Tencent vs Lao Gan Ma: Lawsuit Heats Up Between Chinese Tech Giant and Country’s Beloved Chili Sauce

Tao Huabi, the 70-year-old granny who was crowned “the hottest woman in China” and is the face of Chinese chili sauce Lao Gan Ma is in the midst of a legal tussle with one of the country’s biggest tech companies, Tencent. So what’s going on?

News broke on Monday that a Chinese court had frozen Lao Gan Ma assets worth RMB 16.24 million following an unspecified complaint filed by Tencent.

The story was initially met with confusion and plenty of jokes on Chinese social media. Some users suggested that Tencent staff may have endured a massive case of diarrhea prompting the action, while others wondered whether the tech juggernaut had simply decided that Lao Gan Ma’s new recipe wasn’t as good as the original.

However, the reality appears to be a little more mundane. According to a statement from the internet conglomerate sent to Global Times, Lao Gan Ma “has failed to pay Tencent advertising fees to promote its chili sauces for a long time,” citing a contract the two companies allegedly signed in March 2019 worth “up to tens of millions of yuan.” Conversely, Lao Gan Ma issued a statement claiming they had “no commercial cooperation with Tencent” and denied any malpractice in an ongoing court case with Tencent Holdings over alleged unpaid advertising fees.

On Wednesday, however, the story took a turn for the weird when Guiyang police arrested three people accused of scamming Tencent by pretending to be representatives of Lao Gan Ma's marketing department.

The three suspects are accused of forging official company stamps and signing a promotional contract with Tencent. Their “aim was to obtain online game package codes, which they later resold online," the police said on Weibo.

The spicy sauce godmother and her famous product have a cult following both inside and outside of China. You may recall in 2018 that WWE wrestler John Cena professed his love for the sauce in Mandarin, or that it became an unlikely fashion icon after it was used on clothing at New York Fashion Week. Heck, you may have even tried to recreate the sauce yourself.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, but this spicy case appears to be just heating up.

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Images: QQ, Baijiahao (via Baidu)