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CEO says NetEase will lead the metaverse race as Chinese tech giants charge ahead despite government concerns

  • NetEase founder William Ding Lei says the company is readying the technologies needed to build the metaverse
  • Tencent, Baidu and China’s big three telecoms carriers have also expressed interest in the buzzy new concept

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Metaverse, a buzzword in the tech world, refers to a shared interactive virtual world that has been touted as the next evolution of the internet. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
Josh Ye

NetEase, China’s second largest video gaming company, has become the latest tech firm in the country to voice its commitment to the metaverse concept, joining a host of peers including Tencent Holdings in a rush to embrace what has been touted as the next iteration of the internet, despite scepticism from stock market regulators.

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William Ding Lei, founder and chief executive of NetEase, said during an earnings call with analysts on Tuesday that the Hangzhou-based company has already prepared the technologies and strategies required to build the metaverse, which has been loosely defined as a shared, immersive 3D virtual space where people can interact and trade.

“When the metaverse eventually arrives … we’ll probably be the fastest runner around,” said Ding.

While several Chinese tech giants including NetEase have quietly registered metaverse-related trademarks over the past few months, only recently did some of them openly share their plans to build out the metaverse. Interest around the nebulous concept surged to new heights last month after Facebook renamed itself Meta.

Last week, Tencent, owner of the world’s biggest video gaming business and Chinese super app WeChat, publicly disclosed its vision for the metaverse for the first time when president Martin Lau said during an earnings call that the company can potentially approach the concept through a range of businesses, citing video games and social networks as its major strengths.

Lau said that Beijing does not appear to be “fundamentally averse” to the metaverse, although it is expected to come up with a set of regulations different from the rest of the world.

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In the same week, China’s big three telecoms carriers – China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom – partnered with several tech companies to form China’s first industry group dedicated to the metaverse. At the founding ceremony of the “Metaverse Industry Committee”, the three telecoms giants discussed plans to leverage their advantages in 5G network infrastructure, cloud gaming and virtual reality (VR) technologies to shape the metaverse.

Also last week, Baidu, the leading web search company in China, launched a new virtual world social platform named Xirang, in a move seen by many as its most tangible foray so far into the metaverse.

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