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A review by nickfourtimes
Influence Empire: The Story of Tencent and China's Tech Ambition by Lulu Yilun Chen
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
3.0
1) "Back in the real world, Pony didn't have a clue what his startup's business model would be. The rough idea was that they would create a product that combines the pager and the then-nascent internet. Pony reconnected with two other classmates: Chen Yidan, who was working at the Shenzhen quarantine bureau, and Xu Chenye, who was part of the telecommunications bureau. They had one big problem: none of them knew anything about sales.
Enter Jason Zeng Liqing. Unlike the initial founding quartet of self-proclaimed nerds, Jason was an outgoing, articulate and towering presence. A cadre at the Shenzhen telecommunications bureau, he once convinced a local property developer to invest 1.2 million yuan in building the first walled-off compound in the country to be entirely covered by broadband. The five clicked, and Jason took on responsibility for sales.
Pony would take charge of product and strategy. That division of duties between the founders, and Jason's own dominant personality, planted the seeds of a rift that would eventually see Jason marginalised.
Pony registered a startup for 500,000 yuan, equivalent to sixty-two years of the average Chinese wage at the time. His dad helped him file for the company name. After trying out three that were already taken, he requested the moniker Teng Xun - the first character alluding to part of Pony's Chinese name (Ma Huateng), the second meaning speed and information. In English, the name Tencent paid homage to Lucent Technologies. Because both Pony and Zhang Zhidong hadn't officially resigned at the time, they put Pony's mother down as owner - for about a year, the Chairman of Tencent was his mum, Huang Huiqing."
2) "How times have changed. Nowhere was that transformation more evident than in the capital of Beijing itself. That national psyche is reflected in the speed of change the capital constantly undergoes. Every few months, it's stippled with a new skyscraper, subway station, night club or luxury residential complex with names like Palm Springs or Park Avenue. In a city where the pollution can be so thick with particles that the act of breathing is akin to eating air, the willow-flanked streets spewing catkins in spring are bulldozed every few months and reborn with monikers like Innovation Street.
The landlocked city still shrouds you in the scent of sulphur dioxide and coal the moment you step off the plane. For those passing through, it presages coughs and rhinitis; some would joke 'ten years off your health.' But to me it's always the scent of home - burning stubble in the wheat fields outside the Fourth Ring Road, where the Olympic Bird's Nest Stadium now stands; kebab stalls tucked in the hutongs around the iconic Drum Tower, fanned by grizzled migrants with pastel-hued blow-dryers; whiffs of petrichor washing away the humidity after the first autumn rain; and tobacco-choked night clubs near the Worker's Stadium, where Lamborghinis moonlight as Uber rides to pick up girls. One of my foreign friends calls it 'the developing economy scent.' To me, in an ironic way, it's the scent of hope and ambition."
3) "In late November 2013, Pony brought up a concept known as Internet+ that would be elevated by the government to a national strategic level within two years. The idea was you could topple and revolutionise any industry if you linked it with the internet. Link the web with retail and you get e-commerce, with entertainment and you get online gaming, But there could be a lot more sectors that could be transformed, such as transportation, logistics, manufacturing and - most immediately - neighbourhood services."
4) "In early 2012, Wang and Cheng saw a smartphone app called Momo, a Tinder-like dating app that allowed people to identify the location of other users on an online map. Wang says that the notion of tracking attractive females on phones piqued their interest in the enormous potential of a smartphone's GPS capabilities."
5) "'The most important thing is to drive yourself to a state of despair, and then God will open a window for you. So up till today, we think that money is just one element of resources, but it is never the most important. There will always be someone who is richer than you. The most important thing is your persistence,' said Cheng."
6) "Wang says Didi contemplated expanding into the US. Instead, in September 2015, it invested $100 million in Uber's American rival, Lyft.
According to Wang, it was less about undermining Uber than about gaining negotiating leverage. 'The purpose of them grabbing a lock of our hair and us grabbing their beard isn't really to kill the other person, he says.
'Everyone is just trying to win a right to negotiate in the future.'"
7) "The metaverse, in its simplest terms, is embodied by the world depicted in Stephen Spielberg's Ready Player One, where people live and play in an immersive virtual reality. It's a place where they're free to parachute off Mount Everest, ascend the Great Pyramids of Giza, race against King Kong across New York in a sports car. It's a place where people could spend the better part of their day at work, presiding over meetings with hundreds of others, even (eventually) feel another person's grip via special suits with sensors that can physically manifest their online avatars actions in the real world."
8) "Pony's conundrum is how to propel Tencent into the future while appeasing his political masters - an incredibly delicate manoeuvre with unimaginable stakes. Given the extraordinary achievements of the past two decades, some may argue Pony is duty-bound to try. Who better than the visionary founder of the world's largest online entertainment empire to square that circle, to fashion a formula that will work for a fifth of the global population?
