China's technology giant Tencent reaches out to individuals and organizations worldwide with its telecommunication services. Photo: cnsphoto

Under the need for online communications as a measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, China's technology giant Tencent is reaching out to individuals and organizations worldwide with its telecommunication services, including the UN. Industry insiders believe this is a significant milestone for Chinese tech firms going global.

The UN and Tencent announced on Monday a new and innovative global partnership for the UN's 75th anniversary, in which Tencent will provide the UN75 campaign with videoconferencing and digital tools to boost the online outreach and promotion of the initiative, according to a statement that the company sent to the Global Times on Tuesday.

"We will spare no effort in providing technical solutions to support online meetings and idea exchanges for the UN, with the aim of bringing the global village even closer together and overcoming global threats through extensive dialogue and cooperation," said Martin Lau, president of Tencent.

For UN75, the UN is calling on people all around the world to engage in a global dialogue and empowering partners to organize and participate in online discussions of any scale with the help of Tencent's VooV Meeting platform, WeChat Work, and Tencent Artificial Intelligence Simultaneous Interpretation.

Sun Yuzhong, a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the cooperation between the UN and Tencent is a very good turning point for Chinese technology companies, especially after Chinese social media platforms such as Tik Tok were often dubbed by US officials as "threats" to national security, posing obstacles for Chinese companies, including Huawei, to go global.

Sun said the demand for stable and reliable online communications is huge and the pandemic has escalated the demand. More than tens of millions of online meetings are now being held at the same time, requiring experienced engineers to maintain back-office data. Chinese technology companies have proved successful in serving hundreds of millions of users at the same time.

Alibaba's Tintin has gone through the process during the Double 11 shopping spree, during which hundreds of millions of buyers go online at the same time for interaction.

Also, during the pandemic, Tencent's conference operations have proved competent to support hundreds of millions of primary, middle and high school students attending classes through Tencent's conference platform.

Although Tencent's VooV Meeting launched not long ago, it has been preparing for global services.

During the viral outbreak in China, Tencent opened the online meeting function for 300 people at once for free, building a bridge of communication for dozens of foreign agencies in China, according to a VooV Meeting on Tuesday.

In order to meet the growing needs of users in the outbreak, the team iterated 14 versions within 40 days. With the outbreak of the global epidemic, the company urgently launched the international version of VooV Meeting in more than 100 countries and regions to facilitate global remote collaboration.

At present, the international version of Tencent conference program VooV Meeting has been launched in more than 100 countries and regions, with multi-language switching.

"Maintenance, debugging and performance optimization are the advantages of Chinese enterprises, thanks to the huge amount of users in China and now in the world," Sun said.