The head of the streaming platform DouYu has been detained in China – Kommersant
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The founder of the DouYu streaming platform, Chen Shaojie, has not been in contact for several weeks after law enforcement officials took him away for questioning, reports Financial Times. According to the newspaper’s sources, Mr. Chen was detained after Chinese regulators discovered materials related to pornography and gambling on the platform. Both are illegal in China.
Back in May, China’s Cyber Security Administration dispatched a team of officials to DouYu’s offices for one month to address “pornographic and vulgar content” found on the platform. In October, police arrived at the company’s office and took Mr. Chen away for questioning, after which he did not make contact. DouYu does not comment on the fate of its founder, noting only that the company operates as usual.
DouYu was founded in 2014 and during this time has managed to become one of the leading streaming platforms in China with a monthly audience of about 50 million people. The company held an IPO in New York in 2019 and then raised $775 million. Its market capitalization at the time of placement was $4 billion. The company’s majority shareholder is Tencent, which holds 38% of DouYu shares.
Chinese authorities have been putting serious pressure on the country’s technology sector for three years now. Many analysts believe that the first wave of pressure from Chinese authorities on technology businesses began at the end of 2020. investigation in relation to the founder of the Internet giant Alibaba, Jack Ma. As a result of the investigation, Alibaba was fined $2.8 billion for “abuse of dominant position.”
A new stage of pressure on Chinese high-tech began in June 2021, when SAMR launched investigation into Didi Global: then the company’s applications were temporarily removed from the country’s online stores. Investigations were also launched against other representatives of the Chinese IT sector. In addition, the authorities significantly tightened requirements for companies wishing to conduct an IPO abroad. It was reported that from holding an IPO abroad, fearing sanctions from the Chinese authorities, refused ByteDance, which owns the popular social network TikTok. And in January 2023, Ant Group, the financial division of Alibaba, refused to hold an IPO.
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