NETEASE
"I don't care about being famous. I care about making good products." — Ding Lei
ONE
THE EMAIL
INT. GUANGZHOU TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU - DAY (1995)
A drab government office. Rows of engineers maintain telephone switching equipment. YOUNG DING LEI, 24, sits at a workstation, ignoring his assigned duties. He is reading about the World Wide Web on a smuggled copy of Wired magazine.
Guangzhou, China. 1995. The internet has just arrived in China. There are fewer than 100,000 internet users in the entire country.
SUPERVISOR
Ding Lei, you are supposed to be maintaining the PBX systems. Not reading American magazines.
YOUNG DING LEI
With respect, sir, PBX systems are the past. The internet is the future. In five years, every Chinese person will have an email address. Whoever provides that email address will own the Chinese internet.
SUPERVISOR
Email? What is email?
YOUNG DING LEI
(standing)
It is a letter that arrives in one second instead of three days. It costs nothing to send. And the company that gives it to China for free will become the most valuable technology company in the country.
SUPERVISOR
You are a telecommunications engineer, Ding Lei. Not a businessman.
YOUNG DING LEI
I will be both.
INT. SMALL APARTMENT, GUANGZHOU - NIGHT (1997)
A two-room apartment. Computers stacked on every surface. YOUNG DING LEI, 26, and two friends work through the night. Empty tea cups and instant noodles litter the desk. They are building an email system from scratch.
June 1997. Ding Lei founds NetEase (163.com) in Guangzhou. He is 26 years old. His starting capital: 500,000 yuan (~$60,000), saved from his telecom job.
ZHANG LEI
Ding Lei, we've been coding for thirty-six hours. The email server keeps crashing.
YOUNG DING LEI
Then we fix it and keep going. The Americans have Hotmail. The Chinese have nothing. Whoever builds China's Hotmail first wins. We will be first.
ZHANG LEI
What if no one uses it?
YOUNG DING LEI
Everyone will use it. Email is like oxygen. Once you breathe it, you cannot stop. We give China its first breath of the internet. They will come back for more.
DING LEI (breaking the fourth wall)
I chose the name 163 because that was the dial-up number to connect to the internet in China. 163. Three digits that would change a nation. NetEase meant "easy internet." I wanted the internet to be easy for every Chinese person. Simple. Free. Fast. That was the entire business plan. No MBA. No venture capital strategy. Just: give the people what they need and figure out the money later.
INT. NETEASE OFFICES, GUANGZHOU - DAY (2000)
The office has grown. Thirty employees. NetEase is one of the Big Three Chinese internet portals alongside Sina and Sohu. DING LEI, 29, has just taken the company public on NASDAQ.
June 2000. NetEase goes public on NASDAQ. Ding Lei's personal net worth reaches $400 million. He is 29 years old — one of the richest people in China.
DING LEI
(to his team)
The IPO is done. Now we work. The stock price is a number on a screen. The product is what matters. Our portal needs more content. Our email needs more capacity. We are not building a stock. We are building a company.
A television in the background shows NASDAQ numbers falling. The dot-com bubble is bursting.
CUT TO:
TWO
THE CRASH
INT. NETEASE OFFICES - DAY (SEPTEMBER 2001)
The office is half-empty. Employees have been laid off. DING LEI, 30, sits alone in his office staring at a screen. NetEase's stock has fallen from $15.50 to $0.51. The company has been halted from trading on NASDAQ due to accounting irregularities.
September 2001. NetEase stock falls to $0.51 per share — a 97% decline. NASDAQ halts trading. The SEC investigates accounting irregularities. Ding Lei's net worth drops from $400 million to essentially zero.
DING LEI
(on the phone)
I understand the audit committee's concerns. The revenue recognition was aggressive but not fraudulent. We will restate. We will cooperate. NetEase is not a fraud. It is a real company with real users.
He hangs up. Sits in silence. The screen shows $0.51.
ZHANG LEI
(entering)
Ding Lei, the investors are calling. They want their money back. The journalists are calling. They want a comment. What do we say?
DING LEI
(after a long pause)
We say nothing. Words mean nothing when your stock is fifty-one cents. Only results matter. And results take time.
