The "age of navigation" of china's Internet is obviously an era of big waves and sand.
Wen 丨 Hua Shang Tao Slight Fat Sea
It is hard to believe that the old beauty will love the "xiu xian" and fall in love with the "domineering president"; the local tycoons in the Middle East will gradually become "old iron". And these are the results of the "cultural output" of Chinese Internet companies.
【From Difficult Barriers to the New Age of Navigation】
Widely circulated, the American Kazad chased the Chinese fantasy novel "Panlong" on the "WuxiaWorld" in 2014, and thus quit his addiction.
This made domestic capital notice the possibility of online articles going to sea for the first time. In 2017, the starting point was launched on the overseas version, opening the first year of China's online text. By the end of 2021, the market size of China's online text going overseas is expected to exceed 3 billion yuan, and overseas users are expected to exceed 145 million.
In the Middle East, local tycoons have also risen to the northeast of China. This stems from a stranger social app called MICO, which includes random matchmaking, multiplayer chat, family dating, game rooms, and more, while encouraging users to make friends and interact through live streaming. Every late night, there will be a group of Middle Eastern tycoons in the MICO live broadcast room to spend money, some Middle Eastern tycoons spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for the anchor to brush gifts.
Foreigners' love for China's Internet products can also be reflected in the data. TikTok has exceeded 2 billion downloads; Big Live and MICO have also long dominated the total revenue list or social app best-seller list of many countries and regions; Shopee and Shein have risen to the first and second places respectively.
Countless cases and data prove that China's Internet has ushered in a new era of navigation. Behind the hilarity is the history of China's Internet for more than ten years. From the earliest tools applied to the Chinese Internet represented by ByteDance, Chizicheng, Huanju Group and other enterprises, Chinese enterprises have made great achievements in games, online text, cross-border e-commerce, as well as pan-entertainment such as short videos and social networking.
The earliest Chinese Internet can be traced back to 2006, when Baidu entered the Japanese search engine market, but eventually due to cultural barriers and other factors.
In 2013, Ma Huateng believed that the mobile era gave Chinese Internet companies a new opportunity for internationalization, because the international Internet giants in the PC/Web era have not yet made global products suitable for the mobile era.
At that time, China's mobile Internet was booming, the market was vast, including Google, Nokia, Samsung and other giants to seize the Chinese market, and Chinese companies no longer stuck to the city, the development of overseas.
In 2012, tool applications represented by Cheetah and 360 began large-scale overseas exploration; in 2015, mobile games went to sea on a large scale; in 2016, cross-border e-commerce ushered in a wave, and domestic e-commerce accelerated going out.
Time to 2021, China's Internet out to sea once again ushered in a climax. However, in the new era of navigation, whether it is the driving force or the destination, there are more or less "crises".
"Crises" are embodied in various fields.
In 2020, the size of the mainland mobile game market was 278.687 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 20.7%, and the growth rate in the first half of 2021 fell to 9.65%; the mobile social platform market size is expected to be 143.8 billion yuan in 2021, with a year-on-year growth rate of 23.8% from 29.7% in 2020.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the growth rate of online retail sales in the mainland last year decreased from 26.2% in 2016 to 10.9%; the growth rate of the short video market size showed a downward trend from 2019, and its growth rate fell from 70% in 2020 to 38.1%.
It can be seen that under the background of stock competition, the growth rate of domestic Internet fields is gradually declining, and "going out" has become an inevitable choice for Internet companies.
In the fleet that sails out to sea, the figure of the giant is always attracting attention.
In December 2021, Alibaba established the "Overseas Digital Business" segment, headed by Group President Jiang Fan, in charge of Alibaba AliExpress and International Trading and lazada's subsidiaries facing overseas markets. According to Alibaba's latest financial report, in the first three quarters of 2021, cross-border and global retail business revenue accounted for 5% of total revenue. Specific to Lazada, as of September 2021, Lazada's GMV was $21 billion, ranking third in the GMV of emerging market e-commerce platforms.
A few days later, Tencent also officially released a new overseas game brand Level Infinite, and set up its offices and work locations in Amsterdam and Singapore, the Netherlands. After more than a decade of layout, Tencent's overseas game business has been rising steadily, and Q3 2021 has accounted for a quarter of the current season's game revenue.
China's Internet has been at sea for more than ten years, and the circumstances are different, but the same background is that the national economy has continued to grow steadily, and foreign trade and foreign exchange reserves have made great progress, which is a strong backing provided by the country's strong strength to Internet entrepreneurs.
The domestic Internet booming, From China to China, China's Internet from imitators to imitators, the diversification of models and categories, is the basis for China's Internet to go to sea.
【从Copy to China到Copy from China】
Some media have reported that in 2015, Peter Thiel, the godfather of Silicon Valley venture capital, participated in dozens of events in China for two weeks and came to a conclusion: The market in every field in China is fiercely competitive, and it is possible to copy things from other countries to China, but at the same time, more than 100 people are doing the same thing.
How fierce is the Internet competition in China? We can probably find the answer from cases such as Didi Kuaidi and Meituan Hungry. The fierce fighting made Peter Till a little scared.
The article concludes that, to a certain extent, it is precisely because of this fierce competition that Chinese Internet business entrepreneurs have completed the transformation from imitators to innovators.
