About a dozen Chinese firms, including Tencent Music Entertainment Group, Didi Global and NetEase, are likely to be inspected in a fresh round of routine checks

The move signifies Beijing's changing priorities as it looks to strengthen is capabilities while Washington cuts off access to cutting edge technology

Competitors Alibaba and Baidu are also working on products similar to the viral chatbot, which so far remains inaccessible in China

Baidu also said earlier this week it will soon finish internal testing for a ChatGPT alternative called 'Ernie Bot'

Tencent cut jobs earlier this year too, alongside the likes of Alibaba, as Beijing’s crackdowns and the economic slowdown take their toll

The two firms also plan to work together on content delivery networks and edge computing – the use of augmented reality and machine learning to analyse data

The planned stake purchase in French firm Ubisoft would be Tencent's latest major foreign deal since a regulatory crackdown in late 2020

The platform known as Huanhe, or Magic Core, is the latest victim of Beijing's crackdown on NFT trading, Jiemian.com said, citing Tencent insiders

The China State Administration for Market Regulation, which is responsible for stopping monopolistic behavior, has fined Alibaba, Tencent and numerous other companies.