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The data tells us that among the 20 most active apps globally, 19, except for Telegram, are from China and the United States. Not only are domestic markets firmly occupied by local applications such as WeChat, Douyin, and Taobao, but overseas markets have also seen the emergence of Chinese-backed apps like TikTok, Temu, SHIEN, and Shopee, breaking the skepticism that the Chinese mobile internet would "only engage in internal strife."

Starting from the desktop internet and thriving in the mobile internet era, Chinese companies have achieved remarkable results in the wave of the internet—yet none of this should be taken for granted.

In fact, before the wave of the internet, the global information revolution had already gone through five waves: integrated circuits, mainframes, PCs, enterprise software, and digital communications. China only seized the opportunity in digital communications, with minimal achievements in the commercialization of the other four fields. The gap in core areas such as operating systems, commercial software, and semiconductor processes has even widened.

Looking back to around 2000, when the Chinese internet industry was just budding, the domestic technological business environment was far from ideal: the VC/PE industry was still in its infancy, and overseas venture capital had not yet entered China on a large scale; large tech companies were few and far between, and industrial capital was weak; there were few wealthy individuals, even fewer willing to invest, and private capital was scarcer than unicorns; the country had just experienced the pains of 1998, and fiscal support was quite limited.

In contrast, Japan, South Korea, and Europe had conditions far better than China around 2000: Japan's electronics industry was still at its peak, and private capital was more abundant; South Korea rose with national strength, with tech conglomerates like Samsung and SK directing their efforts effectively; Europe had seized the opportunities in integrated circuits, enterprise software, and digital communications, with tech giants emerging one after another—it seemed they should have been dominating the internet wave.

However, in terms of results, Japan, South Korea, and Europe had achievements but were not outstanding: Japan's contributions included companies like Line and Rakuten, which had far less global influence than Sony and Panasonic during the electronics era; South Korea had companies like Naver, Coupang, and Kakao, but their businesses were limited to the domestic market; Europe had only a few companies like Spotify that could stand on the global stage, far from the dominance of Nokia, Siemens, and Ericsson in their heyday.

How did China manage to seize the internet wave despite the difficult starting conditions? This year marks the 30th anniversary of China's internet access, and this article will attempt to answer this question from the perspective of industrial logic.

Ma Huateng recalls that time and comments: "In those years of entrepreneurship, we never thought about the future; we were all troubled about surviving tomorrow."

The entire year of 2001 was spent in bloodletting, chaos, and anxiety for all Chinese internet companies: the three major portals suffered huge losses, with NetEase facing a delisting crisis, Sohu encountering a hostile takeover, and Sina's Wang Zhidong being ousted from the company; meanwhile, Tencent, with its user base growing like a rocket, faced increasing pressure to sustain QQ, even seeking sellers at a price of 3 million; even Alibaba, with its exceptional financing ability, had cash on hand that could only last six months at its lowest point.

In a series of articles, we discussed:

• Before the internet, China only seized the wave of digital communications, with the telecom industry becoming the fastest-growing emerging industry in China. In this sector, besides the increasingly prominent equipment vendors like Huawei and ZTE, there was another financially strong but often overlooked player: telecom operators—precisely they provided a lifeline to internet companies on the brink of collapse.

The operators' model was simple: collect user payments with one hand while purchasing equipment and services with the other. As telecom services like landlines, wireless, and data gradually became a "basic need" for the public, the money received by operators increased day by day, and naturally, the money spent also rose, supporting the revenues of equipment vendors like Huawei and ZTE while providing new business opportunities for internet companies struggling to make money—SMS.

At the end of 2000, China Mobile launched the "Mobile Dream Network" service, recruiting internet companies as value-added service providers (SPs) to attract mobile users to consume SMS, images, and ringtones, with operators sharing 85% of the fees earned with internet companies. Chinese users' acceptance of mobile fees was much higher than other payment models, with extremely high monetization efficiency; this new model almost instantly saved the entire industry.

By 2002, most Chinese internet companies had emerged from financial difficulties and were rethinking their core businesses—Sina continued to operate its portal, Tencent planned to deepen its IM services, Shanda found a sweet spot in "Legend," NetEase focused on gaming, and the latest Baidu concentrated on search, while Alibaba, having cut costs by 75%, began to seriously refine its "China Supplier" product.

The good news was that the crisis for Chinese internet companies had ended, but the bad news was that overseas internet giants had also emerged from their crises, accelerating their pace of entering China. Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft MSN, and even Li Ka-shing's TOM were all preparing to establish localized teams. Just as Chinese internet companies had returned from the brink of collapse, they had to prepare to face off against these giants.

Except for a few areas, most domestic companies had no magical "assist," and they needed to fight hard against their overseas counterparts.

II. Product Breakthrough#

First is the technological advantage.

• The internet is ultimately a high-tech industry based on computer science, and gaining a crushing advantage through leading underlying technology is the most direct competitive strategy. For example, ChatGPT, backed by OpenAI's significant lead in foundational large model technology, makes it difficult for competitors to achieve the same user experience, no matter how fancy their chat interfaces are.

Next is the model advantage.

• Changes in cyberspace happen rapidly; a new model is often challenged or even overturned by an even newer model before it has a chance to settle. For instance, in the e-commerce industry, after Alibaba and JD.com dealt a blow to traditional retail, they soon faced a completely different competitor, Pinduoduo. The battle among the three is still ongoing, and live-streaming e-commerce has emerged from the sidelines, making it an endless cycle.

Finally, there is the product advantage.

• One interesting aspect of internet products is that they are mostly developed by tech geeks, while the users are ordinary people. The former can explore the cyber world using command lines, while the latter may uninstall an app due to a two-second lag. Therefore, user experience has been elevated to a very high priority in internet products, and those product developers who think from the user's perspective often end up succeeding.

The existence of these three methods essentially means that an internet company is the sum of its "technology + model + product." For example, Google's early core technology was the PageRank algorithm, its model was keywords + the AdWords advertising platform, and its product was a simple search box—these three elements combined constituted Google; none can be omitted, and any one taken out alone cannot represent the company.

With these three weapons in hand, which one will Chinese internet bosses pick up, or "can pick up," to deal with the elephants coming from across the ocean?

The technological advantage is the most fanciful. In all the technology fields that China is chasing, public opinion often harbors a kind of hope: that the old scientists who ride bicycles to work will, like the monk sweeping the floor, endure hardships and ultimately break through to surpass the West. This hope overlooks one point: establishing a technological advantage requires substantial financial investment, especially when chasing Western companies with first-mover advantages, the numbers involved are astronomical.

