NPR

China's Two Largest Tech Companies Sign A Deal Over The West's Biggest Music

A deal between China's dominant tech companies reveals a lot about the country's approach to policing culture.
Pony Ma, founder and CEO of Tencent, stands far right as Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, shakes the hand of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Among the deals being signed that shape the way the world experiences culture, a new partnership will exert a great influence on the flow of content from the world's three remaining major record labels to an enormous and growing marketplace — as long as everyone plays by China's opaque rules around expression.

Last night, China's two largest tech companies, Tencent and Alibaba, announced a deal centered around the world's largest catalogs of music. Tencent, which runs three of the country's most-popular music apps (QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo) as

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