China's tech giants have kicked off this year's digital "red envelope war" for the upcoming Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, aiming for a bigger presence in the market, Beijing Daily reported on Feb. 7.

(Photo/CCTV.com)

More players have come to adopt this new tradition in China over the years, with increasingly larger sums of money having been pledged, making this year's "red envelope war" fiercer than that of any other previous year.

Besides traditional mobile payment giants, such as Alipay and WeChat, latecomers including popular short-video sharing platforms Douyin and Kuaishou, as well as Internet giant Baidu, have all promised a large amount of money and have developed increasingly innovative digital red envelope games to attract more mobile users.

Preliminary statistics show that the total amount that Alipay, Kuaishou, Douyin, and Baidu have promised to disburse for this year's red envelope games has almost reached 7 billion yuan (about $1.07 billion), while the digital red envelope race last year saw a total amount of approximately 6 billion yuan spent by 10 Internet companies in all.

After completing certain tasks, such as collecting virtual cards or lanterns, participants in the digital red envelope activities can win cash or, alternatively, coupons that can be used for online shopping.

With the digital "red envelop war" having continued to gain popularity in China in recent years, many television stations were also attracted by the opportunity to join the battlefield this year.

Douyin recently announced its cooperation with China Central Television (CCTV) in the latter's Spring Festival gala program, becoming the exclusive partner of the most watched TV program in China during the Spring Festival holiday. The short-video sharing platform will disburse a total of 2 billion yuan this year, with 1.2 billion to be given out during the interactive activities taking place during the gala.

This news was soon followed by a similar move by Douyin's rival, Kuaishou, which announced its plans to cooperate with 10 Spring Festival gala programs hosted by different provincial TV stations, while distributing red envelopes worth 2.1 billion yuan among its users.

As an annual event bearing paramount significance to the Chinese people, the Spring Festival gala has already become the most popular TV program during the Spring Festival holiday. Therefore, all the Internet giants have plans to take advantage of the event in order to attract more users, according to experts.

Back in 2015, WeChat cooperated with CCTV during that year's Spring Festival gala program. Whenever a signal appeared during the show, WeChat users had the chance to shake their mobile phones to win cash prizes. Throughout the show, viewers in 185 countries shook their phones an unbelievable 11 billion times.

Through various games played during the "red envelope war", platforms can encourage a growing number of users' to adopt and increase their reliance on their services, as well as attracting more new users. For example, Alipay allows users to directly share their virtual cards with each other. Therefore, many will choose to add more friends to their contact list on the platform or invite more people to join the platform.

According to Zhang Nan, Douyin's CEO, by cooperating with the Spring Festival gala program hosted by CCTV, Douyin aims to further promote its goal of enriching people's social life.

It's believed that there might be other motives for entering into cooperation, as the video sharing platform just launched a payment function in January and a red envelope function a few days ago. Users who want to send red envelopes to their friends on the platform can only use Douyin's own payment function, rather than third-party payment platforms like WeChat and Alipay.