Take Google's Chrome browser project as an example. In 2004, leveraging significant profits from search, Google began to chase the browser market, which had already been divided among IE and Firefox. However, Google invested over $10 billion over ten years, led by future CEO Sundar Pichai, to develop the technologically advanced Chromium kernel, ultimately making Chrome the world's number one browser with a market share of 64%.

Establishing a model advantage is also very difficult. In fact, China has copied almost all overseas models, from portal e-commerce to search social networks, and many locally flavored "innovations" are actually borrowed from abroad. For example, the SMS model that saved the industry originated from Japan. It wasn't until after the explosion of the mobile internet in 2012 that China truly contributed real model innovations to the world.

The only thing left to rely on is the product, because technology can cross borders, and models can be universally applicable, but product experience must align with local habits, which is precisely the weakness of overseas giants: they often prioritize satisfying global users, and their product development teams are far removed from the local market, making it difficult to respond to, or even unwilling to respond to, local demands. This has pointed a clear path for Chinese companies: with the same product form, as long as they can provide a better experience, they can win.

The classic case of Tencent QQ battling ICQ and MSN exemplifies this path.

The first battle was brief. ICQ was once the world's largest instant messaging software, surpassing 10 million users by the end of 1998, but aside from sending batch legal letters to "xICQ" in China, its attention to the Chinese market was quite limited, and the product had many unreasonable points. For instance, at that time, most Chinese netizens accessed the internet via internet cafes, but ICQ stored user information locally, leading to loss of data when changing computers.

Tencent keenly recognized this and was the first to store QQ user information on backend servers, preventing the loss of friend lists and greatly enhancing user experience. There were many similar product improvements, such as offline messages, personalized avatars, and adding strangers as friends, which earned QQ a good reputation among users. By around 2001, the battle with ICQ had already concluded.

The second battle was much more challenging. In August 2004, Microsoft announced the establishment of the MSN China R&D and marketing centers, entering the Chinese IM market with grand ambitions. Compared to the crude ICQ, MSN had a much higher profile, easily capturing 10% of the market share without any localization efforts, and with Microsoft's financial strength and deep government relations in China, Tencent faced immense pressure.

Tencent's response was consistent: let the product speak for itself. From QQ 2003 to QQ 2007, Tencent continuously improved product experience, introducing major application innovations like QQ Show, personal cloud storage, QZone, and QQ Pets, as well as functional improvements like offline files, resumable uploads, and window shaking. These not only enhanced Tencent's commercial capabilities but also made users feel that QQ was becoming increasingly user-friendly.

For example, QQ added a "screenshot" feature in the 2004 version, becoming the first IM software to do so. This seemingly insignificant change was widely welcomed by netizens, and Tencent subsequently added features like dynamic screenshots, editing, long screenshots, screen recording, and pixelation, making it more and more user-friendly. To this day, many people (including myself) instinctively think of opening QQ when they need to take a screenshot on their computer.

If we view the years around the millennium as a long march of internet companies struggling and bleeding through trial and error, then after entering 2005, companies like Tencent began to summarize tactics, expand their victories, and focus on a pain point to the extreme, quietly implanting the impression that "this feature is only well done by this product" into users' minds, continuously enhancing their products and changing the balance of the war through a series of small victories.

In contrast, MSN China's strategic moves were dazzling, with frequent announcements of establishing MSN Chinese websites to recruit partners, collaborating with Yahoo Messenger for interoperability, and attempting to enter the SMS business to grab a share. However, at the core product level, MSN's user experience remained significantly behind QQ. Ultimately, those strategic maneuvers could not withstand users' votes with their feet.

Years later, on Zhihu, a highly upvoted answer succinctly summarized the reason for MSN's defeat: "If it's not user-friendly, it's just not user-friendly."

Meanwhile, as QQ battled MSN, Tencent's internet peers also defeated the attacks of overseas giants on various fronts—Alibaba triumphed over eBay and its Chinese agent EachNet, Dangdang withstood Amazon and its acquisition of Joyo, NetEase prevented Korean online games from monopolizing the Chinese market, and even the later controversial Baidu leveraged innovations like Tieba to surpass Google in market share.

During this process, a subtle change occurred: product managers gained increasing influence in Chinese internet companies, even surpassing programmers in some cases, becoming the core figures determining the success or failure of companies. The public observing the internet preferred to hear their thoughts and methodologies on products, far more than listening to programmers discuss technical solutions or bosses summarize management experiences.

In 2007, when Steve Jobs launched the first-generation iPhone, the Chinese internet companies that had just won their battles were still unaware that a more fertile land was about to appear on the horizon.

III. The Era of Mobile#

In the battle of mobile internet, the confidence, morale, and aggression of Chinese companies are rarely seen in the history of Chinese business.

In 2008, Apple and Google opened up third-party application permissions, prompting a wave of startups in Silicon Valley, with Foursquare, Ngmoco, and Rovio emerging as stars. Although a number of mobile application entrepreneurs also appeared in China, many internet companies were unaware of the scale of the mobile wave until 2009, when the consensus in the Chinese tech circle was finally formed, taking about a year.

Whenever something reaches a consensus among Chinese people, the momentum is bound to be overwhelming. Starting in 2009, Chinese companies split into two paths: one focused on hardware, targeting smartphones, including players like Coolpad and the new entrant Lei Jun; the other focused on mobile applications, including both PC internet companies transitioning to wireless and a host of "mobile-native" entrepreneurs.

Large internet companies were most anxious, eager to secure their tickets to the mobile internet before the doors closed, with Tencent and Alibaba being the most resolute. For Tencent, the outcome of mobile IM was a matter of life and death, and ultimately WeChat emerged victorious, with Liu Chiping leaving behind the famous phrase "Do not resist" during structural adjustments; for Alibaba, the failure of Laiwang turned the transition of Taobao to mobile into a fight for survival, with Zhang Yong leading the charge and shouting "All-in," ultimately succeeding.

Veterans feared being left behind by the train of the times, while new drivers were filled with a frenzy for wealth. The wealth effect of the PC internet era was evident, coupled with government encouragement for "mass entrepreneurship and innovation," leading to what might be the largest wave of entrepreneurship in Chinese history. At its peak, VCs were reaching out to product managers from BAT, calling them one by one to ask if they wanted to start a business, promising funding for those who did.

Unlike the previous era where the industry collectively resisted foreign powers, the mobile internet battle was primarily an internal conflict. A particularly telling scene from that time was in 2015 when Yahoo closed its R&D center in China, leading hundreds of HR representatives to block the entrance of the Tsinghua Tongfang building, holding banners and advertising boards in a "talent snatching" spectacle, almost all from local internet companies. Some resigned from their official positions to return home, while others rushed to exam venues overnight.

