In the US we have Compete, Alexa, and SimilarWeb with self-service interfaces, and Comscore, Nielsen, Experian and others with an enterprise focus. We also have Moz, Wordstream, SEMrush, etc. in the SEO/SEM space.
What's the lay of the land in China? What are the companies that are analogous to these and the overall state of the digital market data ecosystem over there?
In recent political and academic discussion, great attention has been drawn to China, a country that has been emerging dramatically over the past three decades in both economic and political domains. Nevertheless, for the rest of the world, China is a place remaining relatively under-explored, its people, governance, culture, and intellectual thinking full of mystery. To provide a holistic understanding about emerging China, and more recently transitional China, three basic dimensions – industrialization, urbanization and globalization – are necessarily introduced before a general idea can be formed. Above all, China’s growth starts with a hysterical revolution, known as industrialization, that happened one hundred years ago in West. China was a typical agricultural nation before reform and opening. But it shifted sharply when external and endogenous capitalists could operate their factories and enterprises, initially in some special areas such as Shenzhen, the first place opened, and then everywhere in China. New technologies, ventures, management, financial bodies, and more importantly, the cheap labour, GDP-based regime and policies, and perhaps the vertically structured one-party system, all lead to earth shaking changes. This transition was further promoted when China finally entered the WTO (World Trade Organization) in 2001. Since then a label of ‘made in China’ can be seen everywhere in the world. This delayed industrialization brought Chinese people great wealth (unfortunately for only a small proportion of the people) and a huge amount of currency for the Chinese government in terms of tax revenues and state-owned properties, supported by the fact that Chinese government’s own the greatest amount of property in the world, valued ca. $85,953 billion according to the Chinese Social Science Academy (Li et al., 2015).
Industrialization doesn’t go alone but walks side by side with another overwhelming social and population transformation termed urbanization. China was not an urbanized society until after the 1990s when industrialization developed to a point that a huge amount of assembly line workers was demanded in the industrial areas, particularly in southern China in places like like Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Dongguan. In these cities, migrant workers (in Chinese nongmingong) from rural regions of China, mainly from inland provinces such as Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei, were able to find factory jobs with a payment higher than what they could get in their hometowns as famers or craftsmen. These young laborers were usually not highly educated but skilled enough for mass production work in factories characterized as Fordism. Some of them were even fortunate enough to make themselves rich and become entrepreneurs finally in a world full of venture capital opportunities. However, most of them are not ‘qualified’ as urban residents according to Chinese hukou policy (China’s household or residence registration system), a particular regulation to control the mobility of populations in China. Without an official hukou in the cities, citizens find themselves having too many difficulties getting their kids educated, getting social welfare for medical care, unemployment insurance, retirement pay, and even being prohibited from buying a house (in some first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai). This makes migrant workers a special group of people who need to travel between home and workplace similar to migratory birds; they come back home each spring festival to visit their families (kids, parents and relatives), and go back again to the city for their jobs after a short break for the new year holiday. And that causes intensive transport phenomena during the spring festivals (in Chinese chunyun), leading to a huge number of travelers in a duration of about one month or so, as many as almost double the Chinese population of 1.3 billion.
