Tencent Owns China, But It Wants The World

It’s up to the company’s president, Martin Lau (left, in his Hong Kong office), to help Tencent do what no other Chinese business has done: become a worldwide consumer-tech power.

- Brad Stone and Lulu Chen

The leadership committee of Tencent, the Chinese internet colossus, usually holds its annual off-site at a comfortable Japanese resort or Silicon Valley hotel. Last fall it went for something more epic: a two-day hike through the harsh wastes of the Gobi Desert.

The committee traveled in a manner befitting the 14 most senior executives of China’s most valuable company. Helpers assembled their tents, and water was trucked in at considerable expense for showers. Yet by the end of the first day’s 26-kilometer (16-mile) hike, some members were petitioning to pack it in and go home early. Martin Lau, Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s president, and “Pony” Ma Huateng, its co-founder and chief executive officer, insisted on forging ahead.

On the second day they hiked another 26 kilometers and, weary and blistered, made it to Dunhuang, once a frontier town on the Silk Road. While the executives had been wandering the desert, Tencent’s stock had risen to make it the most richly valued company not only in China, but in all of Asia—a record it now trades back and forth with its archrival, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The Tencent team launched into an enthusiastic celebration during a hotel banquet.

The executives would like it to be known, though, that their exuberance wasn’t about the stock. It was about the journey. “The trip is representative of the culture of the company,” says Lau, months later, from the comfort of Tencent’s high-rise offices in Hong Kong. “We are much more focused on the direction of where we are going and the process than the share price.”