China: Communist party doles out cash

China’s Communist Party has found a new way to court technology-savvy web users, setting phrases by President Xi Jinping as the password for electronic “red envelopes” of online cash offered ahead of the Lunar New Year.

In China, elderly family members traditionally give children red envelopes of cash, known as lucky money, during the holiday — which starts on Monday — to wish them good fortune in the coming year.

With Chinese e-commerce booming, Internet giants Tencent and Alibaba both enable users to send lucky money electronically, and the Communist Party has jumped on the bandwagon, teaming up with both the companies.

A total of 300,000 yuan ($50,000) is being made available over three days on Alipay, the online payment service of Alibaba, founded by Jack Ma, one of China’s richest men.

To stand a chance of collecting it, users must get a passphrase from an account owned by the ruling party’s powerful organisation department and run by the official Xinhua news agency on WeChat, Tencent’s hugely popular instant messaging service.