Ma the Chinese business tycoon

Shantou  the Southern China city born, Pony Ma, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, the world’s sixth-biggest tech company which is Facebook, Apple Pay, Spotify, gaming and reading  rolled into one, which last year generated $23bn revenue and has world’s biggest chunk of data, in China despite government surveillance. Ma’s Tencent Holdings ranks among China’s largest businesses by market capitalisation.

Tencent’s messaging app with their search engine is WeChat, which has over 1bn active users per month, who spent one and half hours a day every day. But tech companies including Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com all benefit from Beijing’s desire to foster national tech champions, and help with monitoring and censoring content the regime regards as undesirable and also helps them to block Facebook, Google’ search engine, and Twitter.

Pony Ma, who is worth $47.7bn, says “ Follow our party National People’s Congress and start your business. We are a great supporter of government in terms of information security. We try to have better management and control of the internet”.

When Beijing accused the popular game, Honour of Kings, Tencent responded by limiting the time youngsters can play, calling the new rules “ most serious anti-addiction measures in history”.

Tencent employs about 40, 000 and their top executive on a team-building trek through the Gobi desert in 2016, where stars are rewarded yet criticisms and debates are also welcomed.

Recently at the Fortune Global Forum in  Guangzhou, Pony highlighted the way Tencent empowers developers to build their own apps and services on its open platform without charging rental fees. With his desire to go global Pony rolled out WeChat Pay, its online payment service, in overseas markets mainly aimed at tourists. Last year he got stakes in Snap and electric vehicle maker Tesla.

Mr. Ma’s idol is none other than late Steve Jobs.