Book of social media quotes from TikTok owner Zhang Yiming becomes a must-read amid tech billionaire’s silence
- Both hard and soft copies of Zhang’s quotations are available on online marketplaces such as Taobao and Pinduoduo for up to 20 yuan a copy
- Zhang would post up to 10 times a day on Weibo in the early 2010s, talking about everything from his wife, his back pain, job postings, to book and film reviews
An unauthorised book recording TikTok owner Zhang Yiming’s social media posts between 2010 and 2016 has become popular online as Chinese netizens rush to get a glimpse of the young tech billionaire’s thinking at a time when he is maintaining a low profile.
Zhang, 38, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in China after turning a start-up that began life in his small residential flat into global social media giant ByteDance within a decade. However, amid Beijing’s broad regulatory crackdown on Big Tech companies, Zhang stepped down from his role as chief executive in May to focus on “longer-term initiatives”.
The collection of more than 2,000 posts on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, between 2010 and 2016 as ByteDance expanded rapidly, has become a must-have read for China tech aficionados as these posts are currently hidden from public view.
Both hard and soft copies of Zhang’s quotations are available on online marketplaces such as Alibaba Group Holding’s Taobao and Pinduoduo for up to 20 yuan (US$3.12) a copy. The items on Taobao, sold by only two merchants, saw a surge in sales last week according to customer review records. One buyer commented that the merchant “reacted fast” by providing the book and “must be an extraordinary business talent”. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Zhang – along with a string of other senior tech executives such as Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and Tencent Holdings founder and CEO Pony Ma – has been largely absent from public view this year, aside from a photo in June when he visited his hometown Longyan to set up an education fund. This has been an about-turn for a man who used to be very active on social media.