騰訊 中國殺手級應用製造大廠
Xu Ye is a thoroughly modern metropolitan millennial. She reads science and cultural articles on the way into work, takes and dispatches orders from her boss, lunches on organic produce in an NGO-run community garden and picks up artisanal bread on the way home.
徐燁（音譯）是十分現代的都市“千禧一代”。她在上班途中閱讀科學文化類的文章，到了公司聽老闆吩咐辦事，午餐吃的是非政府組織(NGO)管理的一個社區花園生產的有機食物，下班後順路買手工麪包帶回家。
By Chinese standards, she says, her life in Shanghai is “peculiar”. But in one key respect it is utterly typical: like hundreds of millions of her compatriots, she carries out much of her daily life over Weixin, a wildly popular messaging app, on her smartphone.
她說，按照中國人的標準，她在上海的生活有些“古怪”。但她在一個重要的方面卻是再典型不過了：與數億同胞一樣，她每天花很長時間在她智能手機上安裝的微信(Weixin)上度過，這是一款非常受歡迎的即時通訊應用。
Her connected lifestyle is largely thanks to Tencent, a $225bn internet company whose social platforms have become a part of the very fabric of Chinese lives. For people like Ms Xu, Tencent’s myriad apps and services offer a way to work, play and pay.
她的“互聯生活”在很大程度上要歸功於騰訊(Tencent)，這是一家市值高達2250億美元的互聯網公司，它的社交平臺已成爲中國人生活中的一部分。對於徐燁等許許多多的人而言，騰訊的衆多應用和服務爲他們提供了工作、玩樂和付款的手段。
It is, says one banker, “a social enterprise powerhouse”: under one roof, it has amassed China’s answer to Facebook, WhatsApp, Spotify, Kindle and ApplePay. Chi Tsang, internet analyst at HSBC, says Tencent has “the most killer apps in the world”. Weixin, along with the WeChat app outside China, has 846m active monthly subscribers.
一位銀行人士表示，它是“社會企業巨擘”：單單一家公司就彙集了中國版的Facebook、WhatsApp、Spotify、Kindle和ApplePay。匯豐銀行(HSBC)互聯網分析師曾琪(Chi Tsang)表示，騰訊擁有“全球最多的殺手級應用”。微信加上海外版的WeChat總共擁有8.46億月度活躍用戶。
Tencent also has a huge multibillion investment portfolio, ranging from stakes in Didi Chuxing, China’s biggest ride-sharing company, through to start-ups. It dabbles in artificial intelligence, electric cars and bike sharing. Its posse of champion hackers managed to gain remote control of Tesla’s Model S, forcing the US carmaker to roll out a security patch.
騰訊還有爲數衆多的大手筆投資，持有中國最大駕乘共享公司滴滴出行(Didi Chuxing)的股份，也參股了多家初創企業。騰訊還涉足人工智能、電動汽車和共享單車領域。騰訊的頂級黑客成功地遠程控制了特斯拉(Tesla)的Model S，迫使這家美國汽車製造商推出了一個安全補丁。
“They started with distribution and now they are monetising everything they can,” says Scott Likens, a partner in the emerging tech practice at PwC. “It is the opposite of the traditional business where you’ve got the product and say, ‘Now let’s find the customers’.”
“他們先從渠道做起，如今正試圖在所有力所能及的業務上實現貨幣化，”普華永道(PwC)新興技術業務合夥人李敬思(Scott Likens)表示，“傳統企業先弄出產品，然後說‘現在讓我們尋找客戶吧’，騰訊卻相反。”
Fittingly, it is based in Shenzhen, a fishing backwater turned bustling metropolis across the border from Hong Kong. It was here that Deng Xiaoping in 1992 launched the then-isolated country on its rollicking ride into capitalism, and today it is China’s answer to Silicon Valley.
總部在深圳和騰訊很相稱。昔日落後漁村已成爲毗鄰香港的繁華大都市，1992年，鄧小平就是在這裏引領當時還被孤立的中國走上了生機勃勃的資本主義道路，如今，這裏已成爲中國的硅谷。
The company employs 3,000 workers, more than half of whom are in research and development. While its home market is by far and away the largest, Tencent has an overseas presence in many sectors — its WeChat payments app can even be used at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
騰訊有3000名員工，其中超過一半從事研發工作。目前騰訊最大的市場在本土，但也在海外涉足衆多行業，其WeChat支付應用甚至可以在拉斯維加斯的凱撒宮酒店(Caesars Palace)使用。
“They are everywhere, the US, Europe — especially among Chinese speakers because if you want to contact business or family in China there is only one way to contact them, and that’s WeChat,” says Elinor Leung, a research analyst at CLSA.
