Tencent released a sustainable social value report. What kind of technology enterprise does Ma Jintao hope to build？

What kind of technology company does Tencent want to become? At the beginning of Tencent’s 2022 Sustainable Social Value Report (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"), Pony Ma, chairperson and CEO of Tencent’s board of directors, also gave the answer, "We have a clear picture of a more sustainable and high-quality development of Tencent: it is truly technological for good, cares about human value and the sustainable development of society, and responds to the needs of the times and the development of the country."

After the Hong Kong stock market closed on August 14, Tencent released the "2022 Sustainable Social Value Report", which is the second annual social value answer sheet handed over by Tencent since the first corporate social responsibility report was upgraded to a sustainable social value report last year.

In April 2021, Tencent incorporated the promotion of sustainable social value innovation into the company’s strategy. Tencent has been constantly exploring in practice, and in its 2022 annual report, the implementation method of this strategy is summarized as "sustainable social value innovation model". In short, with the new form of enterprise value of "user (C), industry (B), and society (S) ", to explore new solutions for sustainable and high-quality development.

Tencent’s sustainable social value innovation model. Photo | Photo provided by respondents

On the one hand, Pony Ma pointed out: "If science and technology are to play a leveraging role, it needs to be people-oriented, take the humanistic value of caring for people and society as a reference, focus on truly improving the well-being of human beings, and form a wide range of consensus, collaboration and action, in order to promote sustainable social development." On the other hand, "The purpose of promoting sustainable social value innovation in enterprises is to keep the development of enterprises and the development of the country in the same direction, not only to lay a more solid foundation for the development of enterprises and the longevity of the foundation, but also to better assume social responsibility while striving to create wealth."

Seeking a systematized and innovative solution to social value

In his speech, Ma Jintao argued that every sustainable society issue is an extremely complex social system with multiple actors and interactions. If the power of technology is not integrated into it in a systematic way, there may be rejection reactions and even destructive effects.

In the community, repairing shoes, sewing clothes, matching keys, playing cotton… The seemingly inconspicuous "small repairs" contain huge needs of the people. WeChat and Tencent Maps have integrated the perspective of social innovation into their business, creating the country’s first exclusive map for convenience repair shops, connecting small shop owners and residents in need, and retrieving the "disappeared neighborhood", providing practical convenience for the common people.

The "Minor Repair" map brings back the "disappeared neighborhood". Photo | Photo by respondents

In the countryside, Tencent is actively exploring the "Tencent model" of digital technology to help endogenous rural revitalization. While developing a system of talent training programs, the "Gongfu Village" project uses digitalization to help rural industry revitalization. The "Cultivator Revitalization Plan" has formed an innovative training system serving the government, grassroots rural talents, and villagers. The "Village-level Affairs Management Platform" launched by June 2023 has settled in 35,051 villages, covering 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country, serving 4653,485 villagers.

In the field of health and inclusion, Tencent has built a systematic and innovative solution through digitalization, so that "a network of screening, diagnosis and treatment" can be landed in low-resource areas at a lower cost and higher efficiency. The emergency open API was launched to connect more than 10,000 AED (automated external defibrillator) devices across the country, and 71 local emergency points were landed in schools, communities, business districts and other scenarios, promoting effective exchange of social emergency information and efficient matching of resources.

Tencent Charity widely connects all parties to create a system solution for public welfare digitalization. In 2022, it proposed "taking public welfare users as the center" and launched a new model of "one flower and one dream" for the first time to promote the public to create a public welfare interaction mechanism. In 2022, 99 Public Welfare Day participated in more than 100 million users, donated more than 58.16 million times, and the total amount of public donations exceeded 3.30 billion yuan.

Exploring new forms of sustainable social value

After more than two years of exploration, Tencent has gradually formed a set of integrated development methods, that is, through the integration of "CBS Trinity" and the "dual-price integration" of social value and commercial value, to achieve sustainable social value creation and promote high-quality development. "It has developed from serving users (C), to serving industries (B), and then to serving society (S), and the ultimate direction is to create value for society. The’CBS Trinity ‘is its new form, in which commercial value and social value do not trade off and grow, but integrate and develop symbiotically with each other, and jointly achieve large-scale growth." Pony Ma also pointed out.

During 2022, Tencent’s digital ecosystem nurtured and created 147 new jobs. The WeChat digital ecosystem generated nearly 50.173 million employment and income opportunities through multiple application scenarios such as official account, Mini Program, WeChat Channels, WeChat Pay, WeCom, etc. In December 2022, WeChat Pay launched the "Independent Shop" support action to help small businesses with disabilities to open stores without barriers, operate with security, and have a basic life. As of June 2023, the "Independent Shop" support action has opened free applications to nearly 40,000 small businesses with disabilities in Guangdong Province.

Tencent launched the "Teana Action" for the "hearing impairment problem of the elderly", applying the relevant technologies accumulated by Tencent conference service users (C) to the improvement and upgrading of hearing-impaired devices, and promoting the innovation of the hearing assistance industry (B) with open technologies. Ultimately, a set of systematic and integrated solutions to solve the hearing impairment problem of the elderly has been formed, creating comprehensive social value (S).

"Operation Teana" seeks to solve the problem of hearing impairment for the elderly. Photo | Photo provided by the interviewee

Tencent actively develops smart industries and helps all walks of life to achieve digital upgrading and intelligent transformation. Tencent WeMake Digital Factory integrates Tencent’s technological and ecological advantages in networking, big data, AI and other fields to rapidly promote the transformation of enterprise digital intelligence. By the end of 2022, it has served 430,000 manufacturing enterprises and covered 26 industries.

In 2022, Tencent’s annual R & D expenditure exceeded 61.40 billion yuan, and the cumulative R & D expenditure since 2018 has exceeded 220 billion yuan.

Tencent has also been focusing on basic scientific research and original innovation. Tencent’s "New Cornerstone Researcher Program" supports the research of more outstanding scientists in the fields of mathematics and material sciences, biological and medical sciences, and explores the innovative model of long-term stable social funding to support basic scientific research. In the past four years, more than 250 outstanding scientists have been funded to climb the peak of science.

On November 18, 2022, at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Tencent successfully showcased a number of innovative low-carbon technologies such as glacier radiant refrigeration film materials and carbon dioxide mineralization and storage rock mass samples. In March 2023, Tencent and multiple partners launched the "Carbon Seeking Plan", which aims to find and promote the next generation of cutting-edge breakthrough low-carbon technologies to large-scale application.

Martin Lau, Tencent’s president, said in the report that CBS was gradually merging into the long-term value of Tencent’s "trinity", "guiding us to merge the innovative power of technology and products with the kindness of solving human problems and social pain points into a trickle of goodness that permeates every product and business." And "the kindness and innovation will make us more determined and confident to create a better, healthier and more sustainable future!"

Beijing News Shell Financial Reporter, Bai Jinlei

Editor, Lin Zi, Proofreader, Chen Diyan