Among the top 10 most valuable tech companies globally are two China tech giants…
with many more up and coming startups making their presence felt.
The industry has become a serious rival to Silicon Valley, but there are political hurdles ahead.
This is your Bloomberg QuickTake on China’s tech giants.
Early on, Chinese companies like Tencent had a reputation for being copycats.
Its QQ instant messaging app originally looked a lot like icq - a popular messaging app used in the U.S.
Comparisons are now harder to make.
Tencent’s 1 billion strong messaging app WeChat has grown from simply a texting app,
to a platform for shopping, flirting, dating, watching videos, playing games, and ordering
food and taxis…
There’s no U.S. equivalent.
Since the introduction of the internet in China, the government has controlled the web
with a complex system of censors and gateways known as The Great Firewall.
This has effectively quarantined China’s technology ecosystem, blocking access to the
likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
That’s enabled locals to develop services without competition from abroad and build
platforms with a uniquely Chinese flavor.
And because of China’s large population, whos internet users more than double the entire
U.S. population... the companies grew to be massive.
They became so successful that some U.S. companies are taking note.
But there’s increasing pushback.
Donald Trump: “China...they’re draining us, they’re taking our money, they’re
rebuilding themselves...”
President Donald Trump says China is stealing overseas know-how and has imposed tariffs.
Bloomberg Businessweek uncovered that the Chinese even planted chips in computers for
potential hardware hacks.
Yet Chinese tech company names that only recently drew blank stares outside China are becoming
increasingly familiar.
Take Huawei,
it reached a pinnacle in 2018 by overtaking Apple in smartphone share globally.
But for China’s big tech companies to keep expanding, they’ll need to convince other
nations that they mean no harm.