China is often viewed as a secluded place, favoring local trade over Western involvement.  Not that Western brands aren’t accepted in China, but in many cases the Chinese people prefer known and familiar brands. It’s a cultural divide that can be difficult to comprehend in a world that’s seemingly shrinking due to established globalization trends.

The same can be said about China’s Internet-based ecosystem.  Though most of the world has no problem with interconnection and making services available from one place to another, China tends to keep foreign online services off its network.  But as China eases its restrictions on the web, and globalization continues to impact international commerce largely due to the web, now is the perfect time to recap on the current digital landscape in China.

Below is a visual graphic recently featured on Visual.ly that breaks down China’s web story.  Read on for a synopsis of the video:

.

The Great Firewall of China

.

The Great Firewall of China, or the Golden Shield Project, was established to keep an eye on Internet activity in the communist nation, as well as to censor content deemed subversive, containing pornography, anything about the Dalai Lama, related to the Taiwanese government and several other subjects.  It serves to protect Chinese leaders, but it poses a huge obstacle for foreigners who live or visit the country, as they cannot access some Western sites and services.

To address this issue, China has created domestic websites and services.

In the video The Digital Landscape in China, created by China Digital, compares China’s Internet to a giant greenhouse, “a large closed off ecosystem that is heavily regulated – allowing some things to grow in it, but blocking out others.”

China’s Internet population will soon exceed 600 million, making it the single, largest Internet population online.  It dwarfs other markets like the US, which only has a population of 255 million.  Surprisingly, despite the massive web-connected population, China only has a 44 percent internet penetration, which means there is so much room to grow.

China’s local versions of your favorite websites

.

Despite the heavy regulation in China, its ecosystem is much like what you may find from other countries, comprising gaming apps, instant messaging, blogging, videos, search, and more.  The only difference is that instead of using foreign services like Google, YouTube, Amazon, PayPal, China has local counterparts.

For search, China has Baidu, which accounts for an estimated 8 out of 10 searchers done in the country.  China also has its own social networks such as RenRen, for Facebook, and Sina Weibo, for Twitter.  Sina Weibo is bigger than Twitter accounting for 503 million registered accounts and 54 million daily active users.  For video consumption, they use YouKu, which is estimated to have 26 million viewers daily.

For online shopping, China has its own version of Amazon, eBay and PayPal.  The Chinese use Alibaba’s Taobao for online auctions, and Tmall for business-to-consumer transactions.  The two platforms are so dominant in China that in a single day last November, it was able to generate $3 billion from products sold.  And for online payments, they use Alibaba’s Alipay.

Though the services mentioned above are proof that China’s internet ecosystem is already big, its biggest success story comes from Tencent, a massive online entity that hosts various web services such as gaming and instant messaging.  Tencent is the third largest Internet business with a revenue of $101 billion, behind Google and Amazon with $290 billion and $150 billion respectively.

“The Chinese Internet ecosystem is vast, vibrant and growing at an incredible rate,” the video concluded.

Lifting the curtain

.

China’s closed-door policy is slowly opening its doors.  It recently lifted a ban on some sites like Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times, within the Shanghai Free-trade Zone to entice more foreign investors.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for mainland China.

China is not only strict on foreign websites, as it recently threatened to put anyone in jail who was found spreading online rumors in its domestic services.

Source: China Digital

photo credit: ssoosay via photopin cc

photo credit: SimonQ錫濛譙 via photopin cc