However, this process of industrial migration is seemingly irreversible, since all of these young workers have lost their skills and motivation to go back to do farm work in the countryside. They tend to search for new urban life for their future, which thus stimulates a great demand for urban facilities and houses in the cities. Urbanization is boosted in the industrializing China. When more and more people gather in the cities, urban expansion speeds out of control. Meanwhile, Chinese governments find that there is endless wealth through selling land to real estate developers, enterprises, and foreign investors. Finally, the industrializing China has now become an urbanizing China; fiscal revenues based on exports have been replaced by land finances relying on housing markets (Cao et al., 2008). Local governments, usually in a form of state-owned companies, take over the land from residents with very little compensation but sell at high value in the land market. Intense social conflicts are therefore created between these displaced citizens and local governments or these developers. But it is not necessarily the same story for all the demolition cases. In some big cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen, for example, demolition is always good news for local residents who can get high compensation from the governments, such as a new apartment worth of millions of Yuan. Urban problems are not unique issues in China, but are repeated in more stories and features in fast-growing China. One problem that can be considered a symbol for China’s industrialization and urbanization is air pollution over the past decade, known as smog and haze, especially in the northern areas, such as Beijing and Shenyang, where more than two thirds of the winter days go on with no sunlight, not to mention blue sky. This unconcealed fact reminds Chinese people and in particular the government with a warning that the way of industrialization and urbanization like before can actually not be sustained anymore. Consequences of rapid industrialization and urbanization include even more serious problems such as water pollution, soil pollution, food security, and traffic congestion; and those problems cannot be easily observed while scientific monitoring information is not open for the public yet. All of these present big challenges for the “transitional China” in the new century. Since the beginning of 21st century, China has been quickening its pace ‘going abroad’, starting with entering the WTO by exporting a massive amount of products made in China, and continuing with rising entrepreneurs and capitalists who have purchased assets globally in recent years. But China’s emergence is not confined to the field of economy, extending rather as far as the former system of global politics and governance, as well as cultural and educational dimensions. China is making claims for more shareholding in international issues by proposing and providing new game-changing rules such as the leadership of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the establishment of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the new transnational program of ‘One Belt, One Road’, which inevitably challenge the West’s power, especially the USA. As has been widely noticed by recent media, more political geographic spaces are frequently declaimed for the areas surrounding China. For instance, the South China Sea, which has been under the supervision of the US army since the end of the Second World War, is now declaimed under China’s sovereign rights with an understandable reason of geographic proximity and historical precedent. Cross-state tension is therefore created among different political powers, including a group of southeast Asian states like the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the political alliance of Japan and the USA. However, it isn’t necessary to see this as the omen of war. First of all, the world is now a complex place with great interdependence. These countries with potential conflicts with China are in fact important economic partners with one another. The relationship between China and USA is rather interwoven, which requires a more tolerant and flexible collaborative framework. Moreover, China’s emergence in the recent half-century has rarely occurred with invasion and expansion as an armed empire. It might be associated with the Chinese tradition of Confucianism, which highly emphasizes harmony and multi-beneficial relationships instead of hegemony.
ICT (Information and Communications Technology) consists of a broad range of sectors related to internet, multimedia, IT professional services and many other businesses. Its industrial chain is mainly involved with four sectors, namely (1) ICT products and services design, (2) system integration, (2) equipment supply, (3) content supply and value-added services. Over the past decade, China’s ICT industry has been witnessing a rapid development, connecting tightly with the global ICT value chain. Since 2013, China has been taking a leading position in exporting ICT products all over the world, accounting for 32% of the worldwide market. Along with its wide application in various industries, the ICT industry provides considerable impetus to optimize national economic structure and to improve efficiency of economic operation.
China’s ICT has been rapidly rising with a steadily increasing rate for a decade or more. From 2000 to 2014, the profit of ICT industry of China increased by five times from 228 billion to 900 million RMB. The sales revenue of the electronic and information industry, a component of the ICT industry, increased with an average annual growth rate of more than 20% from 2001 to 2014, much greater than the average growth rate of GDP (7%) in the corresponding period. From the perspective of Internet and communications, the numbers of Chinese netizens and mobile subscribers hit 648 million and 1.256 billion in 2014, registering coverages reaching 48.8% and 92.7%, and average annual growth rates were 4.4% and 6.9% respectively.
China’s ICT industry plays an increasingly important role in the global ICT value chain (Liu and Ding, 2015). Similar to some western countries, China’s rapid development of its ICT industry can be attributed to economic development and innovation investment. Nevertheless, urbanization and industrialization as well as national initiatives are the main factors which boost the development of China’s ICT industry, in contrast to western countries where market and technological innovation may take the major role in promoting ICT development. The rapid growth of China’s ICT industry is intrinsically correlated to economic development. According to global statistical data, the correlation coefficient between an ICT development strength index and national income per capita is 0.85, indicating that economic development is highly associated with the ICT industry. Besides, as a technology and knowledge-intensive industry, technological innovation is the principal impetus for the rise of the ICT industry. According to previous research, each standardized unit of progress in science and technology innovation is expected to directly bring 0.61 standardized units of progress for the ICT industry (Sun and Seamus Grimes, 2015). China’s urbanization and industrialization are also immanent driving forces for ICT industry. Industrialization not only directly stimulates the development of ICT manufacturing, but also promotes its pervasive involvement in other industry sectors and fields through integration of industrialization and informationization. What is more, large-scale urban construction during the process of urbanization has created a huge market for the ICT industry. E-government, intelligent transportation, smart medical and green building, and other application of ICT technologies are all indispensable approaches for the construction of the Smart City, Safe City or Harmonious City. In Socialist China, emphasis attached by government and national policy has a direct impact on the development of the ICT industry. During the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996–2000), China started the informatization progress initially. Correspondingly, the ICT industry was at an elementary stage of development. When it came to the Twelfth Five-year Plan (2011–2015), the information industry had evolved into hot developing fields. ICT technologies are greatly promoted and applied in various fields. It helps to enhance sustainable economic development.
