tech & innovation
HOW CHINA IS REVOLUTIONIZING THE TECH INDUSTRY by David Messiha
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hina’s economy is burgeoning and so is its tech industry, which is in healthy competition with the United States. Just think — some of the biggest names in tech are headquartered in China, such as the national big four companies: Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi. Other American businesses like Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla also manufacture chips and parts there. China’s largest tech companies cater to its massive population. Baidu, for example, provides search enginerelated services; Alibaba focuses on e-commerce; Tencent is the creator of WeChat, a messaging, gaming, and social media app. Xiaomi manufactures phones, consumer electronics, and home appliances. It is also one of the largest local manufacturer of smartphones in China.
China’s big four tech companies are like their Silicon Valley counterparts (Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple) in that they completely dominate the market. Each of these companies made huge investment leaps, yet China is always striving for more and not resting on its laurels. Even though these tech companies face increased pressure and scrutiny from the government, that is not deterring them from achieving their goals in any shape or form. The COVID-19 pandemic has also slowed down the production of tech products because of China’s Zero-COVID policy. Nevertheless, all that hasn’t hindered China’s resilience. The country still boasts some of the biggest minds in the tech industry while producing countless new software and tech engineers each year.
An In-Depth Look at China’s Largest Tech Companies China’s big four tech companies, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, are often collectively referred to as BATX. Together, they generate billions of dollars in revenue and have revolutionized the way people shop, browse, and communicate.
Baidu Initially competing with Google, Baidu gained momentum locally in 2010 when Google ceased operating in China. Following Google’s model, Baidu is an online search engine that generates revenue using pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements from businesses that want to increase their website’s visibility on the search engine results page (SERP). Baidu’s estimated revenue is over 19 billion USD, according to macrotrends. net. Recently, however, the increase of social media apps impacted Baidu’s ad-centric model as many began skipping the search engine in favour of searching on other apps like Alibaba and Bytedance.
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the EDGE Spring 2023
Alibaba Alibaba was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, a business tycoon, investor, and philanthropist. The e-commerce platform is China’s version of Amazon. With more than 22,000 employees, Alibaba continues to dominate the Chinese market, thanks to the optimization of online payments with the introduction of its Alipay app. It is estimated that for every ten online purchases in China, eight are made through Alibaba. Just as Amazon dominates the U.S. market, Alibaba controls China’s, making it the largest retailer in the world with a market cap of more than $400 billion, according to Exactimo, a digital platform for business students. After going public in 2014, Alibaba’s revenue skyrocketed; however, a series of scandals and controversies over counterfeit products saw its CEO Jack Ma step down in 2019. The top role was given to businessman Daniel Zhang.
