Foreword: Creating a Future Together with the Rest of the World

Thirty years ago, an email from Beijing reached the University of Karlsruhe in Germany via Italy. It only contained the short message:

Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world.

This became China’s first message to the world sent by TCP/IP protocols (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol are communication protocols used to connect devices on the Internet).

Today, the digital economy, which has developed based on the Internet, has been included in the annual “Report on the Work of the Government” and is seen as a new driving force for growth in the Chinese economy. Based on estimates from the Tencent Research Institute, China’s total digital economy has exceeded 22.77 trillion yuan, accounts for 30.6% of China’s GDP, and has created 2.8 million new jobs.

These statistics show that the Internet has penetrated all aspects of society and the lives of the Chinese people.

The media was first to come under the influence of the Internet. The mobile Internet has enabled online access anytime and anywhere, which serves readers and viewers well as information becomes increasingly fragmented and reading becomes faster-paced than ever. Written articles and audio-video clips have shifted from newspapers and television to websites, apps, and social media platforms. In 2016, the total number of online news, music, and video users were 614 million, 503 million, and 545 million respectively. Internet companies began to move upstream to produce their own content, promoting the establishment of user-pay models, fighting piracy, and prompting China’s content industry to focus more on genuine and licensed content. The size of the genuine and licensed video industry grew from 3.14 billion yuan in 2010 to 40.1 billion yuan in 2015. As such, a pan-entertainment industry that integrates the production, distribution, and capitalization of literature, audio-video materials, and games has formed, with extended reach throughout China’s urban, rural, and various geographical areas.

The Internet has changed the ways that Chinese consumers use financial services. Starting with online payment, the Yu’e Bao service, which came out in 2013, won over the market with small-balance financial management services that charged no service fees and allowed withdrawals at any time. During the Chinese New Year in 2014, WeChat launched “Red Packets” (small red envelopes traditionally used for giving money) for small-balance online payment, which rapidly become a New Year tradition. At the end of the same year, WeBank opened, which was China’s first Internet bank without a physical place of business. In 2015, Premier Li Keqiang witnessed WeBank issue its first small loan. WeBank’s blockbuster product, the “Particle Loan,” focused on demand for small-balance and ultra-short-term financing. As of November 2016, more than 20 million loans had been issued with a total value of more than 160 billion yuan; the highest number of loans issued in a single day was more than 100,000, with a total value of more than 1 billion yuan. This new service meets the demand for loans that are too small to be economical in the past, empowering China’s finance sector to serve everyone.

The Internet has also changed how Chinese people travel. Didi Chuxing, a ride-sharing platform, linked idle vehicles up with unmet consumer demand and greatly increased the efficiency of ride-sharing by effectively matching the data. In 2015, Didi Chuxing’s orders totaled 1.43 billion, surpassing Uber to become the world’s largest mobile car transportation platform. In 2016, original bike-sharing models like Mobike and Ofo emerged in China to advocate low-carbon and environmentally-friendly transportation for short trips. They conveniently meet the need for last-mile city transportation, thereby quickly winning the market.

The Internet has become a convenient channel by which hundreds of millions of Chinese people access public services. From the central ministries to local governments, public service agencies across China have provided more than 9,000 services to a total of 417 million citizens through WeChat over the past two years, including social security inquiries, traffic fine payments, and hospital appointments. The Xi’an Traffic Police provides 36 services through WeChat with a total 1.4 million followers and handles more than 20,000 items of business every day. In the city of Changsha, the public service platform “Changsha12333” has issued social security cards through WeChat Cards, which upon activation can be used to check balances, pay, apply for unemployment subsidies, and settle hospital bills. These cards have been used 16.21 million times for online services, and city residents’ satisfaction has increased more than 10 percentage points. Additionally, the residents of most Chinese cities can participate in the danger reporting and early warning for extreme weather such as typhoons and torrential rains. Getting information from the people for the people’s use has formed a virtuous cycle.

The inherent goodness and wonderful qualities of the Chinese people have also been quite naturally revealed on social media networks. In 2007, the Tencent Charity platform was established, which brought together people who need help and people who are willing to help through an online platform in a more transparent and convenient way. In 2014, the year when the platform completed its expansion to mobile devices, it collected 100 million yuan of donations. In 2015, the “99 Charity Day” event took in donations of 128 million yuan over three days; and in 2016, the same event received 6.77 million donations totaling more than 300 million yuan. In the era of the mobile Internet, charity has transitioned from relying on large institutional donations to thriving on many small individual donations.

Technologies that originated from the Internet like cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence are becoming a new force for productivity. The RootCloud project made through cooperation between Tencent and Sany Heavy Industry has linked 300,000 devices spread around the world into a cloud platform, which collects nearly 10,000 operating parameters in real time and enables long-range monitoring and management of device groups. With the support of this platform, project participants are able to get repair personnel on-site within 2 hours and complete repairs within 24 hours while also greatly reducing pressure to keep as many spare parts in inventory. This process allows manufacturers to extend their value chains and become providers for company services. Just as power usage is an important indicator of economic activity now, cloud usage is likely to become an important indicator to measure the digital economy in the future.

The Internet is a starting point and a key to understanding China. To understand the digital economy, we look at how Chinese businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and researchers are working hard to innovate and how original technologies, and how business models like WeChat Red Packets, mini programs (apps within the WeChat app), and shared bicycles have changed “made in China” into “created in China.” To understand digital culture, we look at how China’s traditional art is combining with technology to rejuvenate an ancient civilization. The millennial generation are native to the Internet. To understand them and to understand China’s future, we should start with the Internet.

I hope we can start from understanding each other and then create a new future with the rest of the world.