The "big four" IT companies in China are referred to collectively as BATH — an acronym made from the initials of search engine Baidu, shopping site Alibaba, chat app and game producer Tencent and hardware manufacturer Huawei. In terms of their technical and economic clout, the four are said to be approaching rough parity with America's GAFA, which is taken from the initials of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.
Aggressive moves by the U.S. government to exclude Huawei, which has been pitching its next-generation 5G high-speed mobile communications, are being closely watched by Japan's media. More recently, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded the Tencent group sell off its popular TikTok app to an American company as a condition for operating in the United States.
What's this dispute all about? The Sept. 4 issue of weekly magazine Friday delivered a salvo titled "The real aim of China's information strategy."