WeChat company picks Singapore as Asian hub

A man looking at the ‘PUBG Mobile’ game owned by Chinese Internet giant Tencent on his handphone in New Delhi recently.

BEIJING: Tencent Holdings Ltd has picked Singapore as its beachhead for Asia, joining rivals Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and ByteDance Ltd in the race to build up their presence closer to home after setbacks in the United States and India.

Management at China’s largest social media and gaming company had been discussing Singapore as a potential regional hub and geopolitical tensions accelerated its plans, according to people familiar with the matter.

Tencent has been considering the shift of business operations, including international game publishing, out of its home country.

China’s tech behemoths are increasingly turning to Southeast Asia in the face of growing hostility from the US and other major markets, setting up the region, with its 650 million increasingly smartphone-savvy population, as a key battleground.

President Donald Trump has banned US entities from dealing with Tencent’s sup er-app WeChat from Sept 20, while the company’s hit games PUBG Mobile and Arena of Valor are banned in India.

Tencent said it would open a new office in Singapore to “support our growing business in Southeast Asia and beyond”, in addition to current ones in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Tencent currently has dozens of job openings in Singapore for businesses including cross-border commerce, cloud computing and esports, according to its hiring site.