Editor’s note for Thursday, May 20, 2021
A note from the editor of today’s The China Project Access newsletter
My thoughts today:
ByteDance is one of the world’s most valuable companies. It is worth between $250 billion and $400 billion, and it operates the world’s most popular mobile video app, TikTok, and its Chinese version, Douyin, as well as a host of other popular AI-powered Chinese apps like news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, which was its first breakaway hit.
Earlier today, the company announced that its founder, Zhāng Yīmíng 张一鸣 (age 38), will step down from his chief executive position.
Zhang worked for Microsoft and early Twitter clone Fanfou.com, among other companies, before founding a series of startups. He launched ByteDance in 2012.
Chinese media pundits have offered various explanations for Zhang’s decision. I personally find it understandable that a highly intelligent digital visionary would prefer not to spend his days facing the Chinese government’s sustained pressure on big tech companies. And who would not draw lessons from the fall from grace of Jack Ma (马云 Mǎ Yún), the resignation of upstart ecommerce giant Pinduoduo CEO Colin Huang (黄峥 Huáng Zhēng), and the stock wipeout of Meituan after CEO Wáng Xìng 王兴 posted a Tang dynasty poem to social media last week.
But in the statement released by ByteDance (in English, unofficial Chinese version here), Zhang said relinquishing his day-to-day responsibilities as CEO will allow him to “have greater impact on longer-term initiatives,” and “challenge the limits of what the company can achieve over the next decade, and drive innovation.”
Zhang said that at a previous company event, he had “shared a line from Alice in Wonderland: ‘Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’” He worried that he had become so busy as ByteDance CEO that he no longer had the time to dream of new things, and was “relying too much on the ideas [he] had before starting the company.”
Well, make of that what you will, but here’s to dreaming impossible things, Zhang Yiming!
Our word of the day is the line said by the Queen of Alice in Wonderland quoted by Zhang: Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast
有时候早餐前，我已经相信六件看似不可能的事会发生了
yǒu shíhou zǎocān qián, wǒ yǐjīng xiāngxìn liùjiàn kànsì bùkěnéng de shì huì fāshēng le
Upcoming event: June 1: Cornell professor Chris Marquis interviews guests live on the China Corner Office podcast: The U.S. Congress and economic relations with China.
—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief
