Countdown to the Chinese Century: Global Digital Economy

Table of Contents

• Alibaba
• Baidu
• Bytedance
• Emerging Companies
• Huawei
• JD.com
• Meituan Dianping
• Pinduoduo
• Tencent
• Xiaomi
• AI
• Consumption
• Development
• Drones
• Economy
• Electric Vehicles/Autonomous Vehicles
• Fintech
• GDP
• Health
• Innovation
• Renewable Energy
• Robotics
• Smart Cities
• 5G

Samples

Executive Summary

Alibaba, ‘the crocodile in the Yangtze’, is the world’s biggest retail e-commercial B2B company, had $100 billion revenue by 2021, and was the seventh most valuable company globally at $712 billion in 2020 with gross merchandise volume surpassing $1 trillion and around a 30% global e-commerce market share. Alibaba will be the fifth biggest economy globally by 2036 serving two billion people. Alibaba owned 56.5% of China’s e-commerce market in 2019. Alibaba overall had 881 million mobile active users (including Ant Financial) in 2020. Alibaba and its 4,000 “Taobao villages” (with a minimum 100 online shops) were delivering online agricultural sales and other local specialities of over $107 billion in 2019. Average “Taobao village” household per capita incomes were already around $5,350 by 2017. Alibaba had made $6 billion in overseas investments by 2017. Alibaba’s global reach includes AliExpress and Lazada (South-East Asia) equating to 400 million customers overall. Alipay operates at least 27 currencies in over 110 countries. 

Baidu is worth around $70 billion and had $18.7 billion in revenues in 2020 with around a 90% mobile search share and China’s third most popular app with 174 million daily active users and 1.1 billion monthly users by March 2019. Baidu’s open-source AV global Apollo ecosystem with 177 partners in 97 countries includes Nvidia, Ford, and Honda. Baidu has more than 1.5 million developers on its Baidu Cloud and led globally in machine learning patents in 2019. Baidu is developing the $583 billion Xiong’an New Area ‘AI City’. Baidu will have tested L4 AVs in Beijing over 2,000 km of roads by 2022 and is testing AV Apollo Robotaxis in over 20 provinces including Hunan. 

ByteDance is the highest valued start-up globally with a valuation of $140 billion in January 2021. Douyin, or Tiktok, is a mini-15-second video platform with 400 million daily active users by 2020 and operating across more than 150 countries with India its biggest market. In January 2020 Tiktok became the globe’s most downloaded app with over 100 million downloads. Toutiao processes over 200,000 articles and videos daily to personalise user news feeds. Toutiao was valued around $30 billion in 2018 with $7.2 billion revenues and around 124 million daily users. Musical.ly is an innovative social video AI app with over 200 million users globally. 

Youku is China’s second biggest video hosting platform with around 500 million monthly active users and more than 800 million videos. Kuaishou, specialising in short video livestreaming, had 300 million daily active users by 2020 predominantly (92.5%) among young people living in third and fourth-tier cities as well as rural areas. Kuaishou has expanded into Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, and Vietnam and was valued at $18 billion as the fifth most valuable unicorn in the world in January 2021. iQiyi had 538 million monthly active users in 2020 with a $12.7 billion valuation as China’s video livestreaming market trebled to $17.6 billion. Realme gained 14.3% of India’s market and had expanded to 17 countries by 2019 including Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Vietnam as well as Europe with a 4% global market share in November 2020 and the fastest-growing smartphone brand in history for its first fifty million shipments.

Huawei had a 31% global manufactured telecoms equipment market share by 2020 in over 180 countries globally (including 70% of Africa) and 35.7% of the 5G global equipment market. Huawei is China’s leading smartphone brand with up to a 45% market-share in November 2020 and overtook Samsung briefly to become the world’s biggest supplier in 2020. Huawei was valued at $8.5 billion and had $188.6 billion revenues in 2020. Huawei had invested $600 million in 5G by early 2019. Huawei also held the most ‘Standard Essential Patents Declarations’ (SEPs) for 5G at 1,500 and had a global leading 15.4% of active SEPs in February 2021. Huawei constituted a 33% share of the global 5G market and 60% domestically in 2020. Huawei overall had 104 smart city and 5G global agreements in 2019 including Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, and Turkey having constructed over 100,000 global 5G base stations. 

