1
THE COPYCAT
INT. SHENZHEN UNIVERSITY — COMPUTER LAB — NIGHT — 1993
A humid computer lab. CRT monitors glow blue in the darkness. YOUNG PONY MA (22), bespectacled, slight, hunched over a keyboard. He is online — one of the first people in Shenzhen to be connected to the nascent internet. His screen shows an early chat program.
YOUNG PONY MA
(typing, whispering to himself) Hello? Is anyone there?
A cursor blinks. Then a reply: "Hello from Beijing." Pony Ma stares at the screen. A stranger, hundreds of miles away, speaking to him through a wire. His life just changed.
YOUNG PONY MA
(whispering) This changes everything.
INT. SMALL OFFICE — SHENZHEN — DAY — NOVEMBER 1998
A cramped room above a dance studio. Five young men sit at desks covered in cables, takeout containers, and computer parts. Pony Ma (27) and ZHANG ZHIDONG, his technical co-founder, stare at a screen showing ICQ — the Israeli instant messaging service that has taken the world by storm.
TENCENT — FOUNDED NOVEMBER 11, 1998
ZHANG ZHIDONG
ICQ has millions of users worldwide. But it doesn't work well on Chinese networks. The interface isn't Chinese. The servers are overseas.
YOUNG PONY MA
Then we make our own. Same concept. Built for China. We call it OICQ.
ZHANG ZHIDONG
People will say we're copying.
YOUNG PONY MA
(quietly) In the West, they call it copying. In Shenzhen, we call it learning.
INT. TENCENT OFFICE — NIGHT — 1999
OICQ launches. The user count climbs: 10,000. 100,000. One million. The server costs are crushing them. Pony Ma and his team are personally logging into the chat service, pretending to be users, especially pretending to be women, to keep conversations going and attract more users.
YOUNG PONY MA
(typing as a female avatar) Hi! Welcome to OICQ! What do you like to talk about?
ZHANG ZHIDONG
(laughing) This is pathetic.
YOUNG PONY MA
This is survival. Every user we keep today is revenue tomorrow.
The co-founders of Tencent spent months pretending to be chatty women on their own platform to keep users engaged. It is possibly the most undignified origin story in the history of trillion-dollar companies.
INT. INVESTOR'S OFFICE — HONG KONG — DAY — 2000
The dot-com bubble is bursting. Pony Ma, desperate for funding, pitches venture capitalists. He is a terrible presenter — shy, soft-spoken, avoiding eye contact.
YOUNG PONY MA
We have... we have five million users. We just need... we need money for servers.
VC
Five million users and zero revenue. How do you plan to monetize?
YOUNG PONY MA
(long pause) I'm not sure yet. But five million people talking to each other must be worth something.
IDG Capital and PCCW invest $2.2 million for 40% of Tencent. The company is valued at $5.5 million. Twenty years later, it will be worth $500 billion.
CUT TO:
2
QQ AND GAMES
INT. TENCENT HEADQUARTERS — SHENZHEN — DAY — 2003
Tencent has rebranded OICQ as QQ (after a trademark dispute). The penguin mascot is everywhere. Pony Ma has discovered the key to monetization: virtual goods. Chinese users are paying real money for virtual clothing, accessories, and decorations for their QQ avatars.
PONY MA
People will pay one yuan to make their penguin wear a hat. One yuan times five hundred million penguins is five hundred million yuan.
EXECUTIVE
The Western tech press calls it a toy. They say virtual goods aren't a real business model.
PONY MA
The Western tech press doesn't understand China. In China, your online identity IS your identity. Dressing your avatar is not frivolous. It is self-expression in a country where self-expression is limited.
INT. TENCENT GAMING DIVISION — DAY — 2008
Pony Ma walks through a floor of game developers. Screens show League of Legends, CrossFire, Dungeon Fighter Online. Tencent has become the largest gaming company in the world — not by creating games, but by investing in them.
GAMING DIRECTOR
We now own stakes in Riot Games, Epic Games, Supercell, and forty other studios. Tencent has a piece of almost every major game in the world.
PONY MA
We don't need to create culture. We need to own the platforms where culture happens.
INT. BEIJING — GOVERNMENT OFFICE — DAY — 2010
A BEIJING OFFICIAL sits across from Pony Ma. The meeting is cordial but weighted with unstated power dynamics.
BEIJING OFFICIAL
QQ has become very popular. The Party appreciates the role Tencent plays in connecting the Chinese people. We also appreciate the importance of... cooperation.