In external battles, the core of competition for Chinese internet companies was products, while in internal conflicts, the core remained products.

The most classic example of this is the mobile IM war. In the crucial months of 2011, Xiaomi's MiTalk, Shanda's YouNi, Talkbox, and Tencent's WeChat engaged in a life-and-death race; later, 360's KouXin, NetEase's YiXin, and Alibaba's Laiwang joined the fray, while the operators' Feixin kept a watchful eye from the sidelines. Ultimately, Tencent's product capabilities were once again recognized by the industry.

In addition to the transformation battles among PC internet giants, more "mobile-native" star products emerged, such as Meituan, Toutiao, Momo, Kuaishou, Didi, Zhihu, Ele.me, Gaode, and later established platforms like Douyu, Bilibili, Ximalaya, Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin... In their victories over competitors, "better product experience" was the common denominator.

Product managers became the hottest positions in the tech circle, with the website "Everyone is a Product Manager" seeing explosive traffic, Liang Ning's "30 Talks on Product Thinking" widely circulated and studied, and Kai-Fu Lee even encouraging graduates: "I suggest those who aspire to be CEOs consider starting as product managers if they want to work first," with even women seeking partners on Alibaba's internal network prioritizing product managers over programmers.

Traditional industries also attempted to adopt product thinking, especially after Xiaomi entered the manufacturing sector, with industries like home appliances (Haier, Midea), robotics (Roborock, Dreame, Ecovacs), and imaging equipment (Insta360, DJI) heavily borrowing from internet product methodologies. The new energy vehicle industry (Li Auto, NIO, Xpeng) has also brought in talents and bosses from the internet sector, contributing significantly to the enhancement of Chinese manufacturing.

A noteworthy milestone is that beyond "products," Chinese internet companies have finally begun to venture into the uncharted territory of "models."

When Zhang Yiming was raising funds from Sequoia Capital's Wang Qiong, he sketched out the product form and business model of Toutiao on a napkin in a café—not that Zhang Yiming invented the technology of "personalized algorithm recommendation," but that only ByteDance, based on this technology, successfully ran the model of "mass supply + distribution recommendation," achieving a highly efficient monetization loop and transplanting the core idea to later products like Douyin and TikTok.

A similar story unfolded with Meituan. In the food delivery war, Wang Xing was the first to determine that food delivery was a daily order volume industry in the tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, rather than just millions. He then encompassed millions of businesses through offline promotions and developed a delivery team of millions, which tested organizational capabilities in a way unprecedented globally. Here, the success or failure of the business was no longer solely about "products," but about building and managing "models."

By the second half of 2020, the Chinese internet industry reached its peak since its inception, with Alibaba and Tencent nearing a trillion-dollar market valuation, and Meituan, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Baidu also exceeding hundreds of billions, while companies with valuations of over a billion dollars were numerous. Additionally, among the 586 unlisted unicorns globally that year, the U.S. accounted for 233, while China accounted for 227, with the combined share of China and the U.S. approaching 80%.

Despite facing regulatory tightening and public opinion challenges after 2021, the Chinese internet continued to surge forward after adjustments. With the global popularity of TikTok, SHEIN, and Temu, one skepticism after another was shattered by the industry's actual achievements. China is indeed exporting "products" and "models" to the world, and the question posed by Sam Altman at the beginning occurred against this backdrop.

What seems to lie ahead for the industry is only the "technology" mountain that appears unconquered.

IV. The Mountain of Technology#

For commercial companies, whether the mountain of technology can be conquered depends on three things: whether there is funding, whether there is talent, and whether there is commercial feedback.

Funding is the easiest to understand. Taking American tech giants as examples, Microsoft has invested a total of $1.7 trillion in R&D since its establishment, Intel $1.5 trillion, Amazon $890 billion, Google $490 billion, and even Apple, often criticized for its lower R&D investment, has spent $650 billion since 2000—these astronomical figures are the reason for the strength of American technology and also the result.

The importance of talent is often overlooked; having people alone is not enough for tech R&D. One case is why European car manufacturers struggle with in-car systems, with even companies like Volkswagen and Mercedes facing failures due to the local information industry being hollowed out and a severe shortage of programmers. In contrast, weaker Chinese car manufacturers can recruit talent from mobile companies for Android development, from internet companies for front-end interfaces, and from AI companies for smart driving algorithms, ensuring a sufficient supply of talent.

Commercial feedback is the most hidden yet crucial link. For market-oriented companies, money does not come easily; Amazon's cloud computing is globally leading not because Bezos loves technology, but because without it, e-commerce cannot sustain itself. Similarly, Google's deep accumulation in storage, deep learning, and large-scale computing is not because programmers enjoy publishing papers, but because the costs and efficiency of search determine revenue and profit, necessitating investment in R&D.

Thanks to breakthroughs from products, Chinese internet companies have accumulated substantial funding and talent over the past 20 years: the number of engineers at Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance exceeds 50,000, while Baidu, Meituan, Kuaishou, JD.com, NetEase, and Pinduoduo also exceed 10,000, and they have accumulated at least over 2 trillion in profits over the past decade—though their resources may not match those of the U.S., they are still impressive.

With funding and talent, Chinese internet companies have the strength to tackle tough challenges in familiar fields. For example, in the case of cloud databases, Alibaba's e-commerce finance and Tencent's social gaming both view databases as core infrastructure, and both companies have invested heavily in this area. OceanBase from Alibaba and TDSQL from Tencent have both topped global TPC tests, enhancing China's overall strength in this field.

Beyond these breakthroughs that make headlines, much of the technology is embedded in products with over a billion daily active users. For instance, the instant messaging technology that enables hundreds of millions of people to communicate online is primarily held by Tencent and Meta; the talent capable of solving the massive scale and high concurrency issues in e-commerce can only be found in China, aside from Amazon; and globally, more than half of the companies that understand personalized recommendation algorithms are Chinese.

Internet products have a deceptive quality that makes it easy for people to overlook the technical difficulties behind them. For example, Google appears to be just a search box, WeChat looks like a chat window, ChatGPT is a chatbot, and Douyin is a video playback interface... Supporting these UI interfaces are complex underlying architectures and codes. The largest technological investment by internet companies is to ensure these products can handle billions of uses daily while continuously improving their experience.

Take video conferencing as an example. On the surface, it seems no different from video group chats, but business meetings are a very B2B scenario, entirely different from chatting with friends, with inherent requirements for stability, capacity, and latency. Especially with the rise of remote work, people often join meetings from various locations—subways, bedrooms, highways... The noise and internet speed vary greatly across different scenarios, making the underlying technical challenges and engineering implementations increasingly complex.

