Beijing 798 Art District. December 30, 2021
In 2021, the education and training industry is almost wiped out, the real estate industry is suddenly out of money, and airlines and tourist attractions are still groaning in this epidemic... These are all impressive, but none of them touch me the most. The thing that touched me the most in 2021 and made me remember is actually that the Internet is not fragrant.
The development of any industry will probably go through the process from incense to incense. More than a decade ago, Nicholas Carr asserted that IT is no longer important. By implication, information technology is out of the question. But the unscent of the Internet, especially the unscent of the Chinese Internet, still comes a little unexpectedly, some thunderbolts can't cover their ears, and at the same time, it seems reasonable.
Until 2021, Tencent and Alibaba, as the most dynamic representatives of the Asian economy, have been ranked in the top ten of the world's largest listed companies by market capitalization, and in 2020, Tencent ranked seventh and Ali ranked eighth.
In 2021, the S&P 500 hit a new high for 12 consecutive months, in other words, it was breaking the record every month. The stock prices of the top U.S. technology companies have almost all hit record highs, and NVIDIA has more than doubled in a year, not to mention that Apple is up 34%, Microsoft is up 53%, Alphabet (Google) is up 65%, Tesla is up 51%, and Meta (Facebook) is up 24%. On the first day of the market in 2022, Apple became the first public company in history to break the market value of $3 trillion.
Chinese Internet companies have come out of the opposite market, almost the group of Internet education is not mentioned, Tencent fell 18% in one year, Ali fell 48%, Meituan fell 23%, JD.com fell 20%, Pinduoduo fell 67%, Baidu fell 31%, Xiaomi fell 43%, Kuaishou fell 37%, Didi fell 64% in half a year.
In August 2021, TSMC surpassed Tencent in market capitalization to become the largest listed company in Asia by market capitalization (this statistics does not include Saudi Aramco, which is locally listed in Saudi Arabia). This transcendence is quite symbolic, and while highlighting the significant strategic value of high-end chip manufacturing, it also seems to implicitly tell the world that China's Internet may really be unscented.
Top 10 world market capitalizations (as of December 31, 2021)
According to the market capitalization of the last trading day of 2021, Tencent and Ali both fell out of the ranks of the world's top ten listed companies, Tencent ranked 11th, and Ali even fell to 20 outside. This is the first time that Tencent has fallen out of the top ten since the first time it was among the top ten in 2017.
The shrinkage of the market value of Chinese Internet companies is not an individual phenomenon, but a large contraction of the overall situation. The China Overseas China Internet Index (H11136), an indicator that roughly reflects the overall situation of Chinese Internet companies listed overseas, will shrink by more than half in 2021.
The market performance of large Internet companies is not very satisfactory, and the development of technology startups is not very optimistic. Some researchers have found that compared with the number of new unicorns in the United States in the same period, the number of new unicorns in China has also declined significantly in the past two years, in other words, the number of new startups that can become bigger has become relatively small. The increase in online demand brought about by the epidemic, as well as the shrinking market value of Internet giants, have not translated into development opportunities for startups.
Comparison of the number of new unicorns added in China and the United States over the years (Source: CB Insights)
There are signs that China's teenage years of internet protection, tolerance and wanton growth end forever in 2021. In the face of the reality that has been completely changed by it at an extraordinary speed, you can't help but sigh that it no longer has the courage to change everything, nor does it have the ability to change everything, and naturally, it no longer can afford to meet the expectations of investors.
2021 is such a key node, although there has not been a formal coming-of-age ceremony, but all kinds of signals are indicating that the Internet has been treated as a mature, and too energetic industry, subject to regulation. Starting in 2021, whether it realizes it or not, Chinese Internet companies must begin to learn to let go of pride, give up willfulness, and let themselves behave like a mature adult and take responsibility.
The anti-monopoly fist has never been so densely placed on the heads of Internet companies, and the number of anti-monopoly enforcement cases involving Internet platforms in 2021 is as high as 92. Alibaba was fined a record 18.228 billion yuan for abusing its dominant market position; Meituan was fined 3.442 billion yuan for "choosing one of the two" suspected monopolistic behavior; Tencent, Alibaba, Meituan, JD.com, Baidu, Didi, ByteDance, Weibo, 58 and a long list of Internet companies were lined up to claim administrative penalties for failing to declare suspected monopolistic behaviors such as concentration of business operators in accordance with the law.