JD had a $66 billion 2018 market valuation and same-day delivery in around 100 cities with the largest e-commerce warehousing storage space globally and more than 550 fulfilment centres. JD.com owned 25.8% of the $1.9 trillion Chinese e-commerce market in 2019. JD had 9% of the global e-commerce market in 2020 to rank third overall. JD plans to open 1,000 OMO 7Fresh smart supermarkets by 2024 and has expanded to Indonesia. JD also offers a one-hour delivery service covering over 400 major cities across China for over 1.2 million traders with a 10 million daily order peak. JD pioneered e-commerce drone delivery with up to one-tonne packages being flown over 300 km by 2020 and is constructing 150 drone airports. Changsha will globally pioneer Level-4 AV delivery with over 20% of delivery stations equipped with around 100 JD AV robots.

Meituan Dianping had a market valuation of around $55 billion in 2019 having had to outlast 5,000 other companies in ‘The War of a Thousand Groupons’. Dianping’s food delivery platform manages fleets of over six million motorbikes that created the biggest IoT global network by 2017. Meituan accounted for 60% of China’s food delivery market in 2019 processing around 25 million food orders daily and its food delivery will grow over 200% by 2025. Meituan’s gross merchandise volume grew to $98.1 billion with 450.5 million active users and $15.17 billion revenues in 2019. Meituan also will harness drones by 2024 for under ten-minute delivery with last 10 m robots also. Meituan was second for hotel bookings in China in 2018 with a 46.2% market-share while its Maoyan platform has more than 60% of the movie ticket market-share covering almost 95% of Chinese cinemas in over 600 cities by 2018. 

Pinduoduo, translating as “much more together”, was valued at $197 billion in March 2021 and had a third-placed 7% domestic e-commerce market-share as well as a 4% global e-commerce market share in 2020. Its 788.4 million active buyers in 2020 were even more than Alibaba's 779 million. Over $40 billion in gross merchandising value by June 2018 would result in more than doubling of revenues to $4.15 billion in 2019. By 2025 agricultural gross merchandising volumes will over-treble to $145 billion. ‘Duoduo Maicai' has digitally trained over 100,000 farmers and operates grocery deliveries in more than 300 cities with more than one million merchants by 2018. Most of Pinduoduo’s buyers (55% of gross merchandising volume in 2019) are largely from ‘third-tier’ cities and rural areas. 

Tencent, meaning “galloping fast information”, is in possession of the biggest data ecosystem globally. Already in January 2021 Tencent had a $715 billion market valuation at sixth globally. Over 75% of gaming companies use Tencent Cloud with the Chinese gaming market to treble by 2025 to $82.11 billion. Tencent is the world’s biggest video gaming company with over a million customers and around 13% global market-share. WeChat resembles more an operating system with its one million mini programmes encompassing more than 200 OMO services. WeChat Pay constituted 40% of the $49 trillion mobile payment domestic market in 2019 and was operating 17 currencies in 49 countries including South Africa, Malaysia, and Europe. Around 38,000 hospitals reportedly had WeChat accounts by 2017 and its Miying healthcare AI operates in cancer diagnoses. Tencent had made more than 700 investments globally totalling $6 billion overall by 2017 with $70 billion high-tech investment overall until 2025. 

