Tencent Labelled A "Chinese Military Company" By US Government

Pretty wild considering they're one of the world's largest video game investors and stakeholder. They've owned my favorite game, Warframe (Digital Extremes), since 2020.

I'm sure that Intel, AMD and IBM are 'Military companies' too then, their chips end up in everything.

seems an intentional misunderstanding for the crime of being a successful company in a country closed to US imperialism

@nukatha

"I'm sure that Intel, AMD and IBM are 'Military companies' too then, their chips end up in everything."

does anyone argue otherwise?

i think the "Chinese" part of the phrase is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, for better or worse. Nations tend to make kind of a big deal of the distinction between foreign and domestic. ✌️

Interesting things are happening already in the US and Trump isn't even a president yet

I know a quick and easy way to make this go all away. Just don't be a Chinese company. Move the company to another country. BAM fixed.

Interesting. I doubt this connection with the Chinese military but I am not a fan of this company anyways based off of what little I know.

I'm no fan of any company that's headquartered or primarily operated in a dictatorship, and I don't think anyone should feel guilty or hesitant about such opposition. That said, I'd only be half-joking if I were to ask what company **doesn't** have ties to a military or otherwise murderous entity somewhere in the world. Companies are, generally speaking, not good people.

Maybe they know something that we don't. You never know with China 😜

This may be the reason why Nintendo is no longer supporting Tencent with the Switch in China by 2026. Don't want the Chinese military to steal Switch user's info by hacking through Nintendo's own digital footprint. This is also why Nintendo doesn't allow apps such as Facebook, Netflix, X - The Website that use to be Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram, etc.) on its console as those could easily expose Switch user's info to foreign medias or corporations.

@jake1421 Trust me, I'm not trying to start an argument here; I'd just point out that it's possible to oppose both U.S. imperialism and Chinese imperialism. I'm sure you're right that American economic hegemony is primarily the goal in these types of disputes, but working with the military of a different jingoist state (which also happens to be the world's largest military, btw) is a little more complicated than just being "closed to U.S. imperialism". Superpowers are, generally speaking, not good people.

I would find this plausible except it's the US government saying it so it seems all but guaranteed to be complete bs.

I hate Tencent about as much as anyone can without going postal, and I'm sure Tencent has all sorts of ties to shady stuff. Just like every Communist Chinese company ever, but unless the department of defense has started categorizing League of Legends as biological warfare (which it really should) I dont see how Tencent poses a direct Military threat to the 4 largerst Armies in the world, and also the Coast Guard.

Surely the Americans do some research and investigation before adding companies to the death list.

Anyone else starting to have a little nagging feeling that something is very suspect as the US labels more and more of these fast growing foreign competitors as threats to democracy or whatever. After all the crap that's happened around politics and such in the last decade or so, I am sooo suspect of any and all of this stuff now. The "good guys" can no longer be trusted any more than the "bad guys" it seems. And none of them truly seem to be working in the best interests of just the regular punters. And most punters just accept whatever the current narrative is without question. It's a weird time indeed.

@BoilerBroJoe yes it's not all black and white. Maybe if China were actively working with Canadian and Mexican military to "watch" the US we could equate them. I don't think it's complicated but hey let's talk about games

Now let's talk about the U.S. tech companies that are actually well documented as being arms of the U.S. military.
Let ye without sin cast the first stone and all that.

I have no evidence of this, but I feel it's quite possible Tencent may do work for the Chinese military. Game-based combat simulators or training aids are not new. It's completely possible Tencent has done some kind of contract work for the Chinese military in this capacity. That's not saying that they've done anything wrong, or supplied the military with any kind of data, etc. Simply that it's a possible way how they ended up on the list.

I am certainly no fan of Tencent. They own far too much of the gaming market in all regions. But, I can see how they would both qualify to be flagged for the list and present a case to prove it's not a threat. Still, I'd be fine with non-Asian government posing to limit their investments outside of China.

This label can be justified, when Chinese Military intelligence has full access to user info within TenCent systems. You can bet the Chinese government has full control over TenCent. Like they have with each successful big company in China.

It's well known that it's simply impossible to do any business in China without agreeing to Chinese government oversight.

Western corporations have just hidden these agreements for many years, until this was exposed some years ago. Suddenly causing (fake) concern by Western governments after public pushback after the revelation.
Like the Huawei spy chip scandal in their routers and chips in Micro Systems servers hardware, etc. Chinese intelligence hoarding user data from Mobile devices and systems linked to Chinese corporations. Etc, etc.

It's the main reason, why Western corporations are suddenly trying to divest themselves towards other countries in recent years, like Vietnam and India. Building factories there and moving production out of China.

Also don't forget that Nintendo also suddenly cut their ties with TenCent and pulls out of China.

The US also is casually talking about taking over Canada and Greenland...so who knows what's going on here.

sigh I guess Warframe is getting banned in the US. I enjoyed my time at least.

@Xbox_Dashboard If the USA manage to get Canada as part of the nation then that would be a breath of fresh air. That makes traveling to Alaska by land much more easier.

gasps in surprise What an unexpected turn of events! Who would have thought? It was so secret only everyone knew it for a decade or so

@Xbox_Dashboard I wouldn't count on an entire nation casually giving all its land and sovereignty to anyone

They might be working on augmentes reality, making American soldiers appear as monsters. Where did I see that? Probably black mirror.

For context Tencent also manufactures air fryers which were proven to be spying on Australians.

This is correct. Tencent are dangerous for a variety of reasons. If you use any of their platforms everything you do is sent to the chinese government.

