Tencent’s Pony Ma emphasises social responsibility as anti-addiction measures cut gaming play time

Tencent Holdings co-founder and chairman Pony Ma Huateng said that internet platform companies should take the lead in bearing social responsibility for their products and services, even as anti-addiction measures cut playing time for its biggest business segment.

Speaking at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, on Wednesday, Ma also acknowledged the government’s support in fostering internet innovation, which has encouraged the company to “look to the future”. The Shenzhen-based company would not have grown from a start-up to a big tech company with more than 40,000 employees without support from China’s reforms and opening-up, he said.

“The development of the internet has entered a deep-water, no-man’s land with boundaries of responsibility blurred,” Ma said in a speech at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, on Wednesday. “Platform companies should stand up and take the social responsibility,” he said, without making a particular reference to games.

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Ma is steering Tencent into the industrial internet, an area of focus for the Chinese government, which has made it a strategic priority to upgrade the country’s manufacturing base and digitise the world’s second-biggest economy.
In an open letter last week, Ma laid out the rationale for a recent restructuring of its business units to better focus resources on developing the industrial internet, which it sees as the future driver of economic growth.

The shift in focus is taking place at a time when the government is clamping down on the online gaming industry amid widespread social concern that excessive playing of video games is leading to addiction and enfeebling the nation’s young.