Why China’s Most-Hated Internet Company Decided to Play Nice

Tencent’s popularity may help it avoid trouble with Beijing. But its vast power could still squelch innovation in the world’s largest online market.

A few months after Wang Xing founded a Groupon-like e-commerce service called Meituan, he learned that China’s biggest internet company, Tencent, had started a similar venture. “Is there any business that Tencent wouldn’t do?” he asked. Mr. Wang’s quote led a 2010 magazine article about Tencent with a headline so famously profane — think the rough Chinese equivalent of an F-bomb — that two top editors were fired shortly after it was published. The cover depicted Tencent’s mascot, a chubby penguin wearing a red scarf, stabbed with knives, blood dripping to the floor.