However, when you open Zoom or Tencent Meeting, you'll find their interfaces and operations are very user-friendly. Behind this ease of use is the extensive R&D they have conducted in audio and video, cloud deployment, AI, etc., effectively "shielding" users from the complexities of technology, allowing them to join meetings across platforms conveniently through a link, making the experience smoother and more seamless. These improvements in experience, in turn, have propelled online meetings to become a mainstream office habit, creating a virtuous cycle between R&D investment and commercial feedback.

From this, another common understanding emerges:

• The areas where tech companies are most motivated to tackle tough technological challenges are undoubtedly their core businesses.

For instance, Apple has often been criticized for its low R&D investment as a percentage of revenue, and even Musk frequently throws jabs. However, when it comes to core business, Apple's ability to "conquer mountains" is evident. For example, when Apple realized that chips would greatly impact the experience and iteration of iPhones and Macs, it quickly assembled a large team and spent ten years developing the A-series and M-series processors, particularly surpassing Intel in the desktop CPU field, which shocked Silicon Valley.

Thus, it can be said that products choose technology, or rather, business chooses technology. Google’s decision to design NPUs stemmed from the insatiable demand for computing power in Google Cloud, which had become a black hole; self-developing NPUs would significantly reduce costs. Similarly, Microsoft's generous support for OpenAI is not because Nadella wants to be the next big boss in Silicon Valley, but because AI can genuinely enhance the pricing and renewal rates of Microsoft products; if he doesn't invest in this area, the board won't let him off the hook.

A country's ability to accumulate technology and talent across multiple fields depends on its ability to establish a healthy commercial cycle in those fields. The same applies to Chinese internet companies; their greatest "duty" is to thoroughly understand the technologies within their business scope, collectively expanding the "reservoir" of national scientific research. As for the "bottleneck" issues outside their commercial radius, their investments are more driven by a sense of mission based on national sentiment.

Therefore, the path for Chinese internet companies to conquer technological mountains is no different from that of overseas giants: under mature business models, they spend money around their core businesses, mastering underlying technologies, continuously reducing costs and improving experiences, ensuring that commercial feedback can "support" talent teams and "afford" R&D expenses, and ultimately, after sufficient accumulation, invest in the pursuit of more cutting-edge technologies.

This is the correct path that follows industrial rules, but it is also a path that requires patience. In 1998, Gates became the world's richest man, while Lei Jun was still worrying about not being able to pay salaries. Chinese internet companies have only crossed the life-and-death line for just over a decade, half the time of telecom equipment manufacturers like Huawei, and the money spent hasn't been enough for long enough. Therefore, the fact that Chinese people have not won a Turing Award is essentially the same reason why there are so few Nobel Prize winners from China.

However, in recent years, there has indeed been a notion in public opinion that "internet giants focus more on products and models rather than technology."

This skepticism is understandable. The standard path for Chinese internet companies to break through has been to initially follow the technological directions of overseas giants, borrow mature business models, and establish "product advantages" to gain a foothold in business. Only after accumulating a certain foundation can they afford to venture into model and technological innovations. On this path, the "visibility" of products and models is undoubtedly the highest.

Starting from a GDP per capita that was only 5% of that of Japan, Europe, and the U.S., this was the only path for the Chinese internet industry to break through. In contrast, countries with better conditions have become mere markets for the one-way "output" of Silicon Valley products, with only a fraction of their industries remaining. Thus, the core contradiction in public opinion regarding Chinese internet lies between the people's emotional satisfaction of "breaking through bottlenecks" and the industry's need to adhere to objective laws of development.

Another popular viewpoint—that "a company is only valuable if it achieves a breakthrough in bottleneck technology"—falls into a similar error of understanding, failing to recognize that in a catch-up country like China, it is necessary to first solve the funding source issue for R&D to sustain large teams and tackle tough challenges. Even Huawei's success in developing HiSilicon chips was backed by profits from telecom equipment.

Only by shifting our gaze away from lithography machines and 2nm processes can we see more industrial heroes and heroic industries.

Festivals#

Before "Double 11" emerged as a shopping festival, the day was more commonly known as "Singles' Day," a product of internet-native subculture. Initially, Alibaba's marketing department, due to a lack of resources—did not have the determination to mobilize the entire company to create a festival—opted to opportunistically leverage the traffic from "Singles' Day," discovering it was a highly cost-effective choice and subsequently claimed it as their own.

On the other hand, winter is a natural promotional season for retail, with "Black Friday" also occurring in winter. This is not coincidental; preparing supplies for the family to survive winter is a historical pattern in commercial society. Therefore, whether it is November 11 or not, establishing a tradition of major promotions around this time of year is an inevitable result.

According to Uncle Ni, Ma Yun initially hoped to establish a "Thanksgiving Day," organizing an event each year to give consumers discounts. However, the problem arose when "Double 11" became too successful, leading everyone to believe it could become an opportunity to showcase dominance in the industry, with every executive and department having their own mission regarding "Double 11."

Thus, it is not that "Double 11" has become increasingly complex, but rather that from the moment it succeeded, "alienation" had already begun.

Both Pan Luan and I have a deep impression that for a long time within Alibaba, "Double 11" was framed as a training exercise unrelated to business, merely a grand narrative, with army cots moved into the office, working tirelessly to support the promotion, leading to a wonderful chemical reaction where employees felt that only those who fought for "Double 11" together could be called comrades.

Of course, I must emphasize the limitations of the era; nowadays, most people would not buy into such narratives. However, at that time, large companies still had an environment that valued fortune, and Alibaba did not inherently encourage a "striving" mentality—stock prices were there, leaving no room for complacency. They genuinely believed that "Double 11" had already concluded its business battle, with the only competitor, JD.com, not even a concern. Thus, in the eyes of the bosses, "Double 11" became a ritual to serve corporate culture and unite company morale.

Arrogance, of course, has its price, as we have all seen. Ten years ago, Alibaba and JD's GMV accounted for over 80% of China's e-commerce industry, but today, Alibaba's share has been squeezed to less than one-third, with Pinduoduo, Douyin, and Kuaishou emerging one after another. As the industry matures, concentration has actually decreased, which is an interesting trend.

Dai commented highly on the pressure-testing practice brought by "Double 11," noting that the peak daily sales during major promotions would become the norm in a few years, effectively serving as a rehearsal for capacity expansion, greatly aiding the technical line. From a management perspective, the bosses evaluated the returns from "Double 11" without major issues, but it was also foreseeable that "Double 11" would transform from a miraculous creation into a burden on both supply and demand.

