Chapter 49 21. International scientific research status

Ma Huateng and his Tencent have always been the focus of controversy. In the past 12 years, this IT company founded in 1998 has become China's No. 1 and the world's third largest Internet company; Tencent's most famous instant messaging software, Tencent QQ, has become the communication software used by the most people in China. The naive image of a penguin has successfully captured the computer desktops and mobile phone screens of more than 400 million Chinese netizens. However, such a huge success has not reduced the criticism of Ma Huateng.In the eyes of many people, a large number of products launched by Tencent have obvious traces of plagiarism, and some domestic industry people are quite disapproving of Ma Huateng's style of work.Ma Yun, CEO of Alibaba, thinks: "The biggest problem with Tencent Paipai is that there is no innovation, and everything is copied." Wang Zhidong, the former president and CEO of Sina. The king of plagiarism, and he is blatantly and openly plagiarizing." Not to mention the protracted "3Q war" between Qihoo 360 and Tencent in 2010, the many wars of words between 360 founder Zhou Hongyi and Ma Huateng.

However, Ma Huateng has his own views on the so-called plagiarism that he is widely accused of: "Plagiarism can be understood as learning, it is a kind of absorption, and it is a kind of learning from each other." In any case, no matter what others say, in China's Internet market, Tencent's status in the arena has been established, and with hundreds of millions of QQ users, whether it is portals, online games, e-commerce, SNS, any new Internet business , as long as Ma Huateng is interested, he can easily enter, and he can play with ease in a short period of time, obtain huge benefits, and leave the pioneers far behind.After all, no matter what you want to do, the user base is always the foundation. Controlling the users means owning the market, and the next thing will be easy.This is also the reason why many people envy and hate him.

However, among so many Internet companies, why only Tencent has so many users?In the final analysis, it is because it was the first to provide unique information services to Chinese netizens. Ma Huateng is from Chaoshan. He traveled from Shantou to Shenzhen with his parents in his 10s.His family conditions were very good when he was a child.It is said that in the early days of Tencent’s establishment, his father, Ma Chenshu, used to be in charge of the finances for a period of time. Every time Ma Chenshu came to the company, he drove a stylish black Mercedes-Benz S500.The good family conditions allow Ma Huateng to focus on his interests.He played with computers very early, and later entered Shenzhen University to study computer science.At that time, Ma Huateng's PC level had already impressed teachers and classmates.He is good at dealing with various viruses, and has provided many good solutions for school PC maintenance, but he often does some pranks of locking hard drives, which makes the school computer room administrator dumbfounded.

After graduating from Shenzhen University in 1993, Ma Huateng joined Runxun Company and began to work as a software engineer, focusing on the development of paging software, and has been working as the director of the development department.This experience made Ma Huateng understand the significance of developing software: practicality comes first, not for the author's own entertainment. "Many software technicians are often very confident in their intelligence, writing software is just a way to compare with each other, and I hope that what I write can be used by more people, and I am willing to play a small role in bringing technology to the market ’” Ma Huateng said later.

Although Ma Huateng was young at that time, his Internet experience was beyond the reach of ordinary people.Before the popularization of the Internet in China, a netizen named ROY set up the first Huiduo Great Wall station in China in Beijing. A station usually has only one computer, one telephone, and one MODEN. Users connect to the server by dialing the phone. ——In fact, the server is also a very simple computer——then download the latest post in the BBS, and read and reply to the letter after offline.After the reply is packaged, it will be dialed and uploaded to the server.Although the early prototype of the Internet like Huiduo.com was very simple, many netizens at that time realized the fun of the Internet early, and Ma Huateng was one of them.When he joined Huiduo.com for the first time, he never got tired of it. After half a year, he volunteered to invest 50,000 yuan to set up four telephone lines and 8 computers at home. He assumed the role of the Shenzhen station manager of Huiduo. Can't be handed over.Over time, Shenzhen's "Mazhan" has become famous on Huiduo. Ma Huateng is very proud of this, "On the Internet, I can get complete excitement."

Ma Huateng met quite a few friends through the Internet, such as Ding Lei from Netease.Ma Huateng said, "When we drank beer together, we were just wage earners and we didn't know the future. Ding Lei's later success inspired me. As long as we do it, nothing is impossible." The experience of developing practical software not only cultivated Ma Huateng's keen sense of the software market, but also made him a lot of money from it. "Believe that what you write can be sold for money." Ma Huateng is one of the authors of the popular stock card. The stock card developed by him and his friends has been selling well in the SEG electronic market. The company solves software problems, which not only makes him a little famous in the circle, but also has considerable primitive accumulation.

