Although the Internet found its footing in China much later than most of the western countries, with rapid progress only after the Trans-Pacific Fiber Optical Cable Network since 2000, China is striving to march to the next Chinese-characteristic Internet era in great stride. They call it “Internet +” phase, a notation announced by Premier Li Keqiang in Spring 2015 to integrate mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data and the Internet of Things with modern manufacturing to encourage the healthily development of e-Commerce.

Even today, besides mobile e-Commerce spearheaded by Alibaba Group and a few large players, the broad development of mobile internet in China has seen rapid attraction and growth, much faster than that in European or the US markets. It all started by realizing that the Internet development in China needs to fit in their own unique cultural environment. The current popular business model O2O (Online-to-Offline) – online order to offline delivery and services – can allow online consumer goods to be delivered within hours to the doorway, Uber-type personal shared rides to be called 24×7 within a few minutes in big cities, restaurant discount orders and reservation to be made on mobile minutes before arriving. Considering China’s size of population and geography, this kind of speed and efficiency are rare even in western countries.

The rapid development of mobile internet in China has been powered by the cloud computing. Every business area is a huge big data space. Although technology challenges remain in many areas, western-educated talents are recruited back to create new products and services everyday. It’s a global talent war at the moment.

The Internet has lowered the barriers of competition and flatten the field in almost every business corner. With the target of Internet+, the leapfrog development in China in certain areas may very well lead to future new growth patterns and another interesting era.