There is a photo circulating on the internet about some of the most prominent names of Chinese mobile internet industry gathering at the same dinner table.

Many of you asked us three questions:

  1. Is this photo real?
  2. Who exactly are these people?
  3. Why is Jack Ma, Chairman of Alibaba group, not in the photo?

Here are our answers:

  1. This photo is real. It happened during the annual World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, which takes place between 2 and 6 of December.
  2. Here is the list (clockwise from the guy on the front wearing a white shirt):
  3. This dinner was organised by Richard Liu of JD.com and Wang Xin of Meituan Dianping.
    • JD.com is the second biggest ecommerce player in China and a direct competitor of Alibaba;
    • Meituan Dianping was previously under the portfolio of Alibaba, but the two companies have since fallen out.  Alibaba now has subsidiaries competing against Meituan across all business lines of the latter.
    • Tencent, the major competitor of Alibaba in almost all fronts, is a key investor of both JD.com & Meituan Dianping.
    • Five other major companies represented at the dinner are invested by Tencent.
    • Therefore, there is no surprise that Jack Ma is absent from this dinner, even though Wuzhen, the venue of the dinner, is just one hour drive away from his home base of Hangzhou.

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Thanks for reading The Low Down (TLD), the blog by the team at Momentum Works. Got a different perspective or have a burning opinion to share? Let us know at [email protected].