Dark clouds appeared on the horizon last Sunday for employees of China Unicom: their long-expected year-end bonuses may have been canceled.

This widespread rumor, reported on Chinese tech sites, came with apparent evidence — what appears to be an internal communique from the national mobile carrier. It said the company's loss in 2016 was 70 million yuan (roughly 10 million US dollars), a number that jolted the management and led to a cut in salary for contracted employees in December and a slicing of bonuses.

CGTN cannot currently confirm the veracity of the communique, but Chinese IT media platform kkj.cn (formerly known as mydrivers.com) published some analysis of China Unicom's performance, which may give us some hints about the company's current state. According to reports released by all three major Chinese network carriers in November, China Unicom had the smallest number of users, which was 99 million, 20 percent of China Mobile's, and about 15 percent less than China Telecom's. Moreover, the number of China Unicom's broadband network users declined by 70,000 in the month, ranking bottom among the three carriers.‍

The communique also encouraged employees to raise the quality of their work, and promised to compensate them if they can achieve the projected aim of 2016 in the first quarter of 2017.

China Unicom was overwhelmed by China Mobile in the pre-3G era. But it reestablished market position as the only carrier allowed to use WCDMA, a 3G standard that is compatible with most smartphones worldwide, allowing users to choose from a wide variety of phone models. This changed during the adaptation of 4G in China, when more and more mainstream cellphones became "full-netcom" — compliant with all major carriers. China Unicom at this point lost its killer feature.