Despite his background in technology, Ma Huateng began to pay attention to business very early. He was one of the earliest speculators in the Chinese stock market.In fact, when he graduated from university, Ma Huateng had already planned to do business, but at that time he suddenly found that the competition was so fierce that he couldn't bear it, and finally had to be a programmer honestly.Until a chance, he came into contact with ICQ, an instant messaging tool developed by an Israeli. It was this software that gave him new inspiration. With the unique business intuition of Chaoshan people, Ma Huateng immediately realized that ICQ is a good thing.In China at that time, even a pager could make people flock to it.The instant chat tool ICQ is equivalent to a pager between PCs, people can use it to exchange information on the computer conveniently, which is obviously full of business opportunities.

"Since 1998, I have considered starting my own business, but I have never thought about what to do, but the idea of ​​starting a business has not fluctuated. I know that I am fully capable of doing things that I am fascinated by. Find space in the two major resources... How could I have so much money in 1998? At that time, I had only graduated from college for 5 years, and the first monthly salary was only 1,100 yuan. Calculate how much time I have to save to invest 100,000 yuan in the stock market where?" Ma Huateng said, it was this idea that strengthened his determination to start a business.

So, in November 1998, five people including Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong pooled 500,000 yuan and registered Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd.After a while, several people pooled another 500,000 yuan to increase the company's registered capital to 1 million yuan, officially starting their entrepreneurial journey. Several founders of Tencent have many years of experience in Shenzhen's telecommunications and Internet industries. It can be said that they are the first batch of Internet workers in Shenzhen. This will undoubtedly provide a lot of help to the company at the technical and business levels. "Entrepreneurship is not a joke, and Tencent is not all smooth sailing. At the beginning, our servers had nowhere to host. Building a company is much more complicated than writing software." Looking back on the hardships in the early days of entrepreneurship, Ma Huateng still remembers it vividly.

Ma Huateng had already had his own ideas on how to connect paging and the Internet to develop business, but at that time, there was indeed a fierce debate among Tencent shareholders about whether to launch the ICQ project. "Finally, the recognition of the development direction of network technology made everyone seek common ground while reserving differences, and we began to give preference to ICQ technology." ICQ is an instant messaging tool based on the Internet, which integrates multiple functions of paging, chatting, e-mail and file transfer.When the user installs ICQ on the personal computer, it will be embedded in the Window system and become an icon on the desktop. Every time the user turns on the computer, it is a fixed device.Internet users can use this to know if their friends are online and to communicate directly.The founders of Tencent all realized that users have a great demand for ICQ services in a Chinese environment, so they independently developed an Internet-based online Chinese ICQ service - OICQ, and became the Chinese ICQ service provider with the largest number of online users in the country.Later, because OICQ was complained by AOL, accusing it of violating ICQ’s intellectual property rights, in April 2000, Tencent changed the domain name “OICQ.com” originally registered to “tencent.com” and changed the OICQ communication software to It was later known as Tencent QQ.

