Apple's iTunes platform now allows customers in the People's Republic to pay for their mobile apps and music purchases with their Chinese bank cards. However, instead of paying for each purchase as you go, you'll now have to first top-up your iTunes account in pre-set amounts of 50, 100, 300, or 500 RMB. Payments via Alipay or Union Pay are also not currently available. Steven Millward of Penn Olson dissects Apple's move:

The move is also designed to combat piracy of iOS apps in China, which has been thriving under the previous inconveniences/restrictions. Just this week we saw a major Chinese web company, Tencent (HKG:0700), launch a shanzhai iTunes app that helps you avoid Apple’s tightly-controlled ecosystem, and there’s the Chinese-made iTools desktop app that assists in the jailbreaking and adding of pirated/cracked apps. more ›

We've heard that the iTunes app store can sometimes be strangely stringent about what type of applications get to be sold there - so we're surprised that this one made the cut. Stuck Pixel's Cute Asian Girls app gives you hundreds of photos of pretty Asian girls in various poses for an introductory price of 99 cents (roughly 6 RMB). more ›

Sure, here in China there's legitimate download sites and there's mp3.baidu.com, but if you've ever wanted to straggle the fence between legality and piracy, there's a way to do that too. Taobao has long been harboring many iTunes store gift voucher hackers, selling $200 USD (1,368 RMB) gift cards for as little as 18RMB. more ›

Surprise, surprise! Talks between China Mobile and Apple over bringing the iPhone to China (legally) have stalled yet again - this time over the iTunes apps store. Allegedly, China Mobile is itching to operate the application store itself in a typical ploy to retain as much control as possible. Also, unlike their Western counterparts, Chinese phone users don't typically have credit cards, preferring to pay for things by depositing money into their mobile phone accounts. Add that to already ongoing issues like figuring out which of the three 3G networks the iPhone plays the nicest with, and it's probably safe to say we won't be seeing any Made-for-China goodness soon. more ›

• Chinese online trading site, Alibaba, plans to expand to Europe. The company behind the site will open a London office, as part of a project called "Road to London", which aims to encourage Chinese companies to invest in the next Olympic host city.
• As we told you earlier, an album called Songs For Tibet, was released on iTunes just three days before the Olympics, causing its online store to be blocked in China. Now however, iTunes Music Store has been reopened, in a new and Songs For Tibet-free version, somehow the censors have managed to block access to this album, without blocking the entire site.
• Baidu's new e-commerce platform will offer 10.000 beta testers free online stores and domain names.