Wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses and a red T-shirt, an eight-year-old Chinese boy is logged in for an online coding lesson -- as the teacher. Vita has set up a coding tutorial channel on the Chinese video streaming site Bilibili since August and has so far garnered nearly 60,000 followers and over one million views. He is among a growing number of children in China who are learning coding even before they enter primary school. The trend has been fuelled by parents' belief that coding skills will be essential for Chinese teenagers given the government's technological drive. 'Coding's not that easy but also not that difficult -- at least not as difficult as you have imagined,' says Vita, who lives in Shanghai.

Danish toymaker Lego is teaming up with Chinese internet giant Tencent to jointly develop online games and potentially a social network aimed at Chinese children. Privately-owned Lego has seen a slowdown in sales growth in recent years, but the Chinese market has been a bright spot with sales growing 25-30 per cent in 2016. It is competing with Barbie maker Mattel and Hasbro, the firm behind My Little Pony, for a slice of the $31bn (£22bn) toys and games market in China. Lego said on Monday the partnership with Tencent, China's biggest social network and gaming company, aimed to create a safe online environment covering content, platforms, and experiences tailored for Chinese children. "What we are looking for now with Tencent is just to find more creative ways... (of) reaching children, and creating bespoke content with Tencent, in this case, video games," Jacob Kragh, head of Lego in China, told Reuters on Monday at joint event with Tencent in Beijing. The partnership includes developing a Lego video zone for children on the Tencent video platform, as well as developing and operating Lego branded licensed games, the toymaker said.