China’s Big Tech: From Free Development to Strict Regulation

... for the stability of China’s financial system. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that preferences and subsidies granted by the state were the main factors for China’s growth of internet giants. The companies that subsequently grew into tech giants built their business on meeting the current market needs; they managed to predict the trends in market development. For instance, Alibaba and Tencent were founded when no more than 2% of Chinese were internet users. In 2005, the figure climbed to 10%, then to over 30% in 2010, and today, China has nearly 1 billion internet users, which is more than the combined population of the ...