Compared with developed countries, China’s ICT industry started rather late. It didn’t come into shape in China until 1994 when internet was first introduced into China. It was there the development of the ICT industry began. Influenced by China’s unique economic development path and national policies, China’s ICT industry experienced several important stages before it grew to be one of the world leaders. The next section will introduce the characteristics and development modes of the ICT industry during its four development periods.
1994–2000: Initial Stage of ICT Development:
In 1994, China started to connect with international Internet through the American company Sprint, which was called the ‘National Computing and Networking Facility of China’ (NCNF). Since then China entered into its new era of internet. However, in the very beginning, China’s ICT was still preliminarily developed. According to data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the value added by China’s information industry accounted for 4% of GDP in 2000, less than the ratio of the global ICT industry to GDP proportion (6.4%). In addition, the innovation ability of China’s ICT industry mainly relied on introducing foreign technologies. Overall, China’s ICT industry was still out of the global centre of ICT technologies before 2000.
2001–2005: Rapid Development Stage Dominated by the ICT Manufacturing Industry Driven by Individual Users:
In this period, the international ICT industry reached a stage of rapid expansion and diffusion. Against this background, China began to attach great importance to the ICT industry. By 2005, the value added of the information industry accounted for 7.2% of GDP. In terms of imports and export, the export value of electronic information manufacturing products exceeded 30% of the total export volume of China. Simultaneously, urbanization took off and created large amounts of new urban residents, who were all potential individual users of ICT products and service. In this period, the ICT industry mainly focused on manufacturing individual-user-oriented communication devices and other low value-added equipment. Information Technology also lagged behind. Therefore, the interior industrial structure of China’s ICT industry was relatively low-end.
2005–2010: Primary Service-oriented Development Stage of the ICT Industry Driven by Individual Users:
Influenced by the international and domestic environment, the most obvious feature of the ICT industry was service-oriented manufacturing. ICT service became a main part of economic growth. In 2010, the revenue of information technology services industry (such as software industry) and information transmission services (such as telecommunications industry) was 2,317 billion Yuan, accounting for 26% of the ICT industry (8708 billion Yuan). Meanwhile, ICT service began to rise. For instance, in 2009, Internet banking represented by Alipay.com achieved great development, which was driven by rapid popularization and development of internet tools like financial payment, cloud computing, and social networking media.
2011–2015: Mature Service-oriented Development Stage of the ICT Industry Driven by Enterprise Users:
In 2010, China surpassed Japan and became the world’s second largest economy entity. China’s continuously elevating international status and increasing involvement in the global economy gave strong impetus to the ICT industry. But its development was faced with competition from South Asia, Latin America, and other emerging ICT countries. They possess advantages of cheap labour and land and experienced a momentum of development in the ICT industry. To remedy the cut profit margins of the ICT manufacturing market, China was forced to turn to promoting the ICT service industry; due to extensive applications in various industry branches and fields, the targets of the ICT industry in China evolved from individual-user-oriented toward enterprises-oriented.
