Top of the Great Era

Chapter 3100 Muscles

Boss Ma has come to Beijing.

He said he wanted to communicate with the authorities, coordinate some official and private relations, and hold the Internet Conference. The venue is not far from Alibaba, which is his home. Although it was nominally founded by the authorities, in fact, many of them were his personal will. Those foreign Internet companies were not allowed to develop in China, so they did not accept the official arrangement. The reason why they were able to come to China to participate was actually because of Boss Ma's face.

However, he alone could not organize this event, at least not in a beautiful way.

It would be great if we could get Boss Zhou in as well!

Boss Ma has been in constant contact with Zhou Buqi during this period. One of the important reasons why he came to Beijing specially this time was that he wanted to persuade Zhou Buqi to go a step further and make more efforts for the establishment of this Wuzhen Internet Conference.

Because he was afraid that he could not convince him, he went to find Lao Zhang first.

Lao Zhang is a fun-loving person.

He also had a close relationship with Zhou Buqi.

  Let him come forward!

As expected, Zhang Chaoyang really liked this kind of lively scene, so he organized a party that night and invited several Internet entrepreneurs in Beijing to sing in KTV. Five or six men gathered in KTV, without even a girl to accompany them.

Absolute green pure K.

Among these people, Lao Ma and Lao Zhang are the best singers and the ones who like to show off the most. They are definitely the microphone masters in the KTV. Either Lao Zhang sings or Lao Ma sings, while the others just sit there drinking and chatting.

"This is such a big thing, you have to take the lead!"

After a song was sung, Lao Zhang ran to Zhou Buqi and also extended an invitation.

Zhou Buqi said very honestly: "It has no real meaning."

Lao Zhang opened his eyes wide, "How could it be? This is an opportunity to show off our strength to the world! In the current Internet industry, there are only two countries playing, one is the United States, and the other is China. If we compare us with the United States a few years ago, there was really a big gap. The situation is different now. Look at the new businesses in the mobile Internet. We are more creative and more dynamic than the United States."

Zhou Buqi disagreed, "Why show off your muscles? This is the right era. Modern civilization requires people to dress neatly. Only primitive people, when civilization was backward, would show off their muscles by being shirtless."

Lao Zhang said unhappily, "If you don't know, how do you know if your belly is muscle or fat?"

Zhou Buqi laughed.

Boss Ma also came over at this time and said solemnly: "That makes sense, it's about showing off your muscles. If you don't show them off, people will think you are just extra fat, and that you are soft and easy to bully!"

"Hmm?" Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows, a little frightened, "What do you mean by that? Who are you trying to show off your muscles to?"

Boss Ma said: "The Internet is at the forefront of domestic industrial innovation. What is innovation? Innovation is to break the old order and establish a new order. Innovation is to destroy the rules of the past and create a new set of things!"

Zhou Buqi didn't dare to take up the topic and chose to remain silent.

Boss Ma went on to say, “Now that Alibaba has gone public, the next step is to operate Ant Financial’s IPO. I know WeChat is also providing Internet financial services, and WeChat Pay is doing pretty well, with a scale not much smaller than Alipay. But you don’t really understand what Alipay is all about!”

Zhou Buqi said: "You can do whatever you want, I have nothing to do with Alipay."

Boss Ma was surprised and asked, "How can it have nothing to do with you? When Alipay and Alibaba were separated, there was an agreement. If Alipay goes public, it will compensate Yahoo with a large sum of money. This has nothing to do with you? Alipay has been successful in China, and the relevant model can be copied to PayPal and promoted to the world. PayPal is not your company?"

At the beginning, he secretly separated Alipay from Alibaba, which seriously damaged the interests of shareholders.

It was Zhou Buqi who stepped forward to coordinate.

We contacted SoftBank and Yahoo and asked them to reach an agreement with Alibaba. Alipay has been split off, which is a fait accompli. We can only wait until Alipay goes public in the future and take out a large sum of money to compensate SoftBank and Yahoo, the two major shareholders.

Yahoo is now a subsidiary of Ziweixing International, which now links it to Zhou Buqi.

Zhou Buqi hesitated for a moment, then smiled and said, "By the way, I visited Zuckerberg's home a few days ago, and he is also very distressed now!"

Boss Ma said unhappily, "Stop changing the subject!"

Zhou Buqi said, "You just want me to invite some world-class Internet entrepreneurs to attend your Internet summit. Zuckerberg doesn't count?"

Boss Ma's eyes lit up. "Forget it. It would be great if he could come!"

"He's in a lot of trouble now!"

"You're the one who pressured me?"

"Me?" Zhou Buqi shook his head. "The competition between him and me is market competition. In the market, everything is open, fair and just. If I punch you, you can also kick me. What's there to worry about? Even if I lose, it's because I'm not as skilled as you."