DING LEI (breaking the fourth wall)
In 2001, I went from being one of the richest men in China to being a joke. The media wrote my obituary. They said NetEase was dead. They said I was finished. They were wrong. But I understood why they believed it. At fifty-one cents, I almost believed it myself. What saved me was stubbornness. I am the most stubborn person I know. And stubbornness, when combined with a good idea, is the most powerful force in business.
INT. INTERNET CAFE, GUANGZHOU - NIGHT (2001)
A smoky internet cafe packed with teenagers. They are playing online games — Korean MMORPGs, pirated Western games. The room buzzes with excitement. DING LEI stands in the doorway, watching.
DING LEI
(V.O.)
I spent a week visiting internet cafes across Guangzhou. Every cafe was the same: ninety percent of the users were playing games. Not reading email. Not browsing news. Playing games. For hours. For entire nights. They paid by the hour just to sit in a smoky room and play. And I realized: the internet portal business was dying. But online gaming was being born. China had three hundred million young people with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Games were the answer. Games would save NetEase.
INT. NETEASE OFFICES - GAME DEVELOPMENT STUDIO - DAY (2002)
A new floor of the NetEase offices, converted into a game development studio. DING LEI, 31, walks through teams of artists, programmers, and game designers building NetEase's first original MMORPG.
2002. Ding Lei pivots NetEase from an internet portal to an online gaming company. He bets everything on "Westward Journey Online" — an MMORPG based on the Chinese classic "Journey to the West."
LI YIXUE
The Korean games dominate the market. Why would Chinese players choose our game?
DING LEI
Because our game will be Chinese. The characters, the stories, the mythology — all Chinese. Korean games are good. But they are not ours. The Monkey King is ours. Journey to the West is ours. A Chinese game for Chinese players, made by Chinese developers. That is our advantage. Cultural identity is the strongest moat in gaming.
LI YIXUE
And the quality?
DING LEI
The quality will be world-class. I will accept nothing less. Every pixel, every quest, every line of dialogue — it must be the best. If it is not the best, we do not release it. I would rather delay a year than release something mediocre. Mediocrity is death.
CUT TO:
THREE
THE GAMER
INT. NETEASE HEADQUARTERS - DAY (2003)
A conference room. Charts show Westward Journey Online's user numbers climbing exponentially. DING LEI watches the metrics with visible relief.
2003. Westward Journey Online becomes the most popular MMORPG in China. Millions of players. NetEase's stock recovers from $0.51 to over $70. Ding Lei becomes the richest person in China. He is 32.
ZHANG LEI
Ding Lei, Forbes is calling. You are officially the richest person in mainland China.
DING LEI
(barely reacting)
Tell Forbes I am busy. We have a server stability issue in Sichuan province. Three hundred thousand concurrent users and the servers are lagging. That is what matters. Not Forbes.
ZHANG LEI
You went from fifty-one cents to richest in China in two years. That is unprecedented.
DING LEI
The stock price went up because the product worked. The product worked because we cared about quality. The lesson is simple: make something good. Make it for the right audience. Do not chase trends. Do not chase headlines. Chase quality. Quality always wins eventually.
INT. NETEASE HEADQUARTERS - GAMING SUMMIT - DAY (2008)
A large presentation room. DING LEI, 37, announces a partnership with Blizzard Entertainment to operate World of Warcraft in China. The room erupts.
2008. NetEase secures the license to operate World of Warcraft in China, the most popular Western game in the country. NetEase becomes the dominant gaming platform in China alongside Tencent.
DING LEI
We will operate World of Warcraft with the same care that Blizzard creates it. Chinese gamers deserve world-class service. No lag. No bugs. No compromise. Blizzard trusts us because we share their obsession with quality.
JOURNALIST
Mr. Ding, Tencent is aggressively expanding in gaming. Are you worried about competition?
DING LEI
Tencent is good at distribution. We are good at making games. Distribution gets you the first download. Quality gets you the second year of play. I prefer year two.
EXT. NETEASE PIG FARM, ZHEJIANG PROVINCE - DAY (2011)
A massive, modern, high-tech pig farm. Not a traditional farm — this looks like a tech campus for pigs. Clean concrete, automated feeding systems, climate-controlled barns. DING LEI walks through in rubber boots, inspecting the operation. Executives trail behind him, bewildered.