Here, it is necessary to insert some background: according to reports, Tmall has canceled this year's "Double 11" gala, further emphasizing the notion of "the end of an era." However, perhaps due to differing definitions, Tmall still cooperated with Hunan TV for the "Double 11" gala this year, albeit on a much smaller scale.

In Uncle Ni's view, although "Double 11" is Zhang Yong's creation, the gala format reflects Ma Yun's will. Ma Yun has a strong affinity for the entertainment industry, having mingled in it during his more spirited years—incidentally promoting Alibaba's entertainment sector to new heights in a somewhat chaotic manner, which deserves another discussion. Therefore, based on Ma Yun's judgment, a single e-commerce platform alone cannot create a festive shopping atmosphere at the societal level; it must borrow the hand of pan-entertainment to add fuel to the fire.

Thus, the decline of the gala and the adjustment of "Double 11" appear to be on the same axis, but the reasons are not entirely the same. The window for the entertainment industry to dominate the social agenda in China has closed; whether it is entrusted to Zhejiang TV or Hunan TV, there is no way to carve a boat out of a sword. This has led to changes in budget allocation, and there are no specific events to serve as advertising material, making it more practical to provide users with subsidies, effectively driving the repurchase of 88VIP and transforming Taobao and Tmall into a large private space for Alibaba.

This is also one of the reasons why this year's "Double 11" appears particularly subdued. In the process of returning to simple logic, it has transformed into a naked exchange of interests between the platform and users. What does this mean? It means users must continuously invest on the platform to unlock corresponding subsidies; for example, many live-streaming rooms require users to accumulate a certain amount of time to receive red envelopes. This indicates that the platform's policies are in a contraction phase, and having choices becomes meaningful only when there is a prioritization.

If you are not a heavy user of the e-commerce platform but rather the type who only opens the app when you think of something to buy, your perception of this year's "Double 11" will be even weaker, feeling that you haven't seen any subsidies (except for national subsidies)—many comments in the live-streaming rooms have already mentioned this—thus personally playing a role in the empirical decline of the festival's impact.

The same applies to the supply side; the forced halt of the "either-or" practice has broken the unwritten rules of "Double 11," meaning that platforms can no longer lock in merchants to offer discounts. Merchants relinquish profits on individual products in exchange for store-wide exposure, platforms give up advertising inventory in exchange for consumer mindset, and users give up their choice rights in exchange for low prices, thus barely maintaining a temporary impossible triangle.

Once this impossible triangle can no longer be sustained, the value of "Double 11" further collapses. The platform's methods of locking in merchants have shifted from half-price to low-price, then to first releases and new arrivals, gradually weakening the supply advantage, making the platform's limitations evident, leaving them to rely on influencers like Li Jiaqi to distribute red envelopes.

Industry practitioners should be aware that the friction between Douyin and Taobao has been quite intense this year. Although I believe the common enemy should be the silent Pinduoduo, the frontline confrontation is still between these two platforms, which are the closest in business model. The shelf space has not stirred up much of a storm, and only the impulsive consumption mobilized in live-streaming rooms remains as an increment.

Unfortunately, this year's "Double 11" coincided with a year of influencer scandals.

Last month, there was bizarre news about a sales influencer seeking a bank loan to distribute red envelopes. This was not about the influencer losing money to subsidize their family but rather a situation where they couldn't wait for the payment period, and cash flow had run dry. The pressure on influencers has overflowed due to the platform's change in attitude.

Uncle Ni believes that the honeymoon period between platforms and influencers has ended. The declining social reputation is certainly an obvious factor, but the more genuine reason is that the platform is resetting its business model during a contraction phase. Influencers can indeed drive volume, but their existence itself is an unavoidable cost. This is why I say the common enemy should be Pinduoduo, as only Pinduoduo has not boarded this pirate ship.

So I asked another question: has "Double 11" really completed its historical mission?

The essence of "Double 11" is a large-scale customer acquisition activity targeting all internet users in the Chinese e-commerce industry, which had insufficient penetration. Even when it was postponed until Alibaba's IPO in 2014, e-commerce penetration had just surpassed 50%. Last year, it reached 85%, meaning that aside from a small portion of people without purchasing power (but who can access the internet), there are no new customers left for e-commerce platforms in the entire Chinese internet.

Dai believes that major promotions need to establish a mindset of absolute low prices, which inevitably leads to a conflict at the level of first principles, so they will increasingly be diluted. However, "Double 11" bears not only a historical mission but also a historical legacy, as well as being part of market value management. Stopping it is a very difficult task, and even if there are signs of underperformance, in the face of an unreasonable return on investment, there may still be a push to maintain appearances, which reflects the struggles of large companies.

Therefore, looking at the reports from recent years, it is not difficult to find that the prefixes of various data have increased. On one hand, everyone cannot deviate from the statistics bureau—everyone must exceed the market average; otherwise, isn't that forcing the market to say, "Am I going to fall behind?" On the other hand, one cannot admit that growth has stalled; they must borrow arithmetic solutions from the new energy vehicle industry, using various conditions to create impressive performance.

Uncle Ni digressed, suggesting that Lei Jun has taken over the public representation of entrepreneurs from Ma Yun. To paraphrase an old editor, the removal of Ma Yun serves another purpose; the organization has decided to appoint Lei Jun as the new Ma Yun, effective immediately.

In fact, it's not just Lei Jun; Ye Guofu from Miniso, Yu Donglai from Pang Donglai, Zeng Yuqun from CATL, and Wang Chuanfu from BYD have all become frequent subjects in short video topics during the time when internet entrepreneurs maintained a low profile. Their commonality lies in their origins in the real economy, possessing tangible businesses that provide certainty during uncertain risk cycles.

Conversely, those engaged in platform economics, if they cannot tie themselves to mainstream narratives, will deliberately maintain distance. For instance, Shein is on the verge of going public, yet you can hardly find a few photos of its owner online.

Returning to the theme of "Double 11," you will find that Pinduoduo is still telling the story of white-label alternatives. In fact, it is the least related to "Double 11," yet it cannot be avoided, often concluding with the unanimous sentiment that "Pinduoduo is still impressive," which is why I say Pinduoduo is indeed an industry succubus, with immense sexual tension.

Comparing Uncle Ni's negative critique of Pinduoduo with Dai's acknowledgment of it is quite interesting.

Uncle Ni believes that Pinduoduo's ultimate form is to reduce the 6 trillion e-commerce transaction value to 1 trillion in factory delivery value. If all e-commerce platforms succumb to such a model without considering the future, destroying today's market just to survive another day will lead to severe consequences. The military attack system of the Qin Dynasty could sweep through the six states, but it could not escape the fate of the second emperor's demise.