Xiaomi became the world’s third most valuable smartphone manufacturer in July 2018 at $54 billion. Xiaomi is India’s largest smartphone brand (at a leading 30% market-share in early 2020) and was third globally in late 2020 with a 13% market share ahead of Apple. In China as of November 2020 Xiaomi had a 13% domestic market-share. Xiaomi had international sales in 74 countries by 2019 including, Egypt, Poland, and Russia with 190 million monthly online users. Xiaomi opened 100 Mi Home stores in India in 2019 and had over 330 in China across 51 cities by 2017 for its diverse AI-IoT smart home device OMO ecosystem. Xiaomi has invested in 220 companies and incubated 29 further start-ups by 2019 including in Indian fintech. Xiaomi had $17 billion in revenues in 2018 from historic IoT hardware and software. Its award-winning handset designs had 7,000 international patents by 2019. 

China’s AI market will reach $11.9 billion by 2023 and then $61 billion in 2025 (accounting for 30% of the $202 billion global AI market and have related industries of $770 billion). China is set to become the world’s biggest AI market by 2030 at $150 billion (double the current global AI market) representing 6% of GDP and related-industries ten times higher of $1.55 trillion with $15 billion related investment.

$15.7 trillion will be generated by AI to global GDP (at a 16% increase) by 2030 equal to the impact of steam engines in the 1800s, robotics in the 1990s, and the internet since 2000; China will accrue almost half of this at $7 trillion and almost double the US at $3.7 trillion. China already generated around 15% of global data in 2017 reaching 21% by 2020 and will be up to 33% by 2030. In 2020 China superseded the US for AI patent applications at over 110,000. By 2018 the US had already been caught in Internet AI and China is predicted to have a 60-40 advantage by 2023. China’s lead in Perception AI such as facial recognition is already 60-40 and will extend to 80-20 by 2023. Autonomous AI, able to visualise, listen, and feel its surrounding world, will see China level with the US by 2023. 

Chinese tourist spending will near-double to $450 billion by 2025 from 290 million annual travellers. Domestic tourism was a $930 billion industry by 2018 and by 2030 China is projected to be the world’s largest destination for tourism. Consumption constituted 54.3% of China’s total GDP and 60%-70% of economic growth in 2020. Services will constitute 60% of GDP by 2025 and 80% by 2050. Rural China now hosts 40% of China’s middle classes with 160,000 rural outlets for retail. By 2019 China became the world’s largest retail market with sales of $6.3 trillion with a $2 trillion e-commerce market (58% global share and reaching $3.44 trillion in 2024) accounting for 24% in first nine months of 2020. Food services will reach $1.15 billion by 2023. China’s had digital agricultural sales of $58 billion in 2019 with the new digital economy to create almost 380 million jobs by 2025. Social commerce more than doubled to be a $450 billion market by 2021. Consumption in ‘third-tier’ cities and rural areas will reach $8.4 trillion by 2030. China will lead by 2022 in consumer electronics and smartphones. By 2030 58% of the population will enjoy mass affluency of at least $200,000-$300,000 yearly incomes as China accounts for 12% of global urban consumption. Chinese share of global consumption growth will be $6.2 trillion and 18% between 2015 and 2030 to overtake the US and Western Europe. By 2021 China had the most household affluence globally. By 2030 there may be 500 million millennials in China’s middle class becoming the world’s most important consumer group as the new super-consumers. 

China’s is on course for a GDP per capita rate of $25,307 in 2025, $36,000 by 2031, and by 2050 China may reach Singapore’s current per capita income of $58,500. In just 20 years; more than 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty in China (at 75% globally), a middle class of around 500 million has been created, became the world’s largest and most affluent tourists, and jobs have been created for 900 million. The urban population will reach 926 million by 2025 and then in excess of one billion by 2030. Every city will become interlinked with over 200,000 people by rail and motorways and with 500,000 people (560 cities) through high-speed rail. Its high-speed rail length will be in excess of 45,000 km by 2030; the length of the Earth’s equator. A 37,900 km network will almost double to 70,000 km by 2035. China in 2019 had 65% of all global high-speed rail track. The number of the Chinese middle class who can afford a vehicle, television, fridge, and smartphone will constitute 550 million by 2022. Investment totalled $950 billion in 300 key infrastructural projects between 2000 and 2016 in the western provinces at an 8.5% GDP annual average. China had eliminated all remaining rural poverty by February 2021. 