Panning for gold in emerging Internet markets is hard work. The launch of QQ did not directly bring economic benefits to Ma Huateng.At that time, the main business of this small company with more than a dozen people was to do projects for Shenzhen Telecom, Shenzhen Unicom and some paging stations, and QQ was just a by-product of the company.Entire companies often go all out for a single project, and they have to keep their feet under wraps at all times.In order to impress customers with strength, Ma Huateng never printed the words "general manager" on his business cards at that time, but only carried the title of "engineer" - in Shenzhen, there are hundreds of companies like Tencent, Ma Huateng's expectation at the time was that the company could survive. Like other Internet companies that have just started their businesses, capital and technology are Tencent's biggest problems. "First, there was a lack of funds, but the software could not keep up with the funds." At that time, Ma Huateng did not have enough understanding of the market potential of QQ, and he just put it on the Internet for free use by users with the mentality of trying it out.But even he himself did not expect that 10 months later, this unpopular QQ had developed millions of users. As the number of registered users soared, Tencent had to desperately expand its servers. At that time, the server hosting fee of one or two thousand yuan was a huge burden for the company. Without money to buy servers, Tencent had to use despicable means to steal from others. space and bandwidth. "We can only use other people's servers everywhere. At first, it was just an ordinary PC, put it in a computer room with broadband conditions, and then secretly put the program in other people's servers to run." Under the situation of struggling and unsustainable, Ma Huateng thought of selling QQ. "At that time, I thought I couldn't afford it, so I sold it." Referring to the situation at that time, Ma Huateng smiled happily, "But we encountered trouble when selling QQ. I talked to many ICPs (content providers), and they all asked for exclusive Buyout." This made Ma Huateng, who wanted to make money by selling a few more companies through QQ software, very hesitant.At that time, Tencent had negotiated with the Shenzhen Telecom Data Bureau, and the other party was going to offer 600,000 yuan, but Ma Huateng insisted on selling it for 1 million yuan, but the negotiation could not be reached, so it fell through; later, Tencent's top management approached China.com and Sina, and it was also 1 million yuan. The price, however, was rejected by the executives of Zhonghua and Sina. The software could not be sold, but the number of users grew rapidly, and the investment required to operate QQ was increasing. Ma Huateng had to go around to raise money.When I went to the bank, the bank said that it had never heard of a mortgage loan based on the "number of registered users"; when negotiating with domestic investors, most of the other parties were concerned about how many computers and other fixed assets Tencent had.Fortunately, in the second half of 1999, from the United States to China, the prosperity of the Internet market ignited the enthusiasm of investors.Inspired by his old friend Ding Lei's overseas financing, Ma Huateng took a 20-page business plan with six revisions and began to try his luck at the Hi-Tech Fair.At that time, Tencent's valuation was only 11 million US dollars, but even so, some venture capitalists still thought that Ma Huateng's financing requirements were too high and the risk was too high to dare to invest.Finally, they finally met IDG and Yingke Digital. "At that time I asked Ma Huateng, why is your company worth so much money?" Lin Dongliang, one of the IDG partners who first invested in Tencent, later recalled, "Ma Huateng said how many users does Israel's ICQ have? They sold tens of millions USD, how many users does my OICQ have? That’s why I’m worth so much money.” This seemingly “unreasonable” logic finally helped Ma Huateng get financing from IDG and Goldman Sachs. "They gave QQ $4 million, each accounting for 20% of the company's shares. When QQ developed to 10,000 users, the money was not used up." With this fund, the company bought a 200,000-megabyte IBM server. "It was placed on the table at the time, don't mention how beautiful it is." Ma Huateng recalled the scene at that time, still unable to restrain his joy. After more than a year of development, Tencent quickly has nearly 100 million registered Internet users, but Ma Huateng suffers from the lack of charging channels. At the end of 2000, China Mobile launched "Monternet", which opened a "Golden Road" for Ma Huateng through the sharing model of mobile phone charges.By the end of 2001, Tencent had achieved a net profit of RMB 10.22 million. The rapid rise of China's scientific research capabilities has become the headlines of the international news! In thirty years, China has spanned from the mid-19th century to the 21st century.In 1900, China had no modern technology.At that time, there were less than ten Chinese people who knew calculus in the whole country. At the beginning of the 21st century, China has already caught up with the world's advanced level in the field of high-end technology research and development. For example, the following technologies: nuclear energy, high energy physics, biotechnology, information technology, computer technology and robotics. Since the 1990s, the central government's funding for scientific and technological research and development has continued to increase. The manned spaceflight projects in 2003 and 2005 marked the great progress of China's space industry.According to China's lunar exploration program, it is expected to obtain lunar surface samples by 2020. In 2005, China's investment in research and development accounted for 1.3% of GDP, and by 2020, it is expected to increase to 2.5%; 60% of GDP growth will come from technological development. Innovative capabilities, the development of basic science, and the development of cutting-edge technologies will all strengthen China's international standing and propel it to the top of the world. Today, China has reached an advanced level in many fields of science and technology.Some fields have even approached or reached the world level.According to the "Medium and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan" (2006-2020) issued by the State Affairs Committee on February 9, 2006, 16 key projects will be developed in the next 15 years. These benchmark projects cover strategic areas such as information technology and biotechnology, as well as energy, natural resources, environment and human health, jetliners, manned spaceflight, lunar exploration, etc. Agricultural scientific research projects such as insect cotton, dwarf wheat, and super rice. In the long term, the 2006-2020 plan aims to enhance innovation capabilities to promote the application of science and technology, strengthen national security, and promote socio-economic development.The Chinese government will strengthen basic research to better align with world research levels. China's goal is to contribute 60% of GDP growth through scientific and technological progress, and at the same time control the GDP growth contributed by foreign technology within 30%. There are more than 1,000 R&D centers in Shanghai.Nearly 670,000 people work in tech here. Its research results are progressing rapidly, and many scientific and technological achievements were born here.Academic exchanges here are also very active. In 2006, Shanghai's R&D fund reached 3 billion euros, accounting for 2.5% of Shanghai's GDP.These studies yielded 1953 results.Shanghai has 60 institutions of higher learning with a total of 500,000 students enrolled. At present, China has 35 million scientific and technical personnel, ranking first in the world. Among these scientific research technicians, 80% of the researchers are under the age of 45.They are the backbone of China's technological development.