PONY MA
Tencent has always cooperated with the government. We are a Chinese company serving Chinese people under Chinese law.
BEIJING OFFICIAL
Good. Then you understand that cooperation sometimes means giving us the ability to see what those Chinese people are saying to each other.
Pony Ma's face does not change. He nods once. The price of doing business in China has just been made explicit.
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3
THE SUPER APP
INT. TENCENT GUANGZHOU OFFICE — NIGHT — 2010
ALLEN ZHANG, a brilliant but eccentric product manager, works late. His team is building something new — a mobile messaging app to compete with a startup called Kik. Allen has a different vision than simple messaging.
ALLEN ZHANG
(to his team) We are not building a messaging app. We are building a remote control for life. Messaging. Payments. Shopping. Government services. Transportation. Healthcare. Everything through one app.
ENGINEER
That's impossible.
ALLEN ZHANG
The iPhone was impossible. Then it wasn't. Build it.
WEIXIN (WECHAT) — LAUNCHED JANUARY 21, 2011
MONTAGE — CHINA — 2011-2015
WeChat spreads across China like wildfire: — A grandmother in Chengdu video-calls her granddaughter in Shanghai. — A street vendor in Guangzhou accepts WeChat Pay — a QR code taped to a cardboard sign. — A farmer in Yunnan sells produce through his WeChat Moments. — A couple in Beijing splits a dinner bill with WeChat in three seconds. — Government offices accept WeChat for permits, payments, appointments. By 2015, WeChat has over 600 million users. It is not an app. It is an operating system for Chinese life.
INT. PONY MA'S OFFICE — DAY — 2017
Pony Ma reads a Wall Street Journal article calling WeChat "China's app for everything." He sets it down carefully.
PONY MA
(to his assistant) In America, you need a phone, a wallet, a bank app, a messaging app, a social media app, a food delivery app, a taxi app, a payment app. In China, you need WeChat. One app. One billion people. And they wonder why the West is falling behind.
INT. BEIJING — GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE — DAY — 2018
Pony Ma sits as a delegate to the National People's Congress. He is surrounded by the most powerful people in China. He is one of them now — a Party ally, a national champion, a pillar of the state-technology complex.
This is the bargain. In the West, tech companies fight the government. In China, tech companies become the government. WeChat processes payments for a billion people. WeChat hosts their conversations, their photos, their medical records. WeChat is the platform through which the state sees its citizens. Pony Ma built the tool. The Party decides how it's used. Whether he is comfortable with that distinction is a question he will never answer publicly.
CUT TO:
4
THE GREAT GAME
INT. TENCENT HEADQUARTERS — DAY — 2021
Pony Ma watches the news. Beijing is cracking down on tech companies. Jack Ma's Ant Group IPO has been cancelled. DiDi is under investigation. Gaming regulations are tightening. The message is clear: the Party giveth, and the Party taketh away.
PONY MA
(to his executive team) We will comply with every regulation. We will limit gaming hours for minors. We will increase content moderation. We will donate to common prosperity. We will not be the nail that sticks up.
EXECUTIVE
Jack Ma stuck up.
PONY MA
And look what happened to Jack Ma.
Silence in the room. Everyone understands.
TENCENT DONATED $15 BILLION TO CHINA'S "COMMON PROSPERITY" INITIATIVE IN 2021
EXT. SHENZHEN SKYLINE — GOLDEN HOUR — PRESENT DAY
The Shenzhen skyline gleams. Tencent's twin-tower headquarters dominates the landscape. Inside, over a billion people message, pay, play, and live through the app Pony Ma built. He stands at his office window, looking out.
PONY MA
(voice over) They call me the quietest billionaire in tech. In America, CEOs tweet and post and give speeches. I write code. I read data. I watch what a billion people do on their phones. That tells me more than any speech ever could. The West invented social media. China turned it into civilization.
He turns from the window. His phone buzzes — a WeChat notification. Even the CEO of Tencent lives inside his own creation. He checks the message. Smiles faintly. Puts the phone away.
Tencent is valued at over $400 billion. WeChat has over 1.3 billion monthly active users. It processes more mobile payments than any platform on Earth. Tencent owns stakes in hundreds of gaming companies, including Riot Games, Epic Games, and Supercell. Ma Huateng's personal fortune exceeds $35 billion. He remains one of the least visible major tech CEOs in the world. He has never given a keynote speech. He rarely appears in public. WeChat knows everything about a billion people. Its creator prefers that no one knows anything about him.
FADE OUT.