里昂證券(CLSA)研究分析師樑向奕(Elinor Leung)表示：“到處都在用，美國，歐洲——特別是在華語人羣中，因爲如果你想要聯繫中國的生意夥伴或家人，一般都只會用WeChat。”
Alongside Baidu and Alibaba, it is one of China’s three largest internet groups (they are collectively known as BAT). But its Hong Kong listing, in June 2004, differentiates Tencent from its rivals, which headed to the US capital markets.
騰訊和百度、阿里巴巴並稱“中國互聯網三巨頭”(BAT)。但騰訊於2014年6月在香港上市，有別於都在美國上市的兩家競爭對手。
That decision alone won it accolades. “Tencent has a better corporate governance than Google or Facebook,” says Richard Windsor, founder of independent research company Radio Free Mobile, pointing to its spurning of the dual-class shareholding allowed in the US but banned in Hong Kong.
騰訊選擇香港爲上市地受到了讚譽。獨立研究公司Radio Free Mobile創始人理查德.溫莎(Richard Windsor)表示：“騰訊的公司治理水平好於谷歌(Google)和Facebook。”他指的是騰訊放棄了在美國允許但在香港禁止的雙重股權結構。
Strategically, however, it has evolved along similar lines to its Silicon Valley peers, says one banker. “Tencent has had a typical US-style upbringing: for the first three to four years [after its initial public offering] it did nothing; [management] just delivered on what they said they would.”
然而，一位銀行人士表示，從戰略上來說，騰訊的發展道路與硅谷同行類似。“騰訊的發展有典型的美式風格：（IPO後）頭三四年，它什麼都沒做；（管理層）只是兌現了承諾。”
That steady push up the ranks is typical of its founder, Pony Ma (his name is a pun: Ma means horse in Chinese). Unlike his namesake Jack Ma at Alibaba, Tencent’s Mr Ma shuns the limelight and favours a low-key sartorial style that colleagues and acquaintances say is emblematic of his nerdy persona.
這種穩紮穩打的做法體現了騰訊創始人馬化騰(Pony Ma)的風格，與同宗的阿里巴巴的馬雲(Jack Ma)不同，馬化騰不喜歡成爲公衆關注的焦點，他衣着低調，同事和朋友說這符合他的書呆子形象。
An engineer by training, the 45-year-old is listed as the world’s 46th richest man by Forbes, with a net worth of $21.9bn. But he prefers philanthropy over a splashy lifestyle, with the only conspicuous display of his wealth being a palatial home in Hong Kong.
作爲科班出身的工程師，45歲的馬化騰位列《福布斯》(Forbes)全球富豪榜第46位，淨資產爲219億美元。但與奢華的生活方式相比，他更喜歡從事慈善，唯一彰顯個人財富的是他在香港的一幢豪宅。
Paying for content
付費內容
Mr Ma started Tencent in 1998 as the messaging service QQ — not in a garage, Silicon Valley-style, but in a high-tech park in Shenzhen, jammed between hustlers selling pirated phones and PC repairs. Online gaming was added in 2004 and is now the group’s major revenue driver, accounting for Rmb18.2bn ($2.6bn), or almost half of its third-quarter sales. Unlike NetEase, its Chinese rival, Tencent has largely licensed rather than produced its own games.
1998年，馬化騰創辦了騰訊，推出即時通訊服務QQ，不是像硅谷公司那樣在車庫創辦，而是在深圳的一個科技園，那裏滿是銷售山寨手機的販子和個人電腦(PC)維修商。2004年，騰訊涉足網絡遊戲，如今網遊已成爲其主要收入來源，今年第三季度實現銷售額182億元人民幣 (合26億美元)，佔集團近一半。與本土競爭對手網易(NetEase)不同，騰訊基本上只代理遊戲，而不是自己製作。
This year, however, it doubled down on its bet by paying $8.6bn for a majority stake in Clash of Clans developer Supercell, passing on some of the cost to a consortium of investors and keeping the Finnish developer’s management in place.
不過今年騰訊加大了在遊戲上的賭注，斥資86億美元購入芬蘭遊戲開發公司Supercell多數股權，由一個投資者財團負擔部分成本，並保持Supercell管理層不變。Supercell出品的遊戲包括《部落衝突》(Clash of Clans)。
“They have a long-term view on gaming,” says one banker, who reckons half of all deals they look at on a daily basis fall within the sector. “They are definitely looking outbound.”
