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A manager at Tencent Holdings Ltd., China’s most valuable exchange-listed company, has been detained by Chinese authorities as part of an investigation into a high-profile corruption case involving one of the country’s former top law enforcers, people familiar with the matter. with the case. said.
Zhang Feng has been under investigation by China’s antigraft inspector since early last year for alleged unauthorized sharing of personal data collected by Tencent’s social media app WeChat. They said that Mr. Zhang is suspected of passing on WeChat data to former Deputy Minister of Public Security Sun Lijun, who is being investigated by Beijing for unknown violations of Communist Party rules.
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Investigators are looking at what type of data Mr. Zhang apparently with Mr. Sun would have shared and what Mr. Sun could have done with it, people said.
Tencent, which is listed in Hong Kong with a market capitalization of about $ 900 billion, confirmed on Thursday that Zhang is being investigated. The case “relates to allegations of personal corruption and has nothing to do with WeChat or Weixin,” a spokesman for The Wall Street Journal said in a statement. Weixin is the sister app of WeChat for the Chinese market.
There is after mr. Zhang refers as a vice president of Tencent in a statement released by the municipal government of Zhangjiakou, a city near Beijing, in which he is described as having met the mayor of the city in October 2018.
Tencent said Zhang has never held a senior executive position in the company or a management position.
It could not be determined where Mr. Zhang is not now. He could not be reached for comment. Mr. Sun did not respond to a request for comment sent by China’s antigraft inspectors, the Central Commission on Discipline Inspection, and the Council of State Information Bureau.
WHAT IS TENSENT?
The case of mr. Zhang highlights how China’s largest technology companies could become entangled in political battles at the highest level of China’s Communist Party. Businesses like Tencent have access to sought-after data, as well as insight into the users who provide it. Beijing’s concerns are growing that technology companies could misuse the data or share it inappropriately, even though authorities sometimes request access to it for their own purposes.
About the alleged offenses of mr. Sun spearheaded the anti-corruption inspectors and said in April that he was suspected of violating the law. He is one of the key security officials investigated since Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched an extensive anti-law enforcement campaign last year.
The authorities have not confirmed that Mr. Zhang is not investigated.
While the investigation into Mr. Zhang unfolds, Pony Ma, the founder and CEO of Tencent, has not been seen in public on mainland China or in person during major public events. The people familiar with the matter spent most of his time in Hong Kong.
Mr. Mom is not accused of any offense. He did not respond to requests for comment. The Chinese Information Bureau for the State Council and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection did not respond to comments.
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According to people familiar with the matter, Zhang joined Tencent in 2018. Born in 1968, he spent most of his career in a department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which oversaw the appointment of top party officials, according to the submission of stock markets of a state-owned company in Shenzhen where he worked before moving to Tencent.
As CEO of Tencent in charge of government affairs, Mr. According to one of the people, Zhang met with Chinese government officials and was responsible for handling the company’s relationship with ministries in Beijing.
Tencent’s mobile app WeChat is the dominant social media platform in China. Its chat and online payment features make it an indispensable part of daily life for hundreds of millions of Chinese people.
Over the years, Tencent has amassed a huge amount of data by processing the chats and financial transactions of 1.2 billion monthly active users, mostly in China. This has made WeChat a powerful oversight tool for the Chinese government, regulating Tencent and regularly suppressing divergent views on WeChat, the Journal reported.
More recently, however, Chinese authorities have become increasingly concerned that Tencent and other technology giants’ data collection systems give them unique insight into and power over Chinese society, challenging the Communist Party’s desire to monopolize such information. In recent weeks, China has introduced new antitrust rules on Internet platforms, which analysts say are partly motivated by Beijing’s effort to regain control of users’ personal data.
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Mr. Ma’s lack of public appearances – which comes on the heels of China’s recent crackdown on another billionaire entrepreneur, Jack Ma, who is not related to Pony Ma – has worried current and former Tencent employees about the reason why the founder of the company was not yet. seen at events.
Mr. Ma, who also has his Chinese name, Ma Huateng, is attending the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in August 2019, which has been publicly documented.
Mr. Since December 2019, Mom has only performed virtual appearances at Tencent’s annual general meetings – an interruption of his usual practice of attending such events in person. Employees are told that Mom is recovering from a back injury. Mr. Ma, a representative of the National People’s Congress, was absent from last year’s legislative procedure in May, citing health reasons.
While personal meetings on the mainland of China were largely resumed by mid-2020, Mr. Mom missed a ceremony in October to celebrate the 40th anniversary of China’s first special economic zone in Shenzhen, where Tencent is based.
Meanwhile, Mr. Mom, 49 years old, – at least by sound – participated in the quarterly earnings calls. In November, he delivered a speech by audio during a philanthropic event.
Mr. Mom’s lower profile than usual had little impact on the operation of Tencent, whose revenues and share prices peaked during the pandemic, while home consumers flocked to its video games and digital services.
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Tencent is now the most valuable listed company in China, having acquired e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. recently surpassed in market capitalization in December.