岛上购物
Island shopping
TikTok攻入东南亚电商战场
TikTok is wading into South-East Asia’s e-commerce wars
- wade into 强行加入、介入、插手（打架、讨论、争论等）
遭受痛击的既有企业准备好迎接一场代价高昂的战斗
Battered incumbents brace for a costly fight
- batter 连续猛击、殴打
- incumbent 拥有相当大市场份额的公司
In march tiktok’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, faced angry lawmakers in Washington, who grilled him for five hours on topics ranging from misinformation to mental health. A threat of a ban in America, the short-video app’s largest market, looms large. Other Western governments are making similar noises. TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese firm called ByteDance, has already been locked out of India, another big market, since 2020 on grounds of national security.
今年3月，TikTok的首席执行官周受资现身华盛顿，接受怒气冲冲的议员就错误信息到心理健康等问题长达五小时的盘问。这个短视频应用在它最大的市场美国面对被封禁的威胁。类似的声音在其他西方政府也此起彼伏。TikTok隶属一家名为字节跳动的中国公司，自2020年以来已被它的另一个大市场印度以国家安全为由拒之门外。
- grill 盘问、追问、审问、责问
- loom large 问题或忧虑等“显得突出、变得严重”甚至是“萦绕心中、挥之不去”（拓展学习：小词详解 | loom）
Contrast that with the welcome Mr Chew received in June in Jakarta. He charmed a crowd in the Indonesian capital that included government officials with his plans for the company in South-East Asia, promising to invest “billions of dollars” in the region over the next few years. As uncertainty looms over its prospects elsewhere in the world, TikTok, which in 2020 moved its global headquarters to Singapore, is eyeing South-East Asia’s nearly 700m consumers to bolster its fortunes. Reactions to his talk ranged from favourable to gushing—except among the region’s digital incumbents.
与此形成鲜明对比的是周受资6月在雅加达受到的欢迎。在印尼首都，包括政府官员在内的一群人拜倒在他的西装裤下，他承诺未来几年TikTok将在东南亚投资“数十亿美元”。TikTok已于2020年将全球总部迁至新加坡。由于在世界其他地方的前景不明，它盯上了东南亚的近7亿消费者以改善自己的处境。周受资的言语收获了认可乃至溢美之词——唯已在该地区扎根的数字公司除外。
- 拓展学习：熟词僻义 | capital 是一种怎样的刑罚？
- bolster 巩固（地位）；加强
- gushing 过分热情的、过分赞扬的、夸张地表现感情的
That is because TikTok’s ambitions in South-East Asia go beyond silly dance videos. In 2021 it launched TikTok Shop, which lets users buy products directly from the app. According to Momentum Works, a research firm in Singapore, last year products worth around $5bn were sold globally on its platform. This year the target is $20bn, with three-quarters of that coming from South-East Asian wallets.
这是因为TikTok在东南亚的野心并不止于展示傻气的舞蹈视频。2021年，它推出了TikTok Shop，用户可以直接从这个应用购物。根据新加坡研究公司Momentum Works的数据，去年该平台在全球销售了价值约50亿美元的产品。今年的销售目标是200亿美元，其中四分之三将来自东南亚人的腰包。
- 拓展学习：小词详解 | momentum
- 拓展学习：熟词僻义 | platform 是一种怎样的政策？