“他們在遊戲領域有着長遠眼光，”一位銀行人士表示，“它們無疑放眼海外。”他估計，在他們日常考察的交易中，有一半在遊戲領域。
More generally, content — specifically exclusive, copyrighted content — is a top priority for Tencent. It operates on a “freemium” revenue model, offering some content free and charging at the premium end.
騰訊把內容（特別是獨家、有版權的內容）放在最重要位置上。它採用“免費增值”模式，免費提供部分內容，對高端內容收費。
This, Mr Tsang says, plays into “the increasing propensity of China users to pay for content” — something they initially shunned, turning instead to pirated movies and music.
匯豐的曾琪表示，這符合“中國用戶日益願意爲內容付費的傾向”，中國用戶最初不願付費，寧可選擇盜版電影和音樂。
“Over the past two years the government has cracked down on pirated content and even the ones you still get, the quality is so bad relative to what you can get from Baidu and the others,” he says. “And the operators have got smarter about putting quality content behind the paywall.”
“過去兩年中，中國政府一直在打擊盜版內容，即便你現在仍可以獲得盜版內容，但與百度和其他供應商提供的內容相比，盜版的質量非常糟糕，”他表示，“對於怎麼把優質內容放置在付費牆後面，運營商變得更加聰明瞭。”
Thus Tencent, which has exclusive coverage in China of the NBA basketball championships, can charge viewers Rmb22 a month for a basic subscription and Rmb60 for premium viewing.
擁有NBA中國大陸獨家網絡播放權的騰訊，對體育業務基礎會員每月收費22元人民幣，高端會員則收費60元人民幣。
Like Alibaba, Tencent “has gone well beyond copying [the west],” adds another banker. “They are inventing and reinventing what their businesses should be”. Tencent’s Moments feed on WeChat prefaced Facebook’s addition of Messenger and the $22bn acquisition of WhatsApp.
另一位銀行家補充稱，與阿里巴巴一樣，騰訊“遠不止模仿（西方）”。“他們正在發明和再發明業務模式”。騰訊先推出了微信朋友圈，Facebook才增加Messenger功能和以220億美元收購WhatsApp。
Payments are another case in point. China’s online third-party smartphone payments market dwarfs that of the US: iResearch estimates it to be worth Rmb15.7tn in 2016 — 28 times the $62.5bn forecast by eMarketer for the US in 2017 — and Rmb28.5tn in 2018.
支付是另一個例子。中國的第三方智能手機在線支付市場讓美國市場相形見絀：艾瑞諮詢(iResearch)估計，中國這個市場2016年價值15.7萬億元人民幣——是eMarketer預測的美國市場2017年625億美元價值的28倍——到2018年將達到28.5萬億元人民幣。
It is dominated by Alipay, which is operated by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial and has more than half the market, but TenPay ranks second with a 38.3 per cent share in the third quarter, according to Citibank.
支付市場由支付寶(Alipay)主導，後者由阿里巴巴旗下螞蟻金服(Ant Financial)運營，佔有逾一半的市場份額，但花旗銀行(Citibank)數據顯示，今年第三季度財付通(Tenpay)以38.3%的份額排名第二。
Tencent’s Mr Ma said in May that the average number of mobile transactions exceeded 500m a day, and that over Chinese new year — when it is traditional to hand out hong bao, or red envelopes of money — more than 2.5bn virtual packets were distributed across its platform.
馬化騰今年5月表示，騰訊移動支付日均交易超過5億筆，在有着發紅包傳統的中國農曆新年期間，逾25億個虛擬紅包通過其平臺發出。
Tencent favours a cautious approach to monetising its database of active monthly users. Rather than blitz Moments with ads and risk the sort of backlash dished out to Facebook, Tencent has restricted itself for now to a maximum of one ad per user each day.
騰訊對於從其月度活躍用戶數據庫獲取盈利持謹慎態度。它目前限制每位用戶每天最多發一條廣告，而不是在朋友圈用廣告狂轟濫炸，從而像Facebook那樣遭受抵制。
UBS estimates WeChat Moments’ ad load at about 1 per cent of non-advertising content, compared with 7-10 per cent for Facebook, leaving big scope for growth. In 2015, online advertising made up 17 per cent of revenues.
