Starbucks

Luckin Coffee, once hailed as China’s homegrown rival to Starbucks, has found itself in seriously hot water.  The chain was forced to file for bankruptcy earlier last month amid claims it engaged in the phenomenon of “adding water.”  The term “adding water,” or jia shuifen, harkens to a practice of manipulating accounting statistics to create false narratives. In Luckin’s case, it involved the alleged fabrication of more than US$340million in revenue to give investors the impression it was experiencing miraculous growth.  It is an ignoble end to a company that grew at record-breaking speed and - if only for a brief period - represented the global ambitions of many homegrown Chinese brands.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, China Trends takes the pulse of the Chinese social media to keep you in the loop of what the world’s biggest internet population is talking about. Coins for coffee China’s digital payment revolution may have gone too far for some. Starbucks China was forced to apologize over the weekend after a viral video showed an employee refusing to accept coins as payment. The footage, which was shot at an unspecified location in China, sparked a backlash on social media from users who pointed out that it was illegal to reject coins or cash under Chinese law. In China, mobile payments have largely replaced cash as the norm for anything from dining at restaurants to paying tax