DJI, meaning “great ambition has no boundaries”, constituted up to 80% of the global consumer drone market in 2019 and up to 50% of the North American drone market. DJI also has 60% of the global commercial drone market including a partnership with American Airlines. DJI broadcast the 2018 Golden Globes live as well as was used in the filming of Game of Thrones and Star Wars. DJI is the leading drone patent filer with pioneering innovations such as foldable and hand-guided drones and multirotor image integration. A $15 billion valuation in January 2021 put it in the top 10 unicorn companies in the world and had revenues of already $2.83 billion in 2017. China’s technological innovation, desire to revolutionise logistics due to its geography, and official support has created a perfect storm for drone development. EHang is a fully autonomous electric drone start-up that operates as a globally-pioneering taxi service flying passengers over 50 km in Dubai for example as well as making autonomous deliveries, including medical supplies, in Chinese urban areas since May 2019. CAGR spending for drones will be highest in China until 2024 at 63.5% with a $2.4 billion domestic market in 2019 projecting a world-leading $28 billion industry and a trebling of global-market share from 20% to 60%.  

The Chinese economy has contributed around 25% of all global GDP growth since 2000. Productivity will be boosted by middle-class consumption of $14.1 trillion through digital innovative transformation, R&D, sustainability, and global integration equating to around $5.6 trillion of added GDP by 2030. High-tech exports were in excess of $700 billion in 2019 at more than four times the level of the US. China is becoming the world’s biggest investor particularly from foreign exchange reserves in excess of $3 trillion. There is even a possibility of the RMB becoming the world’s reserve currency by 2035. The Yangtze River Delta, covering 28 cities an area more than double the size of South Korea and 220 million people, will invest $15.57 billion in AI, smart logistics, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and biotech. The Jing-jin-ji region covers a 110 million population with Beijing to develop $160 billion advanced manufacturing clusters as well as focus on AI, 5G, aerospace, autonomous vehicles, and quantum communication. China made the highest volume of global patent applications in 2019 breaking the US’ 40-year grip with 58,990. Chinese companies historically led the Fortune Global 500 in 2020 constituting around 25% overall and three of the top four positions. By 2025 there will be more billion-dollar revenue generating companies in China than the US. By 2050 China’s economy is projected to be 150% the size of the US’ at $105 trillion to $70 trillion by PPP and $50 trillion to $34 trillion by GDP.

China is the globe’s biggest market for electric vehicles (EVs) with 1.8 million sales in 2021 that will double to 3.6 million in 2022 even reaching five million by 2025. New energy vehicles’ share of overall passenger vehicle sales in China is expected to reach 20% by 2025 before trebling to 60% in 2030 (with electric vehicles at 40%). $14 billion has been invested in high-tech EVs with a further $33 billion committed. China is producing over 50% of global electric car batteries and China’s 345 GWh capacity in 2019 is expected to over-double to 800 GWh by 2030. The Chinese electric battery market will reach $40 billion by 2025. By July 2020 China had constructed around 1.3 million charging piles representing over 50% of global public supply. China’s AV market was a global-leading $14 billion in 2020 (with over 1 million km of testing in Beijing by 2019) and mass-adoption of AVs could realistically occur from 2027 and represent a $1.1 trillion mobility services market and $0.9 trillion in AV sales by 2040. Vehicles with autonomous features will represent 50% of new car sales in 2025 and more than 60% in 2028 reaching up to 90% in China’s first-tier cities. The AV industry has received $7 billion in investment with a further $17 billion committed in Zhejiang alone. Autonomous vehicles are expected to constitute 12% of overall vehicles and more than 40% of new automobile sales in 2040. 

