It took just 28 Chinese characters on an obscure social media platform to ignite a controversy that’s rattled the country’s tech industry.
Meituan CEO Wang Xing lost $2.5 billion of his wealth over two days after he posted verses from a millennium-old poem about the misguided attempts of China’s first emperor to quash dissent. Wang, a usually plain-speaking engineer who enjoys literary classics, later scrubbed his post and explained he was really calling out the short-sightedness of his own industry, trying to clarify there was no implied criticism of the government. But the damage was done: Meituan shed $26 billion over two days, the biggest loser in a broader tech rout, before bouncing back as much as 4.3% Wednesday.
