A man in a traditional Treasury God costume hands out red packets, the lucky money, at the annual Chinese New Year Parade in the Chinatown, Washington, D.C., on Feb. 21, 1999. (Photo : Getty Images)
The Organization Department of the Communist Party of China is using technology to follow a Chinese tradition of giving away red envelopes with money inside. It is a tradition practiced during the Lunar New Year, which falls for 2016 on Feb. 8.
Using a WeChat account, the party is giving away 300,000 yuan worth of lucky money. However, to access the lucky money, WeChat members must use phrases from Chinese President Xi Jinping as password. The phrases are sourced from Xi’s 2016 New Year speech, reported Global Times.
On Thursday, the password was “as long as we persevere, dreams will come true.” There would be different passwords for Friday and Saturday. The activity likely is for three days only in the run up to the start of the Spring Festival.
To get the lucky money, the recipient must use Alipay, the online payment service of Alibaba. The e-commerce giant stressed that the lucky money is not connected to the Communist Party’s membership dues. The amount was raised by Alipay and the Xinhua News Agency’s website on their own, reported The South China Morning Post, now owned by Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
The activity is the party’s way of extending its good luck to Chinese netizens on the Year of the Monkey. Latest figures said that more than 10,000 Chinese netizens “liked” the announcement, while more 100,000 viewed it. Among the provinces in China that have said it would participate in the WeChat activity are Xi’an, Wuhan, Nanjing and Guangzhou.
The Communist Party of China is catching up with Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and Tencent which developed a few years ago mobile apps that allow Chinese netizens to give red envelopes with lucky money via electronic means. In 2015, WeChat had logged more than 1 billion transactions that were related to the lucky money distribution.
