The Chinese tech user base has grown at an astronomical pace over the past decade. In 2016, online spending in China was greater than that of the US and UK combined. In addition to growing at a neck-breaking pace, the industry has been becoming increasingly transparent to western audiences.
Currently, the Chinese tech landscape is dominated by 3 kingpins: Alibaba (Market Cap $374B), Tencent ($327B), and Baidu ($64B).
The largest of the trio is Alibaba, led by Jack Ma. Starting off initially as a B2B (business-to-business) website for connecting manufacturers and potential buyers outside of China, Alibaba has transformed into the second-largest e-commerce company in the world by revenue, behind Amazon.com. For more on Alibaba, see my article published in HackerNoon.
The next largest is Tencent, which also tends to be the lesser known of the trio in the US. The company is primarily mobile-focused, with popular apps for social media and gaming, with investments in just about every other aspect of tech. Tencent’s owns WeChat, one of the largest messaging apps in the world, with over 938M monthly users. But Tencent is also the largest gaming company in the world, with its Honor of Kings being the most downloaded app in the world for Q1 of 2017. Tencent recently announced that it will be making its most successful game (Honor of Kings) available in the US and Europe in the fall.
The smallest of the trio is Baidu, commonly referred to as “the Google of China” in Western media. Baidu owns the most popular search engine in China, but also has operations like “Baidu Baike” (a Chinese Wikipedia) and Baidu Music.
These companies don’t operate in strict silos; they’ve all expanded into most of the technology sub-sectors. See the below graphic from The Boston Consulting Group:
Source: What China Reveals About the Future of Shopping
And their investments do not stop at China’s borders. In the last two years, these companies (and their follower JD.com) invested $5.6 billion into US tech companies. Partnering with one of the Chinese giants is almost a necessity for Western tech companies who want to penetrate the Chinese market.
In early 2016, Alibaba became the 4th largest owner of Groupon and in 2014, they became an investor in Lyft. Alibaba has been investing heavily into Augmented Reality startups across the globe: they have equity in Lumus, WayRay, and even the mysterious Magic Leap (in the form of a ~$800M investment). See: Top Funded AR Startups in 2017.
Tencent too is growing outside of the Great Wall. The company was an early investor in Snapchat and bought Supercell, the makers of the popular mobile game Clash of Clans, for a whopping $8.6 billion. Tencent even owns Riot Games, the makers of the competitive game League of Legends, which had ~67M monthly active users as of 2014 .They’ve also invested $1.2 billion into Flipkart and $1.8 billion into Tesla.
Source: The Rise of China’s Tech Firms in Five Charts
Even their investments into individual companies are intertwined. All of the aforementioned companies have investments in Didi Chuxing, the Uber of China.
One can see how none of these companies are comfortable simply staying inside of their specialty; much like their US counterparts, they’ve each invested heavily in other aspects of tech. The Chinese tech industry has been largely ignored in US financial/tech media, but as the companies expand and grow, the days of this trend are numbered.
Further Reading:
China’s Internet Giants Go Global
The Rise of China’s Tech Firms in Five Charts
Meet the 8 Chinese Tech Giants You Need to Know
The Next Disney Will Come from China and Its Name Is Tencent
Full Disclosure: I am employed by Amazon.com and the viewpoints in this article are entirely my own.