China in 2019 already had the biggest global banking system at around $40 trillion and 182 trillion in national assets in May 2020. Ant Financial in 2018 had a valuation of around $150 billion. China had a leading 69% fintech rate in 2017 with Chinese fintech investments totalling $3.5 billion. Mobile payments constitute 80% domestically and were $49 trillion in 2019 as the largest digital payment system globally. Hangzhou is establishing a $1.47 billion blockchain fund and the Xiong’an New Area will also utilise the technology in the construction of its futuristic city. 550 blockchain patents were filed by China in 2017 while there were at least 774 blockchain projects enacted between March 2019 and April 2020. There were 75,000 Chinese blockchain companies by June 2021 in a domestic industry that could reach $2.5 billion by 2025. A global “internet of blockchains” through China’s Blockchain Services Network will become critical for the Digital Silk Road. The digital yuan was piloted from April 2020 with the potential to enable 300,000 transactions a second. 

By 2017 China’s GDP (based on PPP) was at $23 trillion to the US’ $19.3 trillion. Chinese GDP grew 8.2% in 2021 to be around $18 trillion, and is forecast 5.7% annually from 2022 until 2025, and then 4.5% annually until 2030. US GDP (currently around $23 trillion) is forecast to grow 1.9% to 2.2% annually from 2022 to 2024 and then 1.6% annually until 2030. Digital technologies will already contribute $12 trillion and over half of China’s GDP (55%) by 2025 raising China’s forecast by at least $1 trillion and project annual growth rates of 8% from the Dragon’s Digital Dynasty of AI, IoT, and 5G Fourth Industrial Revolution innovation. The US’ lead has never been smaller and 2025 could be reached even earlier potentially in 2024. By 2035 China’s GDP, by PPP, is expected to account for 33% of the global economy similar to 1820. The Chinese economy is projected to be $50 trillion GDP by 2050 in comparison to $34 trillion for the US. Around $85.8 billion has been invested in the high-tech, digital infrastructural transformation of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in the Pearl River Delta Zone including 5G, AI, cloud computing, big data, the IoT, robotics, and EV charging piles. China’s digital added-value was already over $5.07 trillion in 2019 that constituted over one-third of its GDP (36.2%) with its digital economy growing 15.6%. A dozen provinces and municipalities’ digital added-value exceeded $150 billion including Anhui, Fujian, Henan, Hubei, and Hunan. China’s digital economy is projected reach $12 trillion and constitute 55% of GDP by 2025 (and over half of the $23 trillion global digital economy) as it grows over 9.5% annually and drives almost 70% of economic growth. 

Over 30 million people use the Chunyu Yisheng app to communicate with medical professionals via livestreaming. Chinese AI healthcare systems by 2020 had a greater than 95% diagnosis of common diseases with RXThinking utilising over 400 million existing records for example. UB Tech’s robots offer medical advice, deliver drugs, disinfect wards, help in the delivery of food, and allow video communication for treatment. Youibot emits “concentrated UV light” to destroy viruses and bacteria. DJI’s drones are used for disinfecting public areas spanning more than 600 million km2 at speeds fifty times faster than conventional methods. Drones are also used to carry medical supplies weighing as much as 10 kg over distances of up to 18 km to Chinese hospitals. 5G provided instant remote consultation in ultra-HD imagery for over 60 hospitals in 19 provinces. Full hospital designs can occur nationally by hundreds using the IoT in 24 hours and blueprints for construction in 60 hours. Thousands of machines can be coordinated in real-time to enable a 1,000-bed hospital to be built in 10 days and an autonomous digital supermarket in 24 hours. Helmets and robots, such as developed by KC Wearable, SenseTime, and Yitu Technology for example, ascertain temperatures of 200 people in just a single minute using an “AI-fever screening system” of images through heat (attracting orders additionally from Europe, Africa, and Asia) while drones also scan public areas. In Wuhan over 107 days in early 2020 JD's level 4 AV delivery vehicles journeyed over 6,800 km delivering over 13,000 packages.

