The Chinese technology companies are being attacked by several countries in the world who accuses them of being linked with the Chinese government breaching privacy and allegedly spying on other nations. In a recent update, the Chinese gaming, and technology giant Recent Holdings Ltd. has said on Tuesday that they would open a new office in Singapore and enact it as their South Asian Gaming Hub. Currently, they work from their Shenzhen headquarters, though some global products in areas like music and video streaming operate in Hong Kong, where President Martin Lau is based. The company also said that they store some of their user data in Singapore.
Recently one of their most sought after products, PUBG Mobile was banned by the Indian government as the tension between the armies of the neighboring countries escalated in the border. The company’s application has also received several criticisms from the government of the United States of America. As the trade war between the two supergiants gains momentum, Chinese companies like Tencent and ByteDance are being made to suffer from doing their business in the American soil. China-based tech behemoths are forced to sell off their assets to US-based companies or face the ax from the US government.
Southeast Asia has grown to be one of the most important markets for the Chinese gaming company. Games like “Arena of Valor” has attracted the masses and lured in new gamers from the region. The company’s games have been fairly popular among the people from southeast Asia as the count keeps on growing.
Tencent Cloud, the cloud computing arm of the company has also seen growth from the region. The need for cloud-based IT services by the home-based workers during the coronavirus pandemic saw a sudden upliftment in demand.
The company informed via a statement, “The Singapore office will also enable us to capture potential from the rapid pace of digitization and meet the demand for internet-based services and solutions in Singapore.”
Singapore, in the last few years, has attracted several tech firms and added investments. They have also increased efforts to attract more companies.
In recent years Tencent planned to grow as a company and the stricter regulatory rules of the Chinese government might also add to their problems. Titles like Call of Duty Mobile and PUBG Mobile accounted for 23% of Tencent’s $17 billion gaming empire, in the final quarter of 2019, according to the company.
Despite their efforts to crawl out the claws of China, South Korea’s PUBG Corp. has withdrawn the Chinese company’s publishing rights for PUBG Mobile in India, after the country banned the popular mobile shooter. In the United States, the president’s executive order signed on August 6th prohibits unspecified transactions with WeChat and its operator Tencent. The Commerce Department has not yet taken any decision on whether the gaming activities will be banned by September 20th of this year.
Previously, reports from media agencies like Reuters also informed that ByteDance, the parent of popular short video making application TikTok has also planned to invest billions of dollars in the country as they aim to recruit batches of employees as they look to make their South Eastern Regional headquarters in Singapore. According to reports from Bloomberg Quint, they have also applied for a digital-bank license from the city-state’s central bank, alongside Alibaba-backed Ant Group and Tencent-backed Sea Ltd.
Alibaba, the Chinese conglomerate, has acquired the full control of Singapore-based regional e-commerce platform Lazada, by paying $ 4 billion. The company aims to reach out to 300 million people in Southeast Asia by 2030. Previously, Alibaba group bought half of Singapore’s AXA Tower, valued at around $1.2 billion in the month of May. They are also en route agreements worth $ 3 billion, with Singapore-based company Grab Holdings Inc.