Large companies continue to invest in and buy other studios, trying to diversify their businesses and increase their revenues. #BILIBILI HK960M NETWORK TAPTAP BILIBILILIAOTECHCRUNCH ANDROID#įor example, ByteDance acquired Moonton, known for its MOBA Mobile Legends, for $4 billion last month.Li had little choice but to take the bad with the good. Built to be everything for everyone, WeChat is indispensable.įor most Chinese people in China, WeChat is a sort of all-in-one app: a way to swap stories, talk to old classmates, pay bills, coordinate with co-workers, post envy-inducing vacation photos, buy stuff and get news. For the millions of members of China’s diaspora, it is the bridge that links them to the trappings of home, from family chatter to food photos. Woven through it all is the ever more muscular surveillance and propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party. As WeChat has become ubiquitous, it has become a powerful tool of social control, a way for Chinese authorities to guide and police what people say, whom they talk to and what they read. It has even extended Beijing’s reach beyond its borders. When secret police issue threats abroad, they often do so on WeChat. When military researchers working undercover in the United States needed to talk to China’s embassies, they used WeChat, according to court documents. The party coordinates via WeChat with members studying overseas. While the two apps are lumped in the same category by the Trump administration, they represent two distinct approaches to the Great Firewall that blocks Chinese access to foreign websites. The hipper, better-known TikTok was designed for the wild world outside of China’s cloistering censorship it exists only beyond China’s borders. By hiving off an independent app to win over global users, TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, created the best bet any Chinese start-up has had to compete with the internet giants in the West. The separation of TikTok from its cousin apps in China, along with deep popularity, has fed corporate campaigns in the United States to save it, even as Beijing potentially upended any deals by labeling its core technology a national security priority. Though WeChat has different rules for users inside and outside of China, it remains a single, unified social network spanning China’s Great Firewall. In that sense, it has helped bring Chinese censorship to the world. A ban would cut dead millions of conversations between family and friends, a reason one group has filed a lawsuit to block the Trump administration’s efforts. It would also be an easy victory for American policymakers seeking to push back against China’s techno-authoritarian overreach. Read More on the Relations Between Asia and the U.S.
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