Boss Ma was slightly startled, "Isn't it a market?"

Zhou Buqi said: "Recently, the US military was exposed for abusing prisoners of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were also videos and so on. Facebook uploaded a lot of them. The authorities put pressure on Zuckerberg, hoping that he would limit the spread of such content."

"Interfering with freedom of speech!" Boss Ma finally understood what was going on. This kind of thing is indeed a forbidden zone in the United States. Especially for many idealistic people in Silicon Valley, it is simply a spiritual blow.

Zhou Buqi said: "Ziweixing International has also received a notice from the White House."

Boss Ma asked: "Official notice?"

"No, it was just a private call, based on personal relationships." Zhou Buqi has been developing in the United States for a long time, and he feels that many things are actually similar between China and the United States. "This kind of thing must not be an official notification. If the White House dares to issue a formal notification, the president will have to step down."

As platforms for information dissemination, both Ziweixing International and Facebook have received relevant notifications, so Google must have received them as well.

This is illegal and non-compliant.

But as a businessman, can you really go against the highest authority for such a small matter?

The fact is that everyone has exercised effective control.

It is impossible to completely ban related content, but it has been downgraded. Unless users specifically search for related content, the platform's recommendation mechanism will not recommend related content to users. For example, if a content is labeled "terrorist" or "violent", once it has such a label, it will not be able to receive any traffic share and will no longer be included in the recommendation pool to receive recommended allocations.

Google's initial failure in the domestic market was actually a failure in the competition. They couldn't beat Baidu in the past, and they couldn't beat the combination of Baidu and Weidian in this life. But they refused to admit defeat, and the reason they used was that they didn't want to go along with the authorities, and they didn't want to delete or block some inappropriate content, giving themselves a high-sounding reputation.

Back in the US market, the discretion is indeed much greater.

But there will also be many private requests from unofficial channels of the White House.

We still have to cooperate when we need to.

Boss Ma was very curious, "What happened next?"

"What can we do?" Zhou Buqi asked back, "Just accept it! Haven't you noticed that the popularity of news about the abuse of prisoners of war has decreased recently? Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. have all downgraded the relevant content."

Boss Ma asked, “Is it necessary?”

Zhou Buqi snorted, "If you don't cooperate, you're courting death. Since ancient times, the people have never fought against the government. Let alone the Silicon Valley giants with a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars, even if Hollywood is making a movie, they have to cooperate. If you don't cooperate, you'll be in big trouble."

"How can movies cooperate? Are there censorship agencies?"

"There is no censorship agency, but you should at least do a good job of self-censorship, right? Just like making war movies and action movies, you need to use so many planes and cannons, and sometimes there will be F16 fighter jets and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. If you shoot well, the Pentagon will provide special funds to support you to use these military equipment for free. The shots of the plane taking off from the aircraft carrier cost millions of dollars. Which film company can afford it? If you discredit the military, you can still shoot it and show it publicly, but they will never give you money to sponsor filming again."

"Is this also the same notification from the White House?"

"Almost." Zhou Buqi nodded. "Nowadays, tech giants are avoiding taxes around the world and keeping their money in offshore companies. If we want to use these tax-avoidance funds legally, we must have new laws. Who dares to go against the White House? If I go against it, not only will the White House be unhappy, but my peers in the entire tech industry will also regard me as an enemy."

If American companies want to bring the money they earn in other countries back to the United States, they have to pay a heavy transit tax of up to 35%.

This is too much and no one is willing to pay.

So technology companies are evading taxes and putting the money they earn in foreign countries into tax havens.

Even Ziweixing International has more than $260 billion of its $70 billion cash reserves in Cayman offshore companies. Apple has even more, more than $800 billion, and is heading toward $1000 billion or $2000 billion.

However, if you keep your money in an offshore company, it will have no value.

It must flow back.

How to reflux?

The technology giants are all fat sheep waiting to be slaughtered, and the White House is always watching them. If we don't please the White House and actively cooperate with it, and don't introduce new bills to cancel or reduce high taxes, the money will not flow back and no real benefits will be created for shareholders.

As a businessman, profit should be the main thing.

At the very least, we must not let down the shareholders who have subscribed to the shares.

"That's it..."

Boss Ma pondered.

He understood what Zhou Buqi meant.

Even if you are doing business in the United States, you have to be cautious and actively cooperate with the authorities. If Alipay wants to develop in China, you should keep a low profile and operate for a long time! Don't think that Alibaba is invincible and can show off its muscles as it goes public.

Zhou Buqi said, "If you want me to help you with this conference, I can. I can invite Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Larry Page and others. But I think that if they really come, it may not be a good thing. If you really have muscles, find some pretty girls and take off your clothes for them to see!"