[双语字幕] Tencent SY Lau speaks at Viva Technology Paris 2016

I think the brilliance or the beauty of the Internet is actually that it's such a big open platform where there's virtually no secrets in the recipes in that sense. But having said it, what makes companies successful for the longer run is actually the passions of the founding team and as well as the ability to really galvanize a top management partners, not just team, partners around surrounding the founding team with a strong philosophy, with a strong passion to really make a difference in the world. So yes, there would be some similarities here and there, but and a lot of time the consumers are actually smarter than we thought. They would be able to see, you'll be able to see through what are the small thingies that really fits them well, that then which are products or apps service provided in today's world actually cater for them more than the so-called providers. So I think consumer smart in the world of Internet mobility. We will come back to mobility, but I would like David to see if I want to use it internally as one of my communication tools within the company, do you believe I can do it?

I can. We discuss this and we also have WeChat and we have QQ for Office that are equally very, very helpful. You could like to consider that. So which competition is working, that's good.

If you take that idea back into the world of Internet, the world of Internet today with mobility coming true, with connectivity paving the way as the next biggest things. Mobility, every single audience in the world, in China in that matter, are given that the liberty to exercise their wisdom with regards to consumer behavior. So mobile in the world, a market like China has that very strong significance. A few trends that we saw recently, it all comes back to the keywords that surround the word smart: smart cities, smart consumers, and smart content. Meaning China today will probably be the most well-connected cities in the world. I'm not sure whether our esteemed audience here has followed over the past 12 to 18 months, there are more cities and provisions in China have been connected under the national policies of Internet Plus. In effect, corporations such as Tencent and Alibaba are helping, playing a very important role in connecting the last miles of the society. So when everything is connected, you think about mobility that brings up connectivity, and in that sense then a demand will become infinity. So demand would happen the way that you wanted it, its supply on our side would therefore have to meet up to the new consumer behaviors in a society. So smart cities, smart consumers, and then we, Facebook and ourselves, we have the worry about smart content that therefore engine the so-called resources is happening right now in a society.

That's right. Well, let me maybe put it in a French context. I'm a great friend of French literature. I've watched Les Misérables probably more than 10 times with my family around the world. Victor Hugo, one of the key words that my friend Jeff shared with me was that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has arrived. So I think this fits very well in the context of evolutions of China's Internet society. In our industry, we only have about 20 years of lifespan compared to the major, much worth of various types of industries from industrial revolutions in the West. In any way, we are seeing where the world are today. So we only have about 20 years. So in an hour, that big idea happened at the right time where the market was opening up, where a lot of foreign investment was coming in, where a huge resources of consumers are beginning to realize that their hard-earned capital, their hard-earned money could be utilized in improving their lifestyles. And then national policy came in, infrastructures of broadband supported by the governments, which actually a huge resource. I'm holding a Chinese-made mobile phone here. We are in such smartphone available to 90% of the Internet, mobile Internet server in China. So that helps a lot in actually building an aggregated society where social ideation and social economy is taking a new life by itself.

Well, that is actually the question that we are being asked of in most of the occasions. If we were to look at the space of innovations, there are some scholars, global scholars, they are really iterative in that sense. It makes me think of a gentleman, Clayton Christensen, that talks about innovations, a daily month. And of course the gentleman that drove that innovation eventually was to actually serve the needs of a competitive advantage. And we think about Michael Porter, our professor back in Harvard Business School. Mr. Porter talked about there ought to be a certain types of corridors that exist within an ecosystem before innovation flourish, which is why we see back in the Valley, we are looking at Mr. President of France yesterday sharing with us passionately about his dream of turning France into a French tech nation, a startup nation. So all those things could be in place. But one of the key factors that often being missed out is actually ideas doesn't achieve success by itself. It's always the people. So one of the first things that we saw when we look at the past 20 years, yes, they are beginning to have a field, a match saga. But types of the world, we are very proud that we have Robin Li from Baidu, we are very proud that we have Pony Ma of Tencent, and of course the world knows about Jack Ma more than Jack in China gets. And what it basically means is that if we were to use what you call a time machine, traveling back 10, 15 years ago before this gentleman became such a public figure, they were coding days at night. They have such huge passion to try to make a difference. They all started within a dream that the world will one day be different with their contribution. And this is what is important in innovation. And in China, well, going back to Victor Hugo again, is just the right place at the right time and then with a lot of Chinese luck and Chinese hard work and Chinese passion. I think that's how it started. Having said that, innovation has to serve a purpose. The types of innovation that impact the most are those that actually create a certain utility, a certain values in someone's life. WeChat would be one example, Facebook would suddenly be another. I'm a great fan of Facebook, not because David is sitting next to me, but Facebook allows me to utilize my social circle the way I wanted it to be. And a lot of us actually have that eagerness to share, right? And then I wish if Mark was here today, he would have probably more things. And so if Pony was here today, he would actually show you that types of passion that you never see despite the fact that they're getting older.

