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Shares in Chinese food delivery giant Meituan fell sharply after the company's boss reportedly shared a 1,000-year-old poem on social media.The book-burning pit by Zhang Jie was posted and deleted by the billionaire company's chief executive, Wang Xing.Tang Dynasty poetry is interpreted as a vague criticism of President Xi Jinping's government.Meituan is currently investigating allegations of abuse of its power over the market.The company is one of China's largest takeaway food delivery and lifestyle platforms and is backed by tech giant Tencent.
It has a market valuation of slotland about $ 220 billion (£ 156 billion) and in April raised $ 10 billion to fund investment plans for drones and self-driving vehicles.Chinese media reported that after deleting a post on Sunday from social media platform Fanfou, Wang released a statement, saying the poem references his company's competitors.Despite the statement But Meituan's Hong Kong-listed shares have fallen 14 percent since the market opened on Monday morning. Investors, anxious as China's business leaders, seen criticizing the government, found their companies under intense scrutiny by the authorities.
What is a controversial poem?
One word of the English translation reads:The Qin dynasty was destroyed by burning bamboo and cloth.The Hangu Pass and the Yellow River were in vain defending the ancestral habitat of the Chinese dragon.Before the ashes in the fire pit had cooled, a riot had already begun in Shandong Province.It turned out that Liu Bang and Xiang Yu were both illiterate.The Book Burning Pit, written by a well-known poet in the late Tang Dynasty,
is a sarcastic criticism of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who ruled China hundreds of years earlier.The emperor has lost his reputation for silencing his critics by killing dissenting Confucian scholars and burning their books.While Meituan was under investigation, some viewed Wang's post comparing his suppression to the former imperial tyranny.President Xi Jinping's dominance of the country is seen as more authoritarian and has little space for free speech.
What is the background of this story?
Meituan last month became the second-largest domestic technology company after Alibaba to face an antitrust investigation by China's market regulator.It is suspected that "Monopoly practices" such as punishing traders appearing in competitor markets, state market regulators said at the time.The Chinese government has been seen cracking down on top internet companies in recent months.Jack Ma, co-founder of Chinese tech giant Alibaba,
angered Beijing last year when he spoke publicly about what he saw as the outdated approach of the country's regulators.His speech was quickly followed by officials stricter consumer lending rules that made Ant Group's $ 35 billion debut plan in the financial services market of Alibaba.Alibaba was fined a record $ 2.8 billion last month after an investigation found it had breached its market position for years.
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