Innovation is projected to constitute 60% of GDP by 2025. China already by late 2019 had the largest number of tech unicorns in the world at 206 (and 25% of the global total in 2020 at more than $1 trillion in value). ByteDance is the world’s most valuable at $140 billion having almost doubled in value since 2019 while Didi is second at $62 billion. China had almost half of the top 20 global internet companies by 2019. WeChat, Meituan, and Didi for example have meant whole new ecosystems for app designs through a data-driven, innovation AI economy. By 2018 there were around $100 billion in Chinese tech investments worldwide. 70% of the top 10 venture capital deals of 2018 were Chinese; headlined by the historic $14 billion for Ant Financial. China was in the top three globally for investment in VR, AV, 3D printing, robotics, drones, and AI already by 2017. Technology has increased direct value-added of its exports to 50% with most manufacturers now using local Chinese knowledge to solve global consumer issues. There is the $1.8 trillion ‘Internet Plus’ initiative focusing on 5G, big data, cloud computing, and the IoT, the $15 billion China New Era Technology Fund, and $1.4 trillion will be invested in its digital technological infrastructure overall until 2025. By 2030 China is forecast to have the highest number of overall STEM graduates globally at 14.1 million. The Chinese 3D printing market reached $7.68 billion by 2020 and will over-double to $16.79 billion by 2024 to become the largest in the world with 3D printers to be established at 400,000 primary schools. 

25% of China’s primary energy by 2030 will come from renewable sources before over-doubling to 60% by 2050. Its renewable share of electricity generation will increase from 30% in 2021 to 35% in 2030 before reaching 85% in 2050 and China will be carbon-neutral by 2060 having peaked emissions in 2028. Already 45% of China’s overall installed power capacity is renewable at over 1,000 GW. Renewables will represent a majority of Chinese overall installed power capacity by 2025. China has around one-third of global renewable energy that will rise to 43% overall by 2026. China’s 1,200 GW solar and wind capacity 2030 target will be achieved by 2025 and is on pace to be scaling 2,000 GW and at a minimum 1,500 GW by 2030. Over the past decade China has invested $758 billion in renewables at more than one-third of global renewable financing. China will invest over $6 trillion in renewable energy in the next two decades. China accounts for one-third of global wind power with 281.5 GW capacity in 2020. Overall potential wind reserves are determined to be as high as 2,380 GW. The 7,000-wind turbine Gansu Wind Farm at 10 GW is the largest in the world. Solar capacity will over-double from 253.4 GW in 2020 to between 533 GW and 613 GW from potential 70-90 GW annual PV increases until 2025. China achieved an 82% PV global production share by 2020 as well as a 28% ($300 billion) global market-share in solar merchandise exports by 2019 with China the largest global market for solar equipment. China had installed over one-third of all global electricity-generating hydropower capacity by 2020 at 370 GW. 

The $300 billion ‘Made in China 2025’ initiative will engineer at least 60% Chinese domestic market ownership of high-tech robotic core components and industrial robotics, big data, smart manufacturing, electric vehicles, renewable energy equipment, high-tech medical equipment, and cloud computing while industrial software will reach 50% and smartphone chips 40%. $30 billion has been further invested in advanced manufacturing, robotics, and integrated circuits. The Chinese robotics industry is around $36.1 billion at a global-leading 35% market-share and will near-treble to $108.42 billion by 2024. $150 billion had been invested in Chinese industrial robotics by 2018. The “China Standards 2035” harmonization of advanced technological standards was released in 2021 for FIR technologies such as the IoT, cloud-computing, big data, 5G, and AI with major implications for global adoption in the BRI in the future due to lower prices and rapid commercialisation in the world’s most powerful domestic consumer market. Shenyang Siasun is China’s biggest industrial base for robotics and third most valuable robotics company globally by 2018. Harbin Boshi Automation exports to Russia, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Africa, and Europe. UBTech has established $362.4 million AI labs for 1,310 UAE students since 2016 and is also working with Russia, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan in AI education. UB Tech’s robots have also been used in hospitals, shopping centres, schools, and airports as well as also in South Korea, Belgium, Nigeria, and Japan. Chinese industrial robotics companies already had a 50% domestic market share and are supplying up to 45% of first-tier components globally. 