Oh, actually not quite true. Companies such as Facebook, companies such as Baidu, and ourselves, we don't arrive at where we are today if we don't see the competitions on everywhere. The biggest competition is actually fear. Every single day, those dream makers of our company, we have a group of people we call the dream makers, when we wake up, we worry more about are we losing the love, Mark, are we losing the love from our consumer? Because you might think that you don't have a competition. In effect, in two days, someone from here, somewhere, would disrupt the Facebook and Tencent of the world because they are startups. And this key was at Marie's that you mentioned yesterday when you met with the President. You talked about unicorns. Statistics show that the Fortune 500 companies used to take a space of 20 years for them to achieve the evaluations of 1 billion dollars, but for startups, for unicorns, they averagely only take four years. So our competitions are not known out there and they are real hard-working guys that burn the midnight oil and eat the Chinese star McDonald's. And one fine day, they would be the Facebook of the future and it would be the Tencent of the future. And our hope and our responsibility to the industry is that Tencent has to evolve from where we are today. So as we evolve, whatever things are being done today will be filled by many others. I think that's how things are working on today.

Well, that question again is actually asked a lot. People talk about globalization plans of a Tencent company. Again, we have to put our feet on the ground. We are 18 years old. 18 years are not even allowed to have a beer in the US. So we are still young in that sense. I know French can, can we ask for a beer for us? Why? Because he's what he wants to get. So in other words, we are young, we are very prudent, and at times perhaps sometimes overly prudent. The idea is about expanding our products and services outside the mainland China. The strategy, the strategic constructs behind being, do we know the audience in France better than whoever they are actually championing the needs of France? Do we know the audience in the US where Facebook and Google are doing so well in there? Vice versa, any companies were the queendom. And that's a similar challenge people facing. So I think we have our plans, but we like to be very cautious. And on top of that, Maurice, I really love to share with you that within our space of the world, we seem to like to think of competitions not from a zero-sum game perspective. So we look at if we find some startups, some unicorns, they are doing so well, we would actually like to partner with them. The whole concept about social economy would begin to take place. And that's what happened in one of our deals that we happened in Europe recently. So we partner with people in that sense.

Oh, that's because I think the company is very, very well respected within the world of mobile games. The fact that we have acquired them, but the management team would have the total autonomy in managing their passion. We have to let people the space to manage their passion. That's how great blockbuster products will arrive. So the idea is not to go in to say that we are kind of taking over. No, the idea is let's help you, guide you, and you help us, guide us to see whether whatever things that you are strong at in Europe, the Chinese element could help. And when such companies are trying to actually move into China today, Tencent is a billions-a-user base platform, multi-platform. The games we talk about NBA in the US, we stream NBA exclusively in China. And when we met up with Adam Silver and when I talked to David Shoemaker, we three of us were so thrilled with the success of NBA in China. NBA has been in China for the past 30 years and ever since they started partnering with Tencent last year, their franchise grew by more than three times. And the game where Kobe was having his final moments, we had 10 million people watching NBA games like that while they are on the way to office in the morning. Those NBA's play at night here and then they watch it in the morning.

So that's why on my side, for China to attain such a huge user base over the past three, four years, in fact, the key drivers are actually mobility. See, mobility is just an infrastructure where the accessibility for the Internet experience are made so much pleasurable by the availability of broadband, affordable handsets, and all. But if you have built like that largest speedway or highway in a certain land, you need contents, you need the willingness of the people to spend, to invest time in that area. And that content curation, the entire architectures and sub-industries, various industry are not able to be done by a few companies. So to answer that question, I think we are seeing such a huge mushrooming of phenomena of startup cultures in China. And in very recent years, in fact, I think back in year 2011, Tencent was one of the key pioneers in the industry that actually promoted the concepts of open system. In other words, incubators. We in fact invested millions of dollars in helping create a whole value chains of innovation starting from universities down to the early adopters of technologies and even down to the so-called user-generated content industry. We actually incentivize people that write, people that circulate, and people that could do good deeds of the society. On top of that, in year 2014, when Tencent along with a few others, when we promoted the ideas of Internet Plus to the government, we were blessed with the so-called blessing that the government was very serious about driving China towards 2025 where everybody would be connected. So open systems and Internet Plus are strategies, major catalysts if you like. They actually make the entire country very startup-friendly in that sense.

Well, first of all, Maurice, thanks again for your generous invitation. Well, a torch is a personal recognition, despite the fact given by our Olympics, but the opportunity to interact with the best brains in the world, with David here, with you around, and I also had the opportunity to learn from other great speakers, Eric Schmidt, Robin is going to be speaking later. I think no amount of torch would buy what would actually turn me, I think that's important for it. Now having said that, now that I've done you that favor, so I think I earned the right to modify your question a little bit. So it's not so much about what would I like this audience to think about what they can do with Tencent, but actually it's more about I am assuming that majorities of the audience here are young, ambitious startup entrepreneurs. And I would like to probably just share some of our experience. We would love to see you being the next Zalando, the next Facebook of the world. We long to see you be the next Pony Ma, Robin Li, and Jack Ma of the world. And because when you do that, it basically means you have created such a huge success that hundreds of thousands of people is going to be passionately following your dreams about they make a better living for themselves and their families. They are also creating a better connected world for all of us, whether it was in China or outside China.

You go.