Japan's Kyodo News reported on Tuesday that the U.S. and Japanese governments will jointly monitor Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten (OTC: RKUNY) for fear of customer data obtained by China. The report comes after a subsidiary of Tencent became a major shareholder of Rakuten.

The report also said that the Japanese government will regularly visit Rakuten and share information with the U.S. to prevent information from falling into the hands of Chinese authorities.

Rakuten responded that the Tencent investment is not focused on business cooperation and that there is no need to worry about Tencent's access to customer data.