瑞銀(UBS)估計，微信朋友圈的廣告量與非廣告內容的比率大約是1%，而Facebook的這一比例是7%-10%，這讓微信有了很大的增長空間。2015年，在線廣告佔到微信收入的17%。
China’s mobile ad market was worth Rmb90bn in 2015, according to iResearch, up 178 per cent year on year, and is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 54 per cent from 2015 to 2018.
艾瑞諮詢表示，中國移動廣告市場在2015年價值900億元人民幣，同比增長178%，並預計從2015年到2018年期間複合增長年率達到54%。
Yet monetising the subscribers — and its database — offers the real keys to the kingdom for China’s BAT contingent and their global peers.
然而，對中國互聯網三巨頭及其全球同行來說，從用戶（及其數據庫）身上盈利可以帶來真正的開闢王朝之鑰。
Native ads are increasing in China, as elsewhere, and Tencent is helping to rewrite the rules of engagement for digital advertising. Take the entertainment show A Date with a Superstar, produced by Tencent and sponsored by L’Oréal, whose cosmetic products twirl across the screen. Ad Age describes the show as “essentially a giant commercial”.
與其他地區一樣，中國原生廣告日益增長，騰訊正幫助改寫數字廣告的業務規則。以騰訊製作、歐萊雅(L'Oréal)贊助的娛樂節目《約吧，大明星》(A Date with a Superstar)爲例，歐萊雅的化妝品飄浮在屏幕上。廣告時代(Ad Age)將這個節目描述爲“本質上是一部商業大片”。
Other consumer goods companies are following suit with similar partnerships. “They’re attracting the big spenders who have been active in TV and are now embracing online advertising,” says one analyst.
其他消費品公司紛紛效仿，展開類似的合作。一位分析師表示：“它們正在吸引以前活躍在電視上、現在擁抱在線廣告的大金主。”
Not everyone buys the monetisation story. Mr Windsor argues that Tencent’s different platforms make it harder to aggregate and exploit the big data they are sitting on. QQ and WeChat have yet to be fully integrated, for example.
並非所有人都看好貨幣化故事。溫莎指出，騰訊各個不同的平臺讓它更難整合利用它們坐擁的大數據。例如，QQ和微信迄今仍未完全整合。
“I don’t see Tencent being ready to grab this opportunity in 2017, and so in the short term a slowdown looks inevitable,” he says.
他說：“我認爲騰訊還沒有準備好在2017年抓住這個機遇，因此短期內放緩顯得不可避免。”
Big data, Big brother
大數據，老大哥
Calling China home offers the BAT companies a huge advantage: international competitors are largely locked out and the trio owe at least part of their success to the absence of the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google.
中國互聯網三巨頭的本土身份具有極大優勢：國際競爭對手基本上被排除在外，三巨頭的成功至少部分歸因於沒有面臨Facebook、Twitter和谷歌等的競爭。
However, calling communist China home has a darker side, and an Orwellian shadow hangs over the BAT.
然而，在社會主義中國擁有本土身份也有不利的一面，極權陰影籠罩着互聯網三巨頭。
The first is straightforward censorship. Usefully for its global expansion, Tencent’s WeChat operates two systems of censorship, with users registered outside China able to access more sensitive words than those inside the country.
首先是明確的審查制度。騰訊的微信有兩套審查制度，在中國境外註冊的用戶能夠比國內註冊用戶看到更敏感的話語，這有利於其全球的擴張。
Potentially more insidious are China’s plans to build a social credit rating system based on online behaviour. At face value, this plugs a glaring gap. China’s rapid but uneven development means only an estimated 20-30 per cent of the population is covered by the existing rating system, says Alfred Shang, a financial services partner at Bain & Co.
更隱祕的審查可能來自中國基於在線行爲建立社會信用評級體系的計劃。表面看來，這能填補一個明顯的空白。貝恩公司(Bain & Co)的金融服務合夥人項安達(Alfred Shang)表示，中國快速但不均衡的發展意味着，估計只有20%-30%的人口被現有的評級體系覆蓋。
The fears in China go beyond being excluded from loans due to their online profile. Some fear the plan, published by Beijing last year and due to roll out nationwide by 2020, aims to use algorithms and big data to rate citizens’ “honesty” and “trustworthiness” alongside their creditworthiness. At the worst, say privacy advocates, the system is designed for mass surveillance.
令人擔憂的不只是因爲在線記錄不佳而無法獲得貸款。一些人擔心，中國政府去年發佈的這份將會到2020年全國推行的計劃，旨在使用算法和大數據對公民的“誠實”、“守信”和信譽進行評價。倡導保護隱私的人士表示，最糟糕的情況是該體系的目的可能是爲了實施大規模的監控。
“I kind of worry if Chinese users are going to push back against that,” says one analyst. “A credit score is one thing, but a social score seems a little bit overstepping that.”
