Tencent’s Pony Ma now richest man in Asia

Ma Huateng 马化腾, aka Pony Ma, is the lesser known of China’s two top entrepreneurs surnamed “Ma” — the other being the ubiquitous Jack Ma 马云 of Alibaba. Pony has now topped the Forbes rich list for China and Asia, and sits at number 18 in the world, with an estimated net worth of $37 billion, the Washington Post reports. Jack now stands at $36.4 billion.

Pony Ma founded internet giant Tencent, which launched the social media, lifestyle, and payment application that has dominated Chinese smartphones in the past five years: WeChat.

But Tencent’s success has come not just through one product. Jeffrey Towson, a Beijing-based businessman and author, told the Post that the company is highly original, and “not a one-hit-wonder company like Facebook, PayPal and so many others…They keep hitting another ball over the fence every two to three years.”

Caixin reports on what may be Tencent’s next ball: A new credit-rating system called Tencent Credit, which will compete with “the better established and mostly unrivaled Sesame Credit,” owned by Alibaba. Though Sesame Credit has been operating for nearly two years, Tencent’s “market-follower strategy” has worked before when it forces “competitors to bear the risk and costs of innovation.”

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• U.S.-China business
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  “The Commerce Department announced a preliminary decision Tuesday evening to tax aluminum foil from China at a rate of between 16.5% and 81%, based on the subsidies it says it receives from the Chinese government.”
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• Commodities
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  Iron ore, steel are hot commodities as China’s policies mesh / Bloomberg
  Aluminum leaps past $2,000 a ton after China deepens capacity cuts / Bloomberg
• Macro trends
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• Belt and Road
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  Hard-pedaling soft power, China helps launch $13 billion Belt and Road rail project in Malaysia / Reuters