This week your co-hosts discuss Tencent's business success and cancel culture with Chinese characteristics. We end up with Kevin singing patriotic songs as Adeh comes to grips with an existential crisis:

Tencent

• Tencent has a blowout quarter with 9.1B in profit (compare Apple 28B, FB 11B, goog 15B) https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3126771/tencent-posts-175-cent-rise-fourth-quarter-profit-it-faces-tighter
• At the same time, the company is bracing for what's coming from the central government https://technode.com/2021/03/24/china-probes-tencent-for-antitrust-practices-report/
• Much of their revenue increase was due to games, and we saw PUBG hit 1 billion downloads worldwide https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/25/22350782/pubg-mobile-one-billion-downloads-tencent
• Scrutiny of US listed Chinese companies tightens, leading to Tencent Music losing a third of its value and then declaring a $1B USD of stock buyback https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tencent-music-buyback/tencent-music-announces-biggest-ever-1-billion-share-buyback-idUSKBN2BL06X
• Tencent's full annual report: https://static.www.tencent.com/uploads/2021/03/24/b83f5784d0579b51cf8515cf560b4256.pdf

Cancel Culture, China Style

• H&M has been scrubbed from the Chinese internet due to a remark posted on their website over a year ago https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/24/h-m-censored-xinjiang-cotton/
• Other western brands taking a stand face an increasing backlash and threats of boycott https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/25/backlash-on-nike-hm-in-china-over-comments-on-xinjiang-cotton.html
• "Retailers may be caught between nationalistic Chinese consumers and conscientious ones at home" https://www.economist.com/business/2021/03/27/china-boycotts-western-clothes-brands-over-xinjiang-cotton

Xiaomi overtakes Huawei in global sales

• Xiaomi becomes the third largest smartphone seller, taking advatage of Huawei's troubles in overseas markets https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3126993/xiaomi-moves-past-struggling-huawei-no-1-chinese-smartphone-vendor
• And they are looking to thhe future as they make a move into Electric Vehicles https://www.reuters.com/article/us-xiaomi-electric-great-wall-motor-excl-idUSKBN2BI05P