一位分析師表示：“我有點擔心中國用戶是否會反抗，信用評分是一方面，但社會評分似乎有點過頭。”
PwC’s Mr Likens adds: “I think there’s a dangerous slope. You are getting access to really personal data now. You are getting into who I am as a person and that does bring up some concerns.”
普華永道的李敬思補充稱：“我認爲這是個危險的傾向。你現在能夠獲取真正的個人數據。你進入我私人的領域，這的確會引發一些擔憂。”
The plan is ambitious and observers question the ability to roll it out by 2020. Until then — and probably afterwards as well — the big data amassed by Tencent and its peers are primarily viewed at face value: a fabulous treasure trove of consumer information on shopping, eating, travelling and wealth.
該計劃雄心勃勃，觀察者們懷疑到2020年是否能夠全面推行。到時（或許2020年以後也是），騰訊及其同行收集的大數據會被認真看待：一個關於消費者購物、餐飲、旅遊和財富的巨大信息寶藏。
Additional reporting by Yuan Yang
尋找獨角獸企業：收購潮讓硅谷風投黯然失色
Looking for unicorns: Buying spree puts Valley VCs in shadeTencent is an avid dealmaker. In the past 18 months the company has spent $37.65bn on acquisitions, according to Dealogic data — more than the $26.6bn spent by Sequoia, the Silicon Valley venture capital group, over the same period.
騰訊熱衷於締結交易。Dealogic數據顯示，在過去18個月裏，騰訊斥資376.5億美元進行收購，超過了硅谷風險資本集團紅杉資本(Sequoia)同期266億美元的併購額。
Supercell, the Finnish games group behind Clash of Clans, tops Tencent’s list. But there is a long tail of smaller deals that falls broadly into two categories — stakes in big tech players in China and smaller incubation-style deals. “They’re out there looking for unicorns,” as one banker puts it.
騰訊最大規模的併購交易是收購了推出《部落戰爭》(Clash of Clans)的芬蘭遊戲集團Supercell。但還有其他一長串較小規模的交易，這基本上可以分爲兩類，一類是買進中國大型科技集團的股權，另一類是較小的孵化器風格的交易。一位銀行家表示：“他們在那裏尋找獨角獸企業。”
That makes it distinct from Alibaba, which is less keen on minority stakes. But there is another difference, notes Elinor Leung, an analyst at CLSA: Tencent is building a business ecosystem on top of a social network while Alibaba has a business ecosystem and is building a social platform.
這讓它不同於阿里巴巴，後者不太熱衷於少數股權。但里昂證券的樑向奕指出，另一點不同是，騰訊在社交網絡的基礎之上打造商業生態系統，而阿里巴巴已經有了商業生態系統，正在打造社交平臺。
Tencent’s stakes in China’s tech world include Didi Chuxing, the taxi hailing app now part owned by Uber and Apple; ecommerce website ; the Craigslist-style ; and food delivery app Meituan-Dianping. All of these sites accept TenPay.
騰訊入股的中國科技企業包括現在由優步(Uber)和蘋果(Apple)部分持股的叫車服務應用滴滴出行(Didi Chuxing)；電商網站京東()；Craigslist風格的58同城()以及送餐應用美團點評(Meituan-Dianping)。所有這些網站都接受財付通支付。
“They are just putting everything on their platform,” says Ms Leung.
樑向奕表示：“它們只是把一切東西放在自己的平臺上。”
Tencent is helped in its investment endeavours by having bankers at the top. Both Martin Lau, president, and James Mitchell, chief strategy officer, are Goldman Sachs alumni.
騰訊有銀行家擔任高層職務，這有助於其投資活動。總裁劉熾平(Martin Lau)和首席戰略官詹姆斯.米切爾(James Mitchell)都曾在高盛(Goldman Sachs)工作過。
Rival lawyers and investment bankers express respect about Tencent’s approach to cutting deals. “No renegotiations, no dramas,” says one party who has sat around the table with them.
競爭對手的律師和投行家們對騰訊締結交易的方法表達了敬意。一位與他們談判的當事人表示：“沒有重新談判，就沒有峯迴路轉。”
Adds another: “They are very principled, very progressive. and Chinese to just the right level.”
另一人補充稱：“他們非常有原則，非常開明，是非常得體的中國人。”