China had invested around $77.2 billion by 2020 in smart cities. Over 500 smart cities are being constructed in China and its overall market will almost double from $30.4 billion in 2018 to $59.9 billion by 2023. Chinese smart cities have an overall $2.2 trillion budget. The $583 billion Xiong’an New Area, the world's first AI city, will become northern China’s centre of innovation with only EVs and AVs and be 100% renewably powered. Much of its infrastructure will merge with autonomous AI and be developed by Baidu. It will be 2,000 km2 by 2035 with a population of 25 million. 1,100 km high-speed rail had been built by early 2021. In the Chongqing Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone will lie the 135,000 m2 Cloud Valley AI smart city featuring China’s biggest night-time digital display and public rooftop gardens, service robots, and a 5G-IoT powered 90% big data comprehensive analysis system to perpetually innovate and enhance its autonomous infrastructure. $800 billion has been invested in high-speed rail, AVs, EVs, renewable energy, 5G, and big data to help achieve these sustainable, smart supercities by 2030. The globally pioneering Liuzhou Forest City in Guangxi covered by almost one million plants and 40,000 trees will operate on solar and geothermal power with only electric vehicles. The Beidou global navigation satellite system is a key component of the Digital Silk Road with a Fuzhou data centre providing information communicational coverage to ASEAN and wider BRI services. Over 80% of land and 95% of water will be connected globally through the IoT by 2024 with potential free global wi-fi by 2025. A commercial solar power plant by 2050 generating 1 GW of electricity by 2030 will be deployed in space.

5G by 2025 will account for just under half of Chinese mobile connections, 807 million subscribers, and be the largest 5G market globally at 45%. $162 billion until 2025 will be invested at 19% globally and $411 billion by 2030 with over $25 billion invested in 2020. China already constitutes at least 70% of global 5G connections at 180 million network terminal-connected devices by December 2020 and will achieve full commercialisation nationally by 2023. China held 40% of the global 5G smartphone market in May 2020 while at least 60% of global 5G devices were developed by Chinese companies. China had already about 33% of global 5G ‘Standard Essential Patents Declarations’ (SEPs) in 2019 and over 20% of active SEPs in February 2021. China will over-double IoT connections to eight billion by 2025 and 5G will contribute almost $1 billion to GDP by 2030. China’s established over 1,100 “5G+Industrial Internet” related projects in 2020. 5G by January 2019 had already arrived in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with a peak download speed ten times that of 4G at 1.3 Gbps. China has constructed over one million 5G base stations at more than 70% of the global total and will ultimately invest $280 billion to construct 10 million with three million by 2023. Around 200 million 5G users now exist in China at almost 25% of mobile users. The 5G consumer market will increase from $5.53 billion in 2020 to $667.9 billion by 2025 before reaching $12.3 trillion by 2035 and will connect 100 times as many IoT devices. China is even testing 6G technology in space at speeds 100 times faster than 5G with commercialisation by 2030 and at one thousand times faster than 4G. 

