the more benefits you can get.

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