Hello and welcome to "Life Upclose", your weekly show where we discuss people, lifestyles and China's ever-changing society.

Coming up on this edition:

--Online financing platforms have flourished in China in recent years, posing challenges to conventional banking. We will take a look at the emerging trend among Chinese consumers of managing their money in a Cyber Bank;

--Speaking of money, Guo Jingming is probably one of the most commercially successful writers in China; he is also the most controversial one, with many of his Chinese readers, those born before the 1980s in particular, think the young writer has not fully developed in literature and his showy persona is unacceptable by traditional Chinese standards. A little later on today's show, we will get to know a bit more about Guo Jingming, whose stellar career has been dogged by controversy.

Interesting stories lie ahead, so stay tuned.

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Intro:

A recent survey shows that about 66 percent of Chinese are planning to divert some proportion of their bank deposits to Internet finance products.

The online survey, conducted by the China Youth Daily newspaper with over 10,000 respondents, also indicates that about 84.7 percent of Chinese people have invested in some kind of Internet wealth management product.

Eighty-two percent of the people surveyed said they are content with their investment income and most of them listed higher return rates and greater convenience as major reasons to choose Internet finance.

Over 70 percent of the respondents were born in the 1980s and 1990s. They seem to be interested in taking "new" risks, saying online investments will not only save time, but also enable them to perform small-asset investments between 10 and 20 thousand Yuan, which could never be realized in China's traditional banks.

We finds out why internet financing is now such a hit in China.

Rpt:

Xu Xiao, a resident in LuoYang city, central China's Henan Province, started a new hobby after spending 22-thousand Yuan, or 3,600 US dollars, to buy into Yu'E Bao, a popular online money-market fund.

Each morning, the 28-year-old checks her Alipay, China's Paypal, account through an app on her mobile phone to find how much more dividends have been added to it. Despite the small amount, Xu says she is filled with joy every time she finds new earnings.

"It's very convenient: I don't need to go to the bank to make investments. All I need to do is get on the internet through my mobile phone and click on the screen. The interest rate is much higher than that of the banks."

As a typical fan of Yu'E Bao - which is designed to make it easy for Internet users to invest idle cash from their Alipay accounts and earn a higher interest rate than what traditional bank savings accounts offer �C Xu's enthusiasm is what makes the concept such a success in China and has made "Internet finance" a new catchphrase in the business world.

Xie Ke ,a manager from Ever Bright Bank's Luo Yang Branch, explains in detail what Yu'E Bao is:

"Yu'E Bao is an internet money-market fund co-developed by Tian Hong Asset Management Corporation and Alipay, the online payment arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba. Basically, it offers higher interest returns for investors than traditional deposit accounts with banks do. For example, Yu'E Bao could offer over 6 percent in annualized returns, while the big four Chinese commercial banks only offer around 3 percent yields for a one-year-term deposit. In addition, the investment threshold is one Yuan and investors can redeem their money anytime."

According to Tian Hong Asset Management Corporation, 51 percent of which is owned by Alibabam, Yu'E Bao has become the largest money market fund in China within four months of launching last June. In just 260 days, the Internet money fund has accumulated 350 billion Yuan and gathered a colossal customer base of 81 million users, surpassing the number of China's share investors.

No wonder other internet companies have rushed to follow e-commerce king Alibaba by providing similar financial offerings.

Baidu, Inc,, China's biggest Internet search provider, also has moved into financial services, launching an online finance product called Baifa in late October.

In fact, Baifa's rumored annual yield of 8 percent attracted so many prospective customers that Baidu reported that their financial service brought the company about 1 billion yuan within five hours of the launch.

Online retail giant, Jingdong.com, also has made Internet finance one of the main engines in driving the company's future growth.

Just as the Internet has changed the landscape of retail business around the world, insiders believe it will reshape China's financial sector.

Professor Qian Jun, from Shanghai-based Jiaotong University, views the widespread use of Internet financing as a very positive trend:

"Overall I think it's positive; I think it can play a positive role in the near future. I believe that two sectors, one is the payment sector, basically, it facilitates transactions, you do online much quicker, we see there is already a big boom in this sector; the other sector which is more interesting, is the online lending, because more and more they are behaving like banks, they collect money and they invest them. So I think in the near future, this is an important role for this sector, because, there are still ways for the formal banking and market sector to mature and develop in that they can provide a more mature and diversified basket products for investors. We know a lot of Chinese investors they have the capital but other than the stock market, which is not doing great, or the real estate market, which is clearly risky, they don't have a whole lot of opportunities to go. And also for many good small firms, they have very hard time to secure lending from banks.