In the pandemic ridden world too China has put it’s ICT technology to a good use. In China, BeiDou, the country’s own GNSS constellation, helped track patients and affected places, thus containing the virus, apart from analyzing the pattern of the outbreak. With the help of reliable data and precise mapping and imagery, China could build thousands of new makeshift hospitals across the country. BeiDou is being used by decision-makers for transportation planning. Logistics companies are using GNSS terminals to help ply essential relief goods faster. BeiDou also has a RDSS (Radio Determination Satellite Service) that is relaying information real-time. According to reports, the Chinese government was able to hasten the construction of two new hospitals in Wuhan mainly due to BeiDou. In Ruichang, Jiangxi province, the police forces are using BeiDou-enabled drones for monitoring congested public areas. The Chinese Ministry of Transportation was able to swiftly send emergency messages to over 6 million connected vehicles using BeiDou. The Chinese e-commerce giant JD also delivered medical equipment in remote hospital areas in Wuhan with the help of robots based on BeiDou. TFSTAR, a second generation AI satellite designed by the Satellite Technology Research Center of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) and ADA-Space, is capable of powerful analytics and processing, which enables it to sift through the data. By combining TFSTAR’s data processing capability with geocoding, a health visualization of COVID-19 was created on which people could see the geographical reach of the virus and could find out the distance between them and active infection. A hospital in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, was being staffed entirely by robots. Wuchang Hospital, China Mobile and Cloud Minds, a manufacturer of Cloud-based robotics systems, came together for this project aimed at making the hospital facility completely smart and digital. Most of the devices in the hospital are IoT enabled and services are carried out by robots. The initial screening of the patients is done by 5G-enabled thermometers that send instant updates. Also, there are rings and bracelets that are connected to the Cloud Minds AI platform so that it can monitor all changes in the body. As per a Reuters report, a small robot called Little Peanut was delivering food to passengers on a flight from Singapore to Hangzhou, China who were being held under quarantine in a hotel. Utilizing its sophisticated and expansive surveillance network for public good, the Chinese government joined hands with tech giants Alibaba and Tencent to develop a color-coded health rating system that is tracking millions of people daily. The smartphone app was first deployed in Hangzhou in collaboration with from Alibaba. It assigns three colours to people — green, yellow and red — on the basis of their travel and medical histories. In the industrial hub of Shenzhen, a similar software was created by Tencent. Whether a person should be quarantined or allowed in public spaces was decided based on the colour code. Citizens had to log into the app using pay wallet services like Alibaba’s Alipay, Ant’s wallet, etc. Only those people who were assigned a green colour code could be allowed in public spheres after using the designated QR code at metro stations, offices, and other public places. There were checkpoints at most public places where the code and a person’s body temperature were checked. More than 200 Chinese cities were using this system. Access to public information has led to the creation of dashboards that are continuously monitoring the virus. Several organizations are developing dashboards using Big Data. Face recognition and infrared temperature detection techniques have been installed in all leading cities. Chinese AI companies like SenseTime and Hanwang Technology have claimed to come up with a special facial recognition technology that can accurately recognize people even if they are masked. With the help of data analytics and predictive models, medical professionals can understand more about a lot of diseases. Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant, has made its Lineatrfold algorithm available to teams that are fighting the outbreak, according to the MIT Technology Review. Unlike Ebola, HIV and Influenza, COVID-19 has only a single strand RNA, so it is able to rapidly mutate. The algorithm is a lot faster than other algorithms that help predict the structure of a virus. Apollo, which is Baidu’s autonomous vehicle platform, has joined hands with self-driving start-up Neolix to deliver supplies and food to a big hospital in Beijing. Baidu Apollo has also made its micro-car kits and autonomous driving Cloud services available for free to companies fighting the virus.
Idriverplus, a Chinese self-driving company that operates electric street cleaning vehicles, is also a part of the mission. The company’s flagship vehicles are being used to disinfect hospitals. In order to effectively fight the virus, it has created a massive surveillance system. The Chinese government is gathering people’s smartphone location data, body temperatures, travel history and other details in a centralized database, in which the data is being analyzed using Big Data and Machine Learning. Thousands of facial recognition-powered CCTV cameras have also been installed at almost every quarantine center and only those who have been assigned the green color code can drive on the roads. WeChat, the popular instant messaging app that also has a digital wallet, is being used to collect data. Using this data, the government can find out the number of people with whom an infected person was in close contact and order them to self-isolate themselves. For instance, if in the past ten days, an infected person bought biscuits from a grocery store using WeChat money or AliPay, the cashier at the store who was in contact with him, will be ordered to quarantine himself.
As for your question these are my recommendations which will easy your work done:
1. Toutiao
2. WeChat
3. WeChat Store
4. Baidu
5. UC
6. Youku
7. Tudou
8. Iqiyi
9. Tencent Public Account
10. Tencent Interest Tribe
Besides if you do have any questions contact me: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
