Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group

Dec. 7 (NBD) -- As China's two leading tech titans Alibaba and Tencent are expanding their footprints in various fields, more competition has emerged between the two giants. 

Tencent is competing with Alibaba in ten more fields, Pony Ma, founder of Tencent said Wednesday during the Fortune Global Forum held in Southern China's Guangzhou. 

Pony Ma noted that fair competition will boost employee morale so as to fully unleash the enterprise's potential. However, there is too much competition between the two companies.

NBD Noticed that the two companies has overlapped in the businesses involving SNS, pan-entertainment and pan-sports, health care, cars and transportation, e-commerce, hardware, overseas, travel and real estate, mobile internet and other fields, with direct competition in some sectors.

In the bike-sharing industry, for example, Tencent funded the leading bike-sharing enterprise Mobike while Alibaba invested another industry leader Ofo as well as Yongon Bike.

Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Tencent's rival Alibaba Group, mentioned that Tencent is a great company. 

"It is not easy to build a company as innovative and succesful as Tencent within 20 years. I respect and of course we compete. But compete does not necessarily mean I have to hate them. Pony and I will be doing charity together, the nature conservancy, but we compete (with) each other. While we compete (with) each other, we respect each other." he said.

In the eyes of Pony Ma, the competition creates benefits for China. He took the mobile payment business as an example, saying that the popularity of the online payment in China has greatly improved due to the competition between Tencent and Alibaba's Alipay. 

In recent years, over 800 million Chinese people have linked their bank accounts with WeChat. People can scan the QR code to make the cashless payment in the parking lot or in the vegetable market, even when they meet beggars in the street, he joked.

(Photo/VCG)

As the huge product line and the soaring revenue are regarded as the lifeblood of both two tech giants, the two founders have different views about the ways of enabling enterprises to do their own business.

Jack Ma pointed out that Alibaba is more like an economy, and an infrastructure builder, not simply a company. During Alibaba's growth, it will be an enabler for other enterprises, helping small and medium-sized enterprises to reach consumers, and assisting every small business make profits and improve efficiency through technology, he said.

He further noted that though the e-commerce is developing rapidly, Alibaba does not expect to destroy the traditional economy. The traditional retailers are believed to have big potential, so they should conduct business reform, embracing the technology instead of being scared of it, he added. 

However, his rival Pony Ma shared his view that although Alibaba and Tencent both attach high importance to enabling. But the enterprises that enabled by Alibaba lacks a sense of security, because all their channels, profits and even the destiny are controlled by the enabler.

On the contrary, Tencent empowers partners with decentralization, according to Pony Ma.

Tencent doesn't provide a mall and it will not rent counters for someone's business, he explained. Instead, it allows partners to build their own "houses". After a house is built, all the fans and clients belongs to the builder. People doesn't need to pay the monthly rents or worry about the yearly inflation.

He emphasized that Tencent only controls half of its life in many fields and the other half of its life is held on the partners' hands. Tencent is supporting its partners, not competing with them.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn