2020年经济学人 字节跳动引美国关注(2)（在线收听）

Unlike most of its peripatetic predecessors, though, ByteDance has built its empire by making products that appeal beyond China. It is China’s first global software giant. It has also courted foreign investors.

不过，与多数四处游走的先行者不同，字节跳动是通过生产在中国以外具有吸引力的产品来建立自己的帝国的。它是中国第一个全球软件巨头。它还吸引了外国投资者。

Filings in Hong Kong show that it has used an arrangement called the “Sina structure”, which allows it to accept money from abroad, since its founding (many Chinese tech firms turn to this structure only when eyeing a stockmarket listing in America). Around 80% of ByteDance’s investors are non-Chinese. So are four of its five board members. The other is Mr Zhang.

香港的文件显示，自成立以来，它采用了一种叫做“新浪结构”的安排，允许它接受来自国外的资金(许多中国科技公司只有在考虑在美国上市时才会采用这种结构)。字节跳动公司大约80%的投资者都不是中国人。该公司的5名董事会成员中有4名都是外国人。另一位是张先生。

All this helps ensure ByteDance is not, in contrast to many Chinese tech upstarts, in hock to Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent— which is handy, for Bytedance competes with China’s tech titans for ad revenue. It makes most of its money selling ads in its two main Chinese apps: Douyin, a Chinese TikTok, and Toutiao, a multimedia-and-news app akin to Facebook’s newsfeed (its WeChat rival, Duoshan, disappointed).

所有这些都有助于确保字节跳动不像许多中国科技新创企业那样，欠下阿里巴巴、百度和腾讯的债务——这很方便，因为字节跳动与中国的科技巨头在广告收入上互相竞争。它的主要收入来源是在两个主要的中国应用程序中销售广告：抖音——中国版的TikTok，和头条——一个类似于Facebook的新闻推送的多媒体和新闻应用程序(它的微信竞争对手多山遭遇了挫败)。

How much money it makes, exactly, is unclear: as a private company Bytedance does not publish its accounts. But leaks and statements from investors put last year’s revenue at between 104bn yuan and 140bn yuan ($15bn-20bn), more than Uber, Snapchat and Twitter combined.

确切地说，它能赚多少钱还不清楚：作为一家私营公司，字节跳动不会公布公司账目。但据泄露的消息和投资者的声明，该公司去年的营收在1040亿元至1400亿元(合150亿至200亿美元)之间，超过了优步、Snapchat和Twitter的总和。

Its ad revenues in China surpassed Tencent’s and Baidu’s and now trail only those of Alibaba. It reportedly turned a profit in June 2019, a feat in the world of loss-making unicorns. If the firm generates $25bn in sales this year, as it is expected to despite covid-19, it will have done so three years faster than Facebook.

它在中国的广告收入超过了腾讯和百度，现在仅次于阿里巴巴。据报道，该公司在2019年6月实现盈利，这在亏损的独角兽行业是一大伟绩。如果该公司今年的销售额达到250亿美元(尽管有covid19的影响)，那么它将比Facebook早3年实现这一销售额。

It is the only big Chinese firm whose share of the domestic advertising market is growing fast, from 9% to 17% in 2019, according to Bernstein, a research firm. A recently launched advertising network, Pangle, which lets advertisers reach consumers across any of its non-Chinese apps, may at last help it monetise TikTok.

据研究公司伯恩斯坦称，字节跳动是中国唯一一家在国内广告市场份额快速增长的大公司，从9%增长到2019年的17%。最近成立的广告网络Pangle可以让广告商通过其任何非中文应用接触到消费者，这可能最终会帮助它将TikTok货币化。