Dai's point is that the retail industry's demand for supply-demand matching is certainly more significant than the sudden imposition of the "responsibility for the industry" label. The issue of counterfeit goods was also pursued against Alibaba before its IPO. Later, Alibaba made significant efforts to combat counterfeiting, but it could not change the demand for selling Nike sneakers for 80 yuan. Even without Pinduoduo, such businesses would still exist, even if not online; people would return to traditional markets, and white-label products would still sell best.

So, can you understand why I say Pinduoduo is a succubus?

Finally, let me add some value to this discussion. I noticed a comment that immediately reminded me of a fact: in 2016, a Chinese version of Donald Trump's autobiography was released, and that same year he was elected President of the United States. The preface of that Chinese edition was written by Ma Yun...

In the preface, Ma Yun stated that he believed the readers of this book were those young people who could accept failure and starting from scratch. Eight years later, "Double 11" continues but struggles to hide its decline, while Trump has made a comeback to the White House, and Ma Yun is no longer in the limelight.

Seeking Compound Interest#

Compound interest is a kind of magic that needs to be sought; the exponential curve is key to creating wealth.

If a medium-sized enterprise can maintain a 50% growth rate each year, it will become a giant in a very short time. In fact, very few companies in this world can simultaneously possess true network effects and extreme scalability. However, with the advancement of technology, more and more people will achieve this—finding and creating them is a very worthwhile endeavor.

The same applies to individuals. If you want your life trajectory to be an exponential curve, your goal should be to align your life with a continuously growing trajectory that moves in the right direction. Therefore, choosing a career with a compound interest effect is very important—although most career paths are linear.

If the efficiency of someone who has worked for two years is the same as that of someone who has worked for twenty years, that may not be the career you want to pursue. For anyone with ambition, you need to maintain extremely high learning efficiency at all times. As your career progresses, each segment of your work should ideally bring increasing "compound interest." Ways to gain these leverage points include capital, brand, network effects, and management.

Extraordinary success comes from adding more "0s" after achieving "1." Therefore, you need to focus on increasing more success factors, which may include money, social status, or impacting the world... or something else. Personally, I am very willing to spend time finding my "next thing," and I look forward to it overshadowing my other life achievements.

Too many people get stuck in linear opportunities and hesitate. I believe that whether for a company or an individual's career, the greatest competitive advantage lies in long-term thinking, viewing how different systems in the world will interact from a broad perspective. It is worth noting that finding opportunities for compound growth is very important; the earlier you discover them, the more valuable they are.

In a world where almost no one truly focuses on the long term, the market will reward those who do with generous returns. Focus on the long term, maintain patience, and be open to "accepting surprises."

Unwavering Self-Belief#

Self-confidence is an incredibly powerful force. The most successful people I know are almost all filled with self-confidence, to the point of delusion. Cultivating this ability early on is crucial.

As more and more data proves your judgment correct, and you can continuously deliver results, be more confident in yourself. If you lack confidence, it will be difficult to believe that your ideas about the future will create value, especially when your ideas differ from others.

Many years ago, Elon Musk took me on a tour of SpaceX's factory, where he detailed the manufacturing process of every component of the rocket. But I still vividly remember the absolute certainty on his face when he talked about launching large rockets to Mars. When I left, I thought, "Ah, this is the standard of confidence."

Managing your own morale, as well as your team's morale, is one of the most challenging aspects of a founder's efforts. Without confidence, entrepreneurship is unlikely to succeed. Unfortunately, the more ambitious you are, the more the world wants to bring you down.

Most successful people are correct in their judgments about the future. Often, at least once, their "correctness" is established when everyone else thinks they are "wrong." Without this external misjudgment and the subsequent opportunity window, successful individuals would inevitably fall into the quagmire of fierce competition.

• Of course, confidence also needs to be balanced with self-reflection. I used to hate any form of criticism and did everything I could to avoid it. Now, I choose to truly listen, assuming that the criticism is valid, and then consider whether I should take action based on that. The path to seeking truth is often difficult and painful, but only through this can we distinguish between "confidence" and "self-deception."

This balance can also help you avoid leaving an impression of being self-righteous and unrealistic.

Learn to Think Independently#

Entrepreneurial spirit is difficult to achieve through education. Schools do not teach you how to think independently, so you must cultivate original thinking on your own.

Starting with fundamental principles and attempting to generate new ideas is a very interesting endeavor. Communicating with "like-minded" individuals who possess such attributes is a great way to enhance this ability. Once you have new ideas, you need to find a simple and quick way to test whether these ideas hold up in the real world.

"I will fail many times, but I will always have one that is correct." This is the essence of entrepreneurship. You need to give yourself many opportunities to try and reap your luck.

One of the most valuable lessons is that you can figure out "what you can do when there are no solutions." The more you do this, the more you will believe—courage comes from knowing you can stand up again after being knocked down.

Good at "Selling"#

Confidence alone is not enough—you must also be able to persuade others to believe in your vision.

All great careers, to some extent, involve "selling." You must communicate your plans to customers, potential employees, the media, investors, and other stakeholders. You need to paint an inspiring vision and possess strong communication skills, personal charisma, and robust execution capabilities.

Finding ways to improve your communication skills (especially written communication) is worth investing in. My advice for communication is to first ensure you have a clear thought process, then express it using concise and straightforward language.

The essential prerequisite for becoming a good salesperson is that you genuinely believe in what you are "selling." If you truly believe in it, selling is a pleasure; but if you don't believe in it yourself, selling becomes a torment.

In fact, anyone can improve their "sales skills" through continuous practice. For some reason, perhaps because it often makes people feel awkward, many believe that sales is something that cannot be learned.

Regarding sales, I have another suggestion: show up in person at important times. In the early days, I was even willing to fly specifically to sales events, even though it wasn't strictly necessary. However, in my life, there have been three instances of such "unnecessary on-site sales" that brought extremely important turning points to my career.

Willing to Take Risks#

Too many people overestimate risks while underestimating returns. Taking risks is important because no one can be right forever—you must try many things and adapt quickly.

In the early stages of your career, taking risks is usually easier: you have little to lose, but the potential gains can be substantial. You should try to make risks easier to take. Look for small "bets": if you are wrong, you might lose a little; if you are right, you could gain 100 times.

Place more bets "in the right direction." However, do not accumulate bets for too long. I have found that founders who work too long in large companies often face issues. When people become accustomed to a comfortable life, a steadily rising career path, and the unassailable reputation of a large platform, they find it difficult to commit to leaving it all behind. Many have a peculiar ability to equate their quality of life with next year's salary.

Even if they decide to leave, the temptation to "return to the comfort zone" is immense. Focusing more on short-term gains rather than long-term returns is human nature.

