Tencent's Billionaire Founder Pony Ma Talks With Antitrust Authorities in Beijin...

Tencent's Billionaire Founder Pony Ma Talks With Antitrust Authorities in Beijing- PingWest

Tencent's Billionaire Founder Pony Ma Talks With Antitrust Authorities in Beijing

March 26, 2021 6:50 pm

Beijing (PingWest)- Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent Holdings, China’s biggest social media and gaming company, met with Beijing’s antitrust authority to discuss compliance issues.

Answer reporters’ questions following the earnings announcement. Ma said the company was cooperating with regulators on compliance, including reviewing some of Tencent past investment.

“ During the meeting, we had a discussion about a broad range of topics, the main topic of the meeting is to focus on creating a healthy environment for tech innovation in China,” Tencent president Martin Lau Chi Ping said.

The meeting signals broader antitrust crackdown on Chinese tech giants by the country’s officials, which started last year with Alibaba business empire.

Pony Ma was in Beijing this month to attend China’s annual parliamentary meeting and visited the State Administration of Market Regulation to meet with the office head Gan Lin and other senior officials.

At the meeting, the two parties discussed how Tencent could better comply with antitrust rules, Reuters reported, citing source familiar with the matter.

Wu Zhenguo, the governor of SAMR’s anti-monopoly bureau, who was also participated the meeting, expressed concern about some of Tencent’s business practices, and asked the group to comply with antitrust rules, one of source said.

SAMR is currently collecting information and looking into monopolistic practices by WeChat, and investigate on whether WeChat has implemented unfair competition and squeezed out smaller rivals, two of the people said.

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