The “ice bucket challenge” craze that’s flooded social media to raise awareness and money for ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s disease) has now spread to China. Several of the country’s top CEOs – Xiaomi’s Lei Jun, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, Qihoo’s Zhou Hongyi, and many more – will emulate their western counterparts – Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos – in dumping a bucket of ice cold water over their heads and posting the video on Weibo (hat-tip to QQ Tech).
The smartphone brand Lei Jun founded four years ago was deemed Xiaomi, or “small rice” in Mandarin Chinese. In that short stretch of time its influence has proved to be anything but slight. Its handsets, and in particular their diminishing price, have taken Asia’s vast mobile market by storm.
