Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) said an employee is under investigation for alleged corruption in his personal dealings, rejecting a report that the probe involved the unauthorized transfer of WeChat (微信) data.
The probe of Zhang Feng (張峰) does not involve Tencent’s WeChat messaging service, a spokesperson said. The Wall Street Journal had reported earlier that Zhang had been detained for allegedly sharing personal data collected by WeChat with Sun Lijun (孫力軍), a former vice public security minister being investigated by Beijing.
Zhang, who had been identified as a vice president in a November 2018 statement by a local municipal government, has never held a senior position and is not a vice president, the Tencent spokesperson said.
Investigators are looking into what type of data Zhang may have shared with Sun and what the government official may have done with the information, the Journal said.
Tencent said earlier this month it fired more than 100 employees on suspicion of graft over a series of probes over the past year and reported more than 40 workers to police.
The company’s rare revelation underscores Beijing’s increasingly tough stance on corruption among government cadres and corporate executives.
China is also tightening scrutiny over its most powerful tech corporations including Tencent and arch-rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), seeking to rein in their growing power in a plethora of sectors from finance to e-commerce and the sharing economy.
Pony Ma (馬化騰), the company’s chairman and co-founder, is not under probe, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. He has been free to leave China and traveled to Singapore last year, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing a private matter.
Shares of Tencent, Asia’s most valuable company, fell as much as 1.6 percent before paring losses in Hong Kong trading.
“It definitely will trigger some profit taking for the stock given it has surged significantly this year,” CMB International Securities Ltd (招銀國際證券) strategist Daniel So (蘇沛豐) said. “Although the case involves corruption which is a sensitive topic, it seems that the impact will not be as deep as Alibaba at this moment as it is linked to an individual rather than the Internet business. Investors will still embrace the stock.”
Meanwhile, Alibaba founder Jack Ma (馬雲) was seen teeing off in recent weeks at the Sun Valley Golf Resort, a secluded 27-hole course on the Chinese island of Hainan, according to people familiar with the matter.
It is the first known Ma sighting since the former English teacher joined a live-streamed video chat with rural educators on Jan. 20. While that appearance helped quiet talk of Ma’s detention, speculation about his standing with the Chinese Communist Party has continued to swirl as authorities clamp down on his sprawling business empire.
Ma’s golf outing adds to recent evidence that the outspoken entrepreneur has — for now at least — avoided nightmare scenarios like jail time or a government seizure of his assets.
Another positive clue emerged this week from Softbank Group Corp founder Masayoshi Son, a longtime friend of Ma’s who was among the earliest investors in Alibaba. Son said during Softbank’s quarterly earnings presentation on Monday that he has remained in touch with Ma. While he did not talk about the Chinese billionaire’s whereabouts, Son said Ma likes to draw and has been sharing his sketches via chat.
Alibaba shares rose as much as 1.5 percent in New York on Wednesday, closing at a more than 10-week high.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day