Investors in Tencent Holdings, China’s internet gaming and social media group, have reason to feel anxious leading into Wednesday’s scheduled fourth-quarter earnings announcement.
After watching its stock price shoot upwards for the better part of a year, in the process making its chairman, Pony Ma, the richest man in China in January, Tencent last week got hit by twin blows. Its shares on Friday lost 3 per cent after the central bank suspended Tencent’s virtual credit card (along with that of rival Alibaba), along with QR code scanning apps for mobile payments.
Secondly, on Thursday night more than three dozen public accounts – essentially blogs – hosted by WeChat, Tencent’s hottest offering, were hit by the first wave of large-scale censorship – 35-40 such blogs were summarily deleted.