TikTok CEO leaves his post. Pressure from the CCP
Zhang Yiming, the mysterious young founder of ByteDance, who owns TikTok, is stepping down from his role as CEO of TikTok and its Chinese counterpart, Douyin. Zhang broke the news of his departure in a letter to ByteDance employees posted on the company's website .
Zhang's co-founder and head of human resources, Liang Rubo, will take over and lead the company through the planned IPO. It is unclear whether Zhang will continue in his role as chairman of the company's board of directors.
His departure comes after Chinese government authorities, i.e. the CCP, have ordered more than 30 domestic Internet companies, including ByteDance, to abide by stricter rules governing fair competition and consumer protection, putting an effort new repressive antitrust for Beijing, but which has already hit Alibaba.
As an executive, Zhang is known for rejecting the typically rigid hierarchical structure of Chinese companies with a more horizontal approach, in which formalities are avoided and workers are seen as partners working to solve common problems. The approach is intended to ensure that the business never loses the “agility” of a startup. Liang, who has worked with Zhang for years, started another company with him before starting ByteDance.
As the world questioned the circumstances of his departure, the FT speculated that the removal of 38-year-old Zhang could be linked to Beijing's crackdown on Chinese tech titans, the same campaign that led to the disappearance of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, a executive with whom Zhang is often compared.
Zhang founded ByteDance nearly 10 years ago and led the Beijing-based company to create TikTok and Douyin from acquisitions of popular platforms like Music.ly.His departure comes just as the company was considering launching its own IPO, after a series of relationships with bankers, the value of which would have been around 200 billion dollars. Virtually the largest start-up in the world.
At one point in the letter, Zhang joked about giving the reins to his college roommate: "I'm not very sociable, I prefer solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music and contemplating what may be possible," he joked. . His farewell letter has a light tone, typical of the person.
Despite his success, Zhang has never been popular with party-loyal Chinese, who see him as he tries to abandon the company's "Chinese identity" to succeed in the West. The NYT called ByteDance the only "truly global" Chinese company.
This is probably not the last time we will hear about Zhang Yiming. Who knows you're not looking for luck elsewhere.
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The article The CEO of TikTok leaves his post. Pressure from the CCP comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-ceo-di-tiktok-lascia-il-suo-posto-pressioni-dal-pcc/ on Thu, 20 May 2021 16:27:45 +0000.