Companies Mentioned

• Advanced Info Service Pcl
• Advantech
• Agricultural Bank of China
• Agricultural Development Bank of China
• AIG
• Alibaba (incl. Ant Financial)
• Amazon
• American Airlines
• Apple
• AutoModality
• Aviation Industrial Corporation of China
• Babylon Health
• BAIC
• Baidu
• Baosteel
• Barclays
• Beijing Automation Institute
• Beijing Tiertime Technology
• BeiDou
• Bilibili
• Bitmain
• Bluehole Inc
• BNP Paribas
• BNSF
• Booking.com
• British Telecom
• BYD
• Bytedance (incl. Douyin/Tiktok, Jinri Toutiao, Musical.ly)
• Cainiao
• Cambricorn Technologies
• Carrefour
• CATL
• Changan Automobile Company
• Changchong
• Cherry
• China Academy of Information and Communications Technology
• China Bengbu International Technology and Economic Corporation
• China CAMC Engineering Corporation
• China Communications Standards Association
• China Construction Bank
• China Electronics Technology Group
• China General Nuclear Power Group
• China Gezhouba
• China International Water & Electric Corporation
• China Light Power Group
• China Machinery Engineering Corporation
• China Minmetals Rare Earths Company
• China Mobile
• China National Petroleum
• China Northern Rare Earth Technology Group High-Tech Company
• China Railway Electrification Engineering Group
• China State Power Investment Corporation
• China Telecom
• China Three Gorges Corporation
• China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group
• China Tower
• China Unicom
• China UnionPay
• Cisco
• CITIC Bank
• Cloudwalk
• CNEEC
• Coca Cola
• Credit Suisse
• CRRC
• CWE
• Dahua Technology
• Daimler
• Dana
• Daraz
• Datang Mobile Communications
• DeepBlue Technology
• Deliveroo
• Deutsche Bank
• Deutsche Telekom
• Didi
• Digital China Union
• Digiwin
• DJI
• DXY
• Easypaisa
• Ebang International Holdings
• eBay
• Edge Computing Consortium
• Ehang
• Ele.me
• Elephant Robotics
• Emtek
• Envision Energy
• Ericsson
• Export Import Bank of China
• Exxon Mobile
• Facebook
• Face ++
• Farsoon
• Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium
• Ford
• GCash
• Geely
• GetLinks
• Goldman Sachs
• Goldwind
• Google
• Grab
• Gree Electronics
• Grub Hub
• Haier
• Harbin Boshi Automation
• Harrods
• Hikvision
• Hisense
• HIT Robot Group
• Hollysys
• Homekoo
• Honda
• Horizon Robotics
• Huadian
• Hualong One
• Huawei
• Huayi Brothers
• Huiying Medical
• Huobi
• Hyperledger
• IBM Watson
• iCarbonX
• iFLYTEK
• Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
• InterAgri
• iQiyi
• JA Solar
• JD.com
• Jiangxi International
• Jinchuan Group
• JinkoSolar
• JingChi
• Kakao Pay
• KangHui
• Kayak
• KC Wearable
• KDDI
• KFC
• Kingdee
• King Long
• KPN
• Kuaishou
• Kuka GA
• LAIX
• Lazada
• LeEco
• Lenovo
• Lepu
• LG
• Li Auto
• Lineage
• LinkDoc
• iDriver+ Technology
• Innisfree
• Intel
• Macy's
• Magna
• Maimai
• MakeBlock
• Marriott International
• MediaTek
• Medprin Regenerative Medical Technologies
• Megvii
• Meitu
• Meituan Dianping
• Meizu Zero
• MetLife
• MicroPort
• Microsoft
• Midea Group
• Mindray
• Momenta
• MTS
• Nantong COSCO KHI Ship Engineering
• Nari Technology
• NEC
• Nervos
• Nexar
• NIO
• Nokia
• NTT Docomo
• NXP Semiconductors
• Ofo
• Ola
• Opentable
• Oppo
• Orange
• Panda Selected
• Paytm
• Perfect Diary
• PetroChina
• Pinduoduo
• Ping An
• Plecobot
• Pony AI
• PowerChina
• Proximus
• Prudential
• QianDama
• Qihoo
• Qingdao Rcollar Group
• QR codes
• Qualcomm
• Qudian
• Rational Robotics
• Realme
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• 99 Taxi