How China’s Tech Giants Charged Ahead When Coronavirus Shut Down Cinemas
And then, in the three days between Jan. 25-27, a whopping 600 million people tuned into digital giant Bytedance’s various video platforms to watch, for free, the only new blockbuster they’d have access to for months: director Xu Zheng’s family comedy “Lost in Russia.” For the first time, people across the country were watching a big, theatrical tentpole premiere on their phones.
It was an unexpected cap to the most tumultuous week in Chinese box office history. Expectations of record-breaking numbers vanished as the virus spread, leading to mass refunds and cinema closures. It also offered a peek at how the coronavirus is catalyzing a tectonic shift in Chinese entertainment away from conventional models and toward digital ones.
very year, it celebrates “Ali Day” with huge, staff-wide festivities on the date of Taobao’s founding to honor the tenacity of employees who worked from home.
Despite coronavirus slowdowns, Alibaba last month unveiled a further $28 billion investment into cloud computing, while Tencent has just this year bought control of gamer Funcom and game streamer Huya, and taken a 10% stake in Universal Music. The tech stocks have seen a quick, V-shaped recovery, while those of traditional film players such as Huayi Brothers and China Film Group have languished.
One company poised to gain momentum from COVID-19 is “Lost in Russia” buyer Bytedance, the world’s largest unlisted tech unicorn, and the only company other than Apple to have more than 100 million subscribers both within and outside China. Though layoffs are the norm for many firms as the Chinese economy struggles to regain momentum, Bytedance is on a global hiring spree. It plans to add 40,000 more to its workforce this year, which would give it a staff equal to Alibaba’s and far above Tencent’s.
“Nearly all cinemas on Earth are closed right now, and we don’t know when they’ll reopen,” he says. “We needed revenue flow now — and BAT [Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, China’s equivalent of the FAANGs] are hungry for content.”
“If it weren’t for the internet, the whole entertainment sector would have completely collapsed” amid prolonged physical shutdowns.