When you find yourself in a low point, follow your intuition and spend time on things that might become very interesting. If you are strong enough, you can remain simple and flexible.

Focus#

Focus is the engine of work.

Based on my observations, those who spend more time thinking about what they should focus on usually receive good returns. Doing the right thing is far more important than working long hours; too many people waste time on trivial matters.

Once you know what to do, quickly execute those few extremely important tasks. From my personal experience, I have never seen a lack of execution lead to success.

Work Hard#

Being smart or hard-working, when either one is present, can place you in the top 10%. That is already a significant achievement. But to become the top 1%, you need to be both smart and hard-working—your competitors are also top-tier, and they are both smart and hard-working.

Only those who pursue excellence can reap extraordinary rewards. Extreme work means making trade-offs regarding the rest, such as life balance. If you are unwilling to make trade-offs, that is a completely reasonable choice. However, pursuing excellence has many advantages; in most cases, quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, and success will continue to bring more success.

Finding your goals is one of life's greatest pleasures. I don't quite understand why some Americans view hard work as a bad thing. However, outside of America, it is clear that people still value the importance of hard work—non-American entrepreneurs display extraordinary energy and drive, rapidly becoming the new benchmark.

I don't quite understand why, in some parts of America, hard work has become a bad thing. But it is certainly not the case in other parts of the world—entrepreneurs outside of America are demonstrating energy and drive, quickly becoming the new standard.

You must figure out how to give your all without exhausting yourself. Everyone has their own strategy in this regard. One effective method is to find what you love and do it with people you enjoy being around.

Do not believe those who say "you can succeed without hard work." In fact, endurance in work is one of the most important factors for long-term success.

Additionally, the earlier you work hard, the greater your returns will be, much like the interest from savings. Generally speaking, young people tend to have fewer burdens, so the younger you are, the more capital you have to give your all.

Ambition#

I firmly believe that successful startups always choose to tackle difficult challenges. People want to engage in truly exciting endeavors and feel that their work can create value on the path to their goals.

When you make progress on an important issue, many people will want to help you achieve a larger vision. Be a bit more ambitious and do not be afraid to pursue what you truly want to do. When you discover that you are "different," that may be your opportunity—do not hesitate, go for it.

Follow your curiosity. What excites you often excites others as well.

A Little Bit of Willfulness#

You can make the world bend to your will; it is not as difficult as you think. Too many people do not even try and accept conventional solutions.

In pursuing dreams, people have immense potential to tap into. Self-doubt, giving up too early, and not putting in enough effort combine to prevent most people from approaching their potential limits.

Always pursue what you truly want. Failure is natural, and rejection can be painful. But once an attempt pays off, your gains will be astonishing.

Those who say, "No matter how many times I fail, I will achieve my goals," will always succeed if they are serious and diligent. Their long-term persistence is the true reason for "good luck" coming their way. Airbnb is an example of this.

Willfulness is predicated on optimism—I hope this is a character trait that can be improved through practice. I have never seen a naturally pessimistic success story.

Increase Competitive Barriers#

The harder it is to compete with you, the more valuable your company becomes. This is a truth understood by all.

The same applies to individuals; the higher your replacement cost, the harder it is for you to be replaced.

The best way to enhance competitiveness is to "increase leverage." For instance, building a strong brand or a cross-disciplinary knowledge system... There are many ways to increase leverage; find what suits you.

Do not imitate others; following the conventional path leads to a dead end because it is too easy for others to compete with you.

Build Networks#

Great work requires a team—establish a network of talented individuals to work with (this network can be tight-knit or loose). The effective scale of your talent network is one of the factors that influence how far you can go.

One effective way to build interpersonal networks is to help others as much as possible. For a long time, this has been one of my best personal investments. I am often surprised by the good returns I receive, sometimes coming from connections made ten years ago.

Value your reputation, such as treating those you work with kindly; this will greatly benefit your future. As a manager, it is also important to understand people's strengths and effectively motivate them to accomplish more important work rather than draining them. All of this comes from my practice rather than management textbooks.

Everyone excels at certain things. Define yourself by your strengths, not your weaknesses. Acknowledge your weaknesses and find ways to overcome them, but do not let them stop you from doing what you want to do.

I often hear many entrepreneurs say, "I can't do X because I'm not good at Y." This actually reflects a lack of creativity. The best way to compensate for your shortcomings is to hire complementary team members rather than just hiring people who excel at the same things as you.

Another particularly valuable aspect of interpersonal networks is discovering undiscovered talent. How can you achieve this? The simplest way is to meet many people and take note of who impresses you and who does not. Through practice, you can become more adept at identifying the intelligence, motivation, and creativity of these "unappreciated individuals." Remember, when seeking talent, you should focus on their growth potential rather than just their experience or current achievements.

Every time I meet someone new, I always ask myself, "Does this person have the potential to become a great individual?" This is a great prompting question that can help you identify those who may accomplish great things.

There is also a special situation: getting outstanding individuals to see your potential and be willing to bet on you. This "finding talent" task can be done once a year. The best way to achieve this is to make yourself useful. (Remember, at some point in the future, you should also pass on this generosity.)

Finally, spend more time with positive, supportive people who encourage your ambitions.

What You Have Determines Your Wealth Ceiling#

In understanding wealth, one of the biggest misconceptions I had in my childhood was that people became wealthy because of high salaries. Even then, I noticed some exceptions, such as the billionaires on the Forbes list, almost none of whom made it there solely through salaries.

The truth is that the way to become truly wealthy is to own things that appreciate rapidly in value. For example, if you start a business or own real estate, intellectual property, or similar assets. You need to have ownership of something rather than just selling your time. Time only grows linearly.

The best way to make products appreciate quickly is to scale "products that people want."

Intrinsic Motivation#

Most people are "externally driven," wanting to impress others with what they do. This external drive has two negative effects:

First, you will only work based on consensus, whether that consensus is a certain idea or a career growth path. This leads to you caring more about whether others recognize you than whether what you are doing is genuinely interesting and valuable. At the same time, this "consensus" makes you lose your unique value.

Second, you will misjudge risks. You focus more on keeping up with others and are less able to accept that sometimes "fast is slow," missing out on what is truly important in the long term.

Smart people seem particularly susceptible to these external driving factors. Realizing this cognitive trap can help you, but you still need to work very hard to avoid falling into the imitation trap.

The most successful people I know are primarily driven by internal factors: they do what they believe is truly important, they create what they think the world needs, and they do so to avoid regretting their choices. Especially after achieving a certain level of fame and wealth, this intrinsic motivation is the only force that drives them to continuously pursue "higher, faster, stronger."