Ant Group, which was originally scheduled to IPO on November 5, 2020, suddenly pressed the pause button on the eve of listing, and the highlight moment of the planned world's largest IPO became the beginning of Ant Group Maicheng. After more than a year of rectification, even if Today's Ant Group has the opportunity to restart the IPO, it is no longer possible to become the world's largest IPO.
According to rumors, ByteDance, the world's highest-valued unicorn company, voluntarily postponed its IPO plan in March 2021 in response to regulatory data security concerns. This delay cost a lot, and it is likely that it caused ByteDance to miss the opportunity to go public at its brightest moment.
Didi, on the other hand, chose to sneak in at night and quietly advance its IPO plan. However, Didi's deliberately diluted highlight moment lasted only one day before it was subjected to a cybersecurity review by regulators, and then Didi's main applications were completely removed from the shelves and have not yet been restored to the shelves. Didi's willfulness has brewed himself a bitter wine that is difficult to swallow, and he is afraid that he will have to drink it hard for a long time.
In July 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the Cyberspace Administration of China and other seven departments jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Implementing the Responsibilities of Online Catering Platforms and Effectively Safeguarding the Rights and Interests of Takeaway Delivery Workers, requiring online catering platforms to optimize algorithm rules, not to take the "strictest algorithm" as an assessment requirement, and to reasonably determine the number of orders, punctuality rates, online rates and other assessment elements through methods such as "algorithm selection", and appropriately relax the delivery time limit. On January 4, 2022, the Provisions on the Administration of Recommendation of Internet Information Service Algorithms were officially promulgated, which put forward specific requirements for various recommendation algorithms for Internet information services. All of this suggests that the regulation of the Internet is not some kind of rough movement, but refined to the fine supervision of capillaries.
At the beginning of 2022, on January 5, due to the illegal implementation of the concentration of business operators, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued 13 more fines to Tencent, Ali, Station B, etc.
The Central Economic Work Conference in December 2021 specifically emphasized that it is necessary to set up a "traffic light" for capital, strengthen the effective supervision of capital according to law, and prevent the barbaric growth of capital. Among them, the reference to "preventing the barbaric growth of capital" is obviously more severe than the previous "prevention of disorderly expansion of capital".
Super platforms now know that they can't facilitate work, life, and business at the expense of market fairness and hinder technological innovation, and they will be closely targeted.
Also in the just into 2022, Tencent's reduction in the shares of JD.com, Sea and other companies immediately triggered panic among relevant investors, and the stocks of "Tencent-related" companies such as Shell, Pinduoduo, Futu, Station B, Douyu, JD.com, Meituan, Kuaishou, Weilai, and Sea all plummeted.
This is a signal that in the future, various Internet factions connected through capital ties, such as the "Tencent system" and the "Ali system", will gradually shrink and die. Any investment and behavior that does not contribute to market competition and technological innovation, but is conducive to consolidating vested interests and preventing competitors from entering, will become a poison for platform enterprises. The money in the hands of rich companies should take the initiative to invest in the direction of national strategic goals, such as common prosperity and key core technology innovation breakthroughs.
Although a large number of Internet companies such as Tencent, Meituan, and ByteDance have successively cancelled the 996, large and small weeks and other systems, according to the "Talent Attraction Report 2021" released by the pulse, the work happiness of Internet people is lower than the overall average.
At the same time, young people's concept of job search is changing, compared with senior workers, young people prefer the "iron rice bowl" and hope to enter the system after the age of 35. According to the news released by the State Civil Service Bureau, the registration for the 2022 national civil service examination was closed, and the number of people who finally passed the qualification examination of employers reached a record 2.123 million.
Number of applicants for the National Civil Service Examination in previous years (unit: 10,000 people)
The Internet is not fragrant, this is a fact, but also an attitude, not that the Internet has become a tomorrow, but that Internet companies and Internet people must adjust their mentality as soon as possible. This industry no longer represents "advanced" and regulation is no longer "lagging behind", it is such a "normal" industry, neither humble nor privileged, like all other industries. Under the guise of "boldly trying and boldly breaking through", we can no longer break into the regulatory forbidden area and challenge the regulatory bottom line.
"If the banks don't change, we change the banks." How bright this sentence was then, how bleak it is now. But we will still remember this saying, for the convenience and benefits actually received over the years, whether the speaker and his company have become sacrifices.
"If you want to fight, you will fight." The fearlessness or arrogance represented by such arrogance will not be there again in the future, and they will all learn to be obedient.