Chinese Big Tech’s walled gardens continue opening up

Business & Technology

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Matthew Silberman
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In a major shift akin to Netflix allowing Disney+ content onto its site, Alibaba now offers WeChat Pay, rival Tencent’s payment system, on some of its ecommerce apps.

The context: On September 9, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology summoned tech executives to demand they dismantle barriers between their platforms. A major goal is to weaken the biggest platforms’ hold on customer data.

  • For now, the market is cornered: Tencent has 1.9 billion monthly active users, Alibaba has 1.6 billion, and ByteDance has 640 million.
  • On Sept. 17, Tencent was first to relent, allowing users to share links to rival platforms on WeChat.

Why it matters: Imagine if iPhone users couldn’t share YouTube videos via text message. That’s what the Chinese government wants to change.

Matthew Silberman is Contributor, ChinaEdge and Manager, Business and Technology Research at The China Project. Previously, he studied Chinese as a Blakemore Freeman fellow at the International Chinese Language Program in Taiwan. He has also been a speechwriter at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., a researcher for Evan Osnos, and an editor at the Korea JoongAng Daily in Seoul, South Korea. Read more

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