2011. Ding Lei announces that NetEase is entering the pig farming business. The tech world is baffled. He is not joking.
EXECUTIVE
Ding Lei, the board wants to understand. We are an internet company. Why are we raising pigs?
DING LEI
Because Chinese food safety is terrible. Millions of people eat pork every day that is pumped with hormones and antibiotics. I want to raise pigs the right way. Humanely. Organically. With technology. If NetEase can build the best games in China, we can raise the best pigs in China.
EXECUTIVE
The shareholders will think we've lost our minds.
DING LEI
(scratching a pig behind the ear)
The shareholders thought I had lost my mind when our stock was fifty-one cents. They were wrong then. They are wrong now. These pigs will be famous. The best pork in China. NetEase Pork.
DING LEI (breaking the fourth wall)
People thought the pig farming was a joke. Or a hobby. Or a midlife crisis. It was none of those things. It was the same philosophy that built NetEase: find a problem, solve it with quality, and do not care what anyone thinks. The problem was food safety. The solution was better farming. The fact that I am a tech CEO who raises pigs is irrelevant. I am a person who hates bad products. Bad pork is a bad product. I fixed it.
CUT TO:
FOUR
THE QUIET ONE
INT. TECH CONFERENCE, BEIJING - DAY (2018)
A massive tech conference. JACK MA holds court at center stage, surrounded by cameras and reporters. Across the venue, DING LEI sits in a corner booth, meeting quietly with a game developer. No cameras. No reporters. No entourage.
CONFERENCE ATTENDEE
(to a friend, pointing)
Is that Ding Lei? The NetEase guy? Why is he sitting alone?
FRIEND
He's always alone. No interviews. No speeches. No WeChat Moments. He's worth thirty billion dollars and acts like a mid-level engineer.
CONFERENCE ATTENDEE
In China's tech industry, that's either humility or a superpower.
FRIEND
Look at his stock price and tell me which one.
INT. NETEASE OFFICES, HANGZHOU - DING LEI'S OFFICE - EVENING (2020)
A surprisingly modest office for a billionaire. A gaming PC, a bookshelf, a small desk. DING LEI, 49, plays one of NetEase's new games in development, testing it himself.
2020. NetEase is the second-largest gaming company in China and one of the five largest in the world. Revenue exceeds $10 billion. Ding Lei's net worth: $30 billion.
LI YIXUE
(entering)
The new mobile RPG is performing well in beta. Ninety-two percent retention at day seven.
DING LEI
(not pausing the game)
Ninety-two is good. But the combat feels sluggish at level thirty. The animation needs to be faster. And the loot drops are too generous — the player should feel scarcity. Fix those and it is ready.
LI YIXUE
You still play-test every game personally?
DING LEI
How can I approve a game I have not played? A CEO who does not use his own product is a CEO who has stopped caring. I have not stopped caring.
EXT. HANGZHOU COUNTRYSIDE - PIG FARM - SUNSET (PRESENT DAY)
The NetEase pig farm. Rows of contented pigs in clean, modern facilities. In the distance, the lights of Hangzhou — one of China's tech capitals. DING LEI walks among the animals as the sun sets.
NetEase pork sells at premium prices across China. The pigs are raised in humane conditions, fed organic diets, and given names. Ding Lei personally approves the breeding program.
DING LEI (breaking the fourth wall)
Jack Ma is famous. Pony Ma is powerful. I am neither. I am the man who makes games that people play for ten years and raises pigs that people pay triple for. In China's tech industry, the loud ones get the attention. But the quiet ones get the work done. NetEase has survived the dot-com crash, the gaming wars, the government crackdowns, and every trend that killed lesser companies. We survived because we never chased fame. We chased quality. And quality, unlike fame, does not fade. It compounds. Like interest. Like a good game. Like a well-raised pig.
FADE TO BLACK.
William Ding Lei founded NetEase in 1997 with $60,000. The company is now worth over $60 billion. NetEase is one of the five largest gaming companies in the world, with titles including Fantasy Westward Journey, Identity V, Naraka: Bladepoint, and partnerships with Blizzard, Mojang, and others. NetEase Weiyang pork is among the highest-rated pork products in China. Ding Lei still play-tests every major game NetEase releases. He has never given a keynote speech at a tech conference.