Cybersecurity
Tencent: March of the Penguins
Tencent, the Chinese Internet colossus with the cuddly mascot, has twice as many users as the U.S. has people. It's beloved as a national success story, loathed as a predatory copycat, and full of big plans to break into the U.S.
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It’s hot and crowded in the Shatang Internet Café in the southern coastal city of Shenzhen, where some 300 young factory workers sit amid flickering lights and discarded cigarette packs. At one computer, Zhou Qingqing chats with her boyfriend about 600 miles away in Zhejiang province using QQ, the popular instant messaging software.
She interrupts the conversation to play an online game called QQ Dancer, maneuvering a fashionably dressed avatar to the beat of a catchy Chinese pop song. “This is the only game I know how to play,” she says. “It’s easy.”