Ayup. Nintendo knew what was up.

@Magician Remember that we have a meeting with our overlords next Saturday, Tenno. Long live the Chinese Republic!

@earthinheritor Except that this is the Biden administration making this decision.

There's plenty of stupidity, corruption and malice in DC that doesn't originate from Trump, I can assure you.

Funny. Wouldn't surprise me if Xi had a hand in Tencent.

You can bet their government will likely label Tesla, Meta, Microsoft and Google in their categories for espionage.

Wow. Who to believe the Chinese or the Americans? The two biggest liars on earth.

@progx Hadn't Google already gotten banned from China for disobeying "the great Firewall" of mandatory Internet censorship? (Though I only heard of it back when it was a current event, and the person reporting said they likely did it to go out with more admiration that simply losing market share to Baidu.)

Too much has been allowed to be wild for years, now. Anything that is not in the interest of a country, or co. gets axed. That's common sense, and every place on Earth does this. It's not specific to one country, or another.

@Princess_Lilly did I mention they added the UK in their casual mentions of conquest? This is lunacy.

“Any company that out competes American companies is bad, mmmkay?” - the American regime

• Huawei
• Tik Tok
• Tencent
• ?

If you can’t beat them, destroy them.

If the next Assassins Creed underperforms this company will buy Ubisoft.

I don't know how people in the comments are unable to differentiate between the US military and any military (let alone one that is potentially hostile to the united states). I know a lot of people here aren't in the US, and that's fine, but hopefully it isn't hard for anyone to realize that a country will act in its own best interests. Some would argue that's the entire point of a government, to look out for its own country and people.

Again, this is China we're talking about. If a games company had ties to the Canadian military, it would be a different story.

@BoilerBroJoe 🤣

@earthinheritor We need kids to stop playing video games and go back into the factories and coal mines!

/s

@SurprisedRobinChu Thatll be the only option when they realize how vital immigrants are to the US economy lol

Probably true in a way but you could easily apply the same standard to Microsoft and Apple as being American military companies.

Even could just sticking to video games alone, the developers of Call of Duty literally work with the Pentagon on their software.

The hypocrisy of America is ridiculous. It's the biggest military complex in the world.

@SurprisedRobinChu You're joking but some red states are doing away with child labor laws. They literally want kids to work jobs again like the old days in America when a lot of things weren't regulated. And when those kids inevitably get hurt they will be denied healthcare

@RunninBlue it's the degree of control their government has over those companies and the type of business they do. A beverage company for example wouldn't have any way of gathering insane amounts of personal data like tech companies do and therefore wouldn't be labeled like this.

Tech companies are, by virtue of how one does business in China, government espionage tools almost by default.

@Ashunera84 Do you honestly believe American tech companies don’t take user data and work and share with their government?

Like honestly? You don’t believe that?

Wow.

They would know. The US has plenty of those themselves.

They should sit down and shut up on this one

@Chocobo_Shepherd Non Americans believe they know more about American government than Americans.

Lol people here are so naive thinking it's some gotcha that American tech companies are in bed with the American military. This isn't a declaration that countries can't do that. Superpowers wouldn't be superpowers without their tech industry. They're calling it like it is because tencent is snakey as hell.

@Bratwurst35

https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/civics/new-study-finds-alarming-lack-of-civic-literacy-among-americans

The US government is for sale. Tencent just needs to donate to the right politicians or buy an unaccountable judge a vacation home.

@ecco6t9 no big loss. Ubisoft games have been rubbish and or re-skins for years

@KingMike First Chinese hackers stole proprietary information from Google. Then Google broke the firewall mandate and was banned.

Considering every company in China is partly owned by the government, I am sure they have involvement in the military. It would be pretty hard to ban every Chinese company though.

I guess marvel rivals will be banned in usa, and replacing it, concord will rise again 👻

Meanwhile Microsoft literally brags about providing hardware and software for the US military. Totally not part of the US military industrial complex LOL.

https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/digital-transformation/u-s-army-to-use-hololens-technology-in-high-tech-headsets-for-soldiers/

I knew it, the Chinese Switches are time bombs that will explode when the Chinese eShop servers go offline.
that's just a joke, don't take it seriously. And yes, I probably have to to this now whenever I post these kind of jokes

@RunninBlue I don't think I said that anywhere.

Businesses in China are far more heavily controlled than most of the english-speaking world. China blocks a great deal of information entering and leaving the country, and prevents countless businesses from working there for many arbitrary reasons or for their propaganda.

Engaging in spying on other nations doesn't mean you shouldn't protect yourself from spying.

@Ashunera84 Lots of countries in the world have protectionist economies, not just China. France has quotas on foreign films imported into the country for instance.

As for American companies, you don't think that they engage in their own propaganda, like virtue signalling about being inclusive of minorities yet it's still the same people controlling from the top?

Tencent's rapid expansion is shady and deserves questioning, but the way the US government acts shows it's tied with the incoming Trump government's xenophobia. They're not concerned about corporate responsibility and good governance, seeing the amount of bailouts and lobbyists in Washington.

@PKDuckman literally all of that can be true alongside what I said.

Good, everyone should be alarmed at the rate that this CCP-tied company is buying and investing into Western media and games.

"pared-back version of the Switch"?

@Serpenterror Yeah, and totally not because it was an under-supported failure with only 10 games in it's eShop that was basically sent out to die

Do they supply military training software to the CCP? That's the only way I could see a video game company being part of a country's military industrial complex.