And so the billionaire might not be bowing out anytime soon. Perhaps it's not even up to him. For the Party, it would be much easier to have one mighty all-knowing yet obedient company to rule all than play whack-a-mole with potentially disruptive forces."
Enter Jason Zeng Liqing. Unlike the initial founding quartet of self-proclaimed nerds, Jason was an outgoing, articulate and towering presence. A cadre at the Shenzhen telecommunications bureau, he once convinced a local property developer to invest 1.2 million yuan in building the first walled-off compound in the country to be entirely covered by broadband. The five clicked, and Jason took on responsibility for sales.
Pony would take charge of product and strategy. That division of duties between the founders, and Jason's own dominant personality, planted the seeds of a rift that would eventually see Jason marginalised.
Pony registered a startup for 500,000 yuan, equivalent to sixty-two years of the average Chinese wage at the time. His dad helped him file for the company name. After trying out three that were already taken, he requested the moniker Teng Xun - the first character alluding to part of Pony's Chinese name (Ma Huateng), the second meaning speed and information. In English, the name Tencent paid homage to Lucent Technologies. Because both Pony and Zhang Zhidong hadn't officially resigned at the time, they put Pony's mother down as owner - for about a year, the Chairman of Tencent was his mum, Huang Huiqing."
2) "How times have changed. Nowhere was that transformation more evident than in the capital of Beijing itself. That national psyche is reflected in the speed of change the capital constantly undergoes. Every few months, it's stippled with a new skyscraper, subway station, night club or luxury residential complex with names like Palm Springs or Park Avenue. In a city where the pollution can be so thick with particles that the act of breathing is akin to eating air, the willow-flanked streets spewing catkins in spring are bulldozed every few months and reborn with monikers like Innovation Street.
The landlocked city still shrouds you in the scent of sulphur dioxide and coal the moment you step off the plane. For those passing through, it presages coughs and rhinitis; some would joke 'ten years off your health.' But to me it's always the scent of home - burning stubble in the wheat fields outside the Fourth Ring Road, where the Olympic Bird's Nest Stadium now stands; kebab stalls tucked in the hutongs around the iconic Drum Tower, fanned by grizzled migrants with pastel-hued blow-dryers; whiffs of petrichor washing away the humidity after the first autumn rain; and tobacco-choked night clubs near the Worker's Stadium, where Lamborghinis moonlight as Uber rides to pick up girls. One of my foreign friends calls it 'the developing economy scent.' To me, in an ironic way, it's the scent of hope and ambition."
3) "In late November 2013, Pony brought up a concept known as Internet+ that would be elevated by the government to a national strategic level within two years. The idea was you could topple and revolutionise any industry if you linked it with the internet. Link the web with retail and you get e-commerce, with entertainment and you get online gaming, But there could be a lot more sectors that could be transformed, such as transportation, logistics, manufacturing and - most immediately - neighbourhood services."
4) "In early 2012, Wang and Cheng saw a smartphone app called Momo, a Tinder-like dating app that allowed people to identify the location of other users on an online map. Wang says that the notion of tracking attractive females on phones piqued their interest in the enormous potential of a smartphone's GPS capabilities."
5) "'The most important thing is to drive yourself to a state of despair, and then God will open a window for you. So up till today, we think that money is just one element of resources, but it is never the most important. There will always be someone who is richer than you. The most important thing is your persistence,' said Cheng."
6) "Wang says Didi contemplated expanding into the US. Instead, in September 2015, it invested $100 million in Uber's American rival, Lyft.
According to Wang, it was less about undermining Uber than about gaining negotiating leverage. 'The purpose of them grabbing a lock of our hair and us grabbing their beard isn't really to kill the other person, he says.
'Everyone is just trying to win a right to negotiate in the future.'"
7) "The metaverse, in its simplest terms, is embodied by the world depicted in Stephen Spielberg's Ready Player One, where people live and play in an immersive virtual reality. It's a place where they're free to parachute off Mount Everest, ascend the Great Pyramids of Giza, race against King Kong across New York in a sports car. It's a place where people could spend the better part of their day at work, presiding over meetings with hundreds of others, even (eventually) feel another person's grip via special suits with sensors that can physically manifest their online avatars actions in the real world."
8) "Pony's conundrum is how to propel Tencent into the future while appeasing his political masters - an incredibly delicate manoeuvre with unimaginable stakes. Given the extraordinary achievements of the past two decades, some may argue Pony is duty-bound to try. Who better than the visionary founder of the world's largest online entertainment empire to square that circle, to fashion a formula that will work for a fifth of the global population?
And so the billionaire might not be bowing out anytime soon. Perhaps it's not even up to him. For the Party, it would be much easier to have one mighty all-knowing yet obedient company to rule all than play whack-a-mole with potentially disruptive forces."