This is why, when I meet someone, I most want to understand their motivations. The right motivation is difficult to quantify, but when you see it, you will know, "That's it."

Ultimately, your success must be rooted in what you value most and what you have accomplished. The earlier you start, the further you are likely to go. Remember, if what you are doing is not something you are passionate about and willing to fight for throughout your life, it will be difficult to achieve great success.

I once shared my views on wealth: one of the main reasons I am excited about basic income is that it will encourage more people to take risks, thereby unleashing human potential. Before that, if you were not born lucky, you had to work hard to climb up before you could start living freely. If you were born into extreme poverty, this is very difficult.

However, many people with "poor innate conditions" continue to achieve success, and I see infinite possibilities in them. It is also because of them as a reference that I realize how fortunate I am.

Once again, I wish everyone continued progress and good luck in more endeavors. Thank you!

OpenAI CEO: How to Improve Work Efficiency

1. Seek Compound Interest
2. Unwavering Self-Belief
3. Learn to Think Independently
4. Good at "Selling"
5. Willing to Take Risks
6. Place More Bets "in the Right Direction."
7. Focus
8. Work Hard
9. Ambition
10. A Little Bit of Willfulness
11. Increase Competitive Barriers
12. Build Networks
13. What You Have Determines Your Wealth Ceiling
14. Intrinsic Motivation

In summary, the business model of the content industry is:

• Free content is used to build an audience, which is then monetized through advertising or paid content.

Content creators follow this formula:#

You spend most of your time expanding your audience.
You continuously nurture this audience as a market for selling content.
You create profitable content products to target this market.
Repeat the first step.
The key to making this formula work is that you must regularly produce genuinely interesting or useful content to cultivate an audience, spark their interest, and encourage them to follow you, waiting for the next content. This is the only way to survive long-term in the content industry.

However, doing so means you cannot stop and will be very tiring. If you stop producing new content, you will not find new audiences, and old audiences will also dissipate.

That foreign programmer encountered this problem. By 2023, he was utterly exhausted and filled with fatigue over the content he had created, wanting to take a break. He said, "Every day, I think about what to write next? It's too tiring; these things no longer bring me joy like before."

He stopped, wanting to rest for a while and come back after regaining his energy.

However, he quickly realized that once he stopped working, not updating or promoting his content, his course sales immediately slowed down. After another month or two, they almost stopped being profitable.

This is the biggest problem content creators face: you cannot stop working, nor can you reuse old content; you must keep updating and promoting, staying on top of market trends, or else no one will consume your content, and everything will return to square one.

The root cause of this problem is that the content industry is fast-food culture; trends switch at any moment, and people are only interested in new content, quickly discarding old content. Moreover, the speed of trend switching is accelerating; the internet's hot topics from this week will be forgotten by next week. You can only keep up by accelerating your production speed.

This is the downside of the content industry: produced content is only consumed once; once old content has been consumed, it no longer provides new stimulation in the future. You must produce new content to bring new stimulation to the audience to generate new consumption.

This inevitably leads to content creators being unable to stop, constantly racking their brains to come up with new content that has never been written or filmed before; otherwise, their previous investments will be wasted. Ultimately, you find yourself trapped in a vicious cycle of endless repetition, exhausting yourself.

The programmer concluded:

• He is a disposable product in this industry; once he is exhausted and can no longer produce new things, that is when the market will abandon him.

Understanding this, he realized he could not return to his previous state, grew weary of the life of churning out content, and thus decided to abandon his current paid courses and exit the content industry. This article is his farewell message as he leaves.

I hope that those who join the content industry can understand the fast-food nature of this industry; there is no accumulation, only depletion. When joining, it is best to prepare yourself for being consumed.

Finally, I want to mention "knowledge payment."

Knowledge payment faces the same problem. The paid courses you produce are not true accumulations; once you stop promoting and updating, they will be ignored.

Additionally, it is threatened by AI. Courses aimed at beginners could previously earn some money. Now, with ChatGPT, the beginner course business may have already died because AI can answer all novice questions, and often does so better than you.

What AI cannot provide are likely those hard-earned deep insights and realizations, but they are difficult to package into sellable courses and can only be obtained through practical experience and guidance from experts.

Therefore, the future of knowledge payment in the AI era is uncertain; its peak may have already passed.

At the end of 2022, a new round of technological revolution erupted, and China's technological industry's ability to "keep up" has changed dramatically compared to the domestic internet industry around 2000.

More than twenty years ago, few large tech companies in China were willing to invest in the internet, while today, Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu, Meituan, and others are all competing in the race for large models. Twenty years ago, startups like BAT faced immense difficulties in financing; today, MiniMax, Baichuan, and Zero One are all attracting the attention of hot money. Twenty years ago, those who could write code could only scrounge from a dying software industry; today, China's AI talent pool ranks second globally only to the U.S.

China may not feel much of this itself, and many believe that the external environment, financing market, and entrepreneurial enthusiasm for technology in China in recent years have not been satisfactory. However, looking internationally, one can see that Japan and South Korea have almost disappeared in the AGI space, and Europe has only one Silicon Valley returnee startup, Mistral, standing on the stage—comparatively, China's ability to "keep up" is already quite remarkable.

Facing the ocean, Chinese internet companies can generously borrow the title of a viral article: "I worked hard for 18 years to have the opportunity to drink coffee with you."

The path of Chinese internet companies to the table can be summarized and distilled as follows: using products as a breakthrough point to accumulate users, borrowing overseas experience to achieve a commercial closed loop, and climbing step by step along the path of product - model - technology. In the era of desktop internet, they closely followed and bit down hard, while in the mobile internet era, they caught up head-on, cultivating a large number of market entities, collectively enlarging China's "reservoir" of computer science, and accumulating precious strategic assets for China in preparation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This path of "product - model - technology" is the greatest common divisor of the rise of China's internet industry, akin to the "introduction - digestion - absorption - innovation" of high-speed rail, the "agency - imitation - R&D - surpassing" of communication equipment, the "leveraging supply chains" of the smartphone industry, and the "bending + catfish" of the automotive industry. It is a brilliant methodology demonstrated by a lagging country in the process of catching up, destined to leave its name in the history of Chinese industry.

The AGI revolution that erupted in 2022 is essentially another innovation in computer science; it marks the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution while also continuing the Third Industrial Revolution (the information revolution). The internet industry is the achievement of China's close following during the information revolution, a core asset that many countries envy, and undoubtedly will once again bear the historical task of "keeping up with the trend."

From this perspective, the adjustments and contractions in the internet industry in recent years are merely signals that the first half has ended; the true second half of China's internet has only just begun.