Donald Trump’s WeChat ban targets a celebrated Chinese innovation at the heart of the world’s largest mobile gaming and social media empire, threatening one of the more eye-catching stock rallies of 2020.
It’s hard to overstate WeChat’s importance to Tencent Holdings Ltd. It’s the means through which Tencent introduces a billion people to games and other online content, funneling trillions of dollars in annual payments to brands from Apple Inc to Walmart Inc. WeChat’s reach underpinned Tencent’s US$280bil (RM1.18 trillion) gain in market value since a March 18 Covid-19 trough – equivalent to one Samsung Electronics Co and the fifth biggest dollar-gain on the planet over that period.
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