Top 5 Stories of the Week – Nov. 15

TechRice plans to publish a weekly roundup of the top 5 tech stories of the previous week. Here’s the 1st edition!

1. Interview with Tencent CEO Ma Huateng – Economic Observer

Ma Huateng discusses his ‘critical’ decision: “It was a critical situation. If I had delayed the decision for another three days, QQ users may have been destroyed by 360.”

2. Interview with 360 CEO Zhou Hongyi – Economic Observer

Zhou Hongyi fires back at Tencent, expressing a sentiment that is commonly held across the Chinese internet: “In reality, no one can shake the status quo of you as No. 1; but you should no longer grow by beating others and then stepping over their corpses.”

3. How Baidu Won China – BusinessWeek Cover Story Hat tip to @niubi

More bruising power politics in China’s internet: “Baidu ‘has the best business in the world,’ says Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. ‘It’s hugely profitable, with massive growth ahead in the population of Chinese Internet users, and the government backing it up. Essentially it’s a state-sponsored monopoly.’”

Beyond the battle with Google, the article also touches on the Baidu vs. Alibaba animosities, with the two exchanging insults: “John Spelich, an Alibaba spokesman, said of Baidu in August: ‘These guys are like hoodlums.’ Kaiser Kuo responds by calling Alibaba execs ‘whiny little bitches.’”

4. What Facebook Can Learn from its Chinese Counterpart – ChinaHush

A Chinese netizen makes the argument that RenRen is superior to Facebook in some ways: “To me, what Facebook can do Renren can do better, and Renren can also do what Facebook can not do… If there is something Facebook should learn from Renren, it’s that product should be adapted to meet different groups of people’s need.”

5. The China Investor Map – @chinaccelerator

A map of the investor network in Beijing, Shanghai, and Dalian, home to China Accelerator, one of China’s nascent incubators/accelerators.