ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming relinquishes another corporate role to firm's China chairman as reorganisation at tech unicorn continues
ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, China's richest billionaire under 40, has relinquished another corporate role to Zhang Lidong, the low-profile chairman of the company's mainland business, nearly a month after stepping down as chief executive of the world's most valuable unicorn.
Zhang, who is not related to the company's 38-year-old founder, on Wednesday took over as legal representative of Beijing ByteDance Network Technology Co, according to Chinese corporate registry information portal Tianyancha. Former chief executive Zhang had been the legal representative of that firm, which holds patents on the technologies used in various ByteDance-owned products and services, since it was incorporated in 2012.
In July last year, the company founder relinquished his legal representative role at Tianjin Tongrong E-commerce Co to Zhang. This entity was used by ByteDance to acquire Wuhan Hezhong Yibao Technology Co, operator of Chinese third-party payment service UIPay.
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ByteDance, owner of popular short video-sharing apps TikTok and Douyin, on Friday declined to comment on the latest corporate reshuffle.
Zhang Lidong serves as chairman of ByteDance China. Photo: Baike alt=Zhang Lidong serves as chairman of ByteDance China. Photo: Baike>
The move marks another step up to prominence for ByteDance's Zhang since his appointment as chairman in 2020, with the responsibility for strategy and monetisation in the company's home market.
He reports to Liang Rubo, a co-founder of ByteDance, who took over as chief executive at the end of last year.
While Liang has moved to overhaul ByteDance's operations, Zhang is widely considered as the firm's moneymaker because he is in charge of the commercialisation of various apps, according to a company employee who declined to be identified.
That prominent role has made Zhang, a former journalist, the target of speculation in Chinese media. He was described as being "No 2 at ByteDance", behind only the company's founder, in a June 2020 report published by Digital Shanxi, a news website run by the government of northern China's Shanxi province.
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In 2016, Zhang was credited with helping ByteDance take over a Shanxi firm called Yuncheng Sunshine Culture, through which the tech unicorn acquired its licence for broadcasting audio and video - capabilities that are behind the success of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Zhang was born in 1979 in Linfen, a historical town in Shanxi that is located along the banks of the Yellow River, the country's second-longest river. He went to college at the Shanxi University of Finance and Economics in Taiyuan, the provincial capital. After graduating, he worked at a local media outlet in the same city.
In 2002, he joined the now-defunct newspaper Beijing Times. While he covered major beats such as the energy, pharmaceutical and car industries, Zhang's business acumen gained more notice because he regularly brought advertisements to the newspaper. He was shortly promoted to head its advertising department.
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By 2011, Beijing Times' monthly advertising revenue of 200 million yuan (US$31.44 million) topped its industry and gained a 75 per cent share of the Chinese capital's morning newspaper market, according to a People's Daily article in 2017.
Zhang left the newspaper in 2013 to join ByteDance, about a year after the start-up launched its news app Jinri Toutiao.
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