In fact, from the earliest QQ, to the later Weibo, Meituan, Didi and other enterprises, almost all can find shadows on foreign brands. At that time, most entrepreneurs preferred to advertise themselves as "China's xx".
However, unlike foreign Internet companies, Chinese Internet entrepreneurs are facing the world's largest consumer market, and the huge population base and the number of netizens provide a broad test field for the development of Chinese science and technology enterprises. At the same time, it has a relatively clear layering effect, whether it is boundary or sinking, it has a very imaginative development space.
On the other hand, after 2012, the mobile Internet broke out in full swing, and China's Internet is no longer a backward follower, standing on the same starting line with foreign companies. As a result, there are fewer and fewer objects to learn from and imitate, which has completely stimulated the innovative thinking of Chinese Internet entrepreneurs, and the Chinese Internet has also changed from imitators to imitators.
So we can see that Facebook imitates Mushroom Street and launches a real-time video function similar to TV shopping; an independent short video product called Lasso is set up in several major app markets to benchmark Douyin; and many countries have appeared to imitate the "Meitu" app.
The New York Times also wrote that "the era of China plagiarizing the United States is over, and in the mobile field, the United States has begun to copy China." ”
But what can be copied is the pattern, and what cannot be copied is the cultural attribute. Among China's Internet going overseas, the internet text going to sea is a special group, which not only creates emerging markets that did not exist overseas before, but also subtly exports Chinese culture and IP symbols.
According to the Report on the Development of International Communication of Chinese Online Literature, in 2020, the overseas market size of China's online novels reached 1.13 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 145%. It is estimated that by the end of 2021, the overseas market size of China Nettext will double and is expected to exceed 3 billion yuan, and the scale of overseas users of China Nettext may also reach 145 million people.
Not only the spread of the online text itself, but also the online text going to sea continues to create value. For example, comics and TV series adapted from "The Legend of the Demon God" and "Yan Yuntai" have been broadcast overseas and have been well received, creating commercial value and spreading Chinese culture.
Giants have also taken note of this market, with Byte and Xiaomi launching fizzo and wonderfic respectively, and Amazon launching a novel creative platform kindle vella in an attempt to block the attack of Chinese nettext.
From the early Copy to China to today's Copy from China, it confirms that China's Internet has been at the forefront of development. Going out and entering developed areas such as Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States confirms the self-confidence of Chinese culture and the extraordinary creativity of China's Internet industry.
【From Asia to the World】
If you take out a world map, take China as the origin, and connect the direction of China's Internet to the sea, you can see that China's Internet is bursting out in an umbrella shape, covering most of the global territory such as North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.
However, the mainland still has the difference between the north and the south, the distance between the east and the west, looking at the world, different economies also have their own styles, and the level of development is also fast and slow, so China's Internet goes to sea, and different business areas friction in different regions has produced different sparks.
Taking cross-border e-commerce as an example, from the geographical point of view, cross-border e-commerce in mainland China is mainly concentrated in Southeast Asia. This is not unrelated to the market space in Southeast Asia, and relevant data show that the current e-commerce penetration rate in the Southeast Asian market is only 11%, and the growth space is huge. It is expected that by 2025, its Internet economy will double in size than it is now.
Counting the popular Southeast Asian e-commerce platforms, most of them are related to Chinese capital. Tencent, Alibaba and JD.com have entered Southeast Asian e-commerce through Shopee, Lazada and JD Central respectively.
Language adaptation, cross-currency payment, warehousing and logistics and policy issues in different countries, the landing of cross-border e-commerce is not easy. After all, Southeast Asia covers 11 countries, more than 90 ethnic groups, and has nearly 200 languages.
It is worth noting that there are also brands that have successfully entered mature e-commerce markets such as Europe and the United States. For example, Shein has quickly become popular in the European and American markets with low prices and new fast, and even becomes the most installed shopping app in the United States in 2021.
Unlike cross-border e-commerce, social apps are blossoming in the Middle East. According to data from a number of institutions, IMIO and YoHo under Naked City have become social platforms in the Middle East for a long time.
In addition to the middle Eastern tycoons can spend money, but also inseparable from the perfect infrastructure and special cultural background.
It is understood that the network coverage rate of the Middle East countries has already exceeded the world average of 54.5%, reaching 64.5%, and in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, this data is as high as 95%.
Under the strict constraints of religion, more and more repressed young people have a strong demand for entertainment, and at this time, the Chinese Internet has brought an ideal place to spend time.
China's Internet going to sea has long been not satisfied with being limited to the Asian region, but is more eager to enter developed countries such as Europe and the United States to create greater value.
Taking the game industry as an example, in 2021, Mihayou's adventure game "Original God" became the first Chinese mobile game product to earn more than 100 million yuan in a single season in the United States. A number of Chinese mobile games continue to rank at the top of the free game revenue list in the United States, Japan and other countries.
What is enjoyable is that the Peking Opera style interlude singing segment in "Original God" once triggered a crazy pursuit by overseas players, watching more than 3 million. "Original God" was also successfully included in the list of key enterprises and key projects of national cultural export in 2021-2022, becoming a successful case of "cultural export".
What can be seen is that China's Internet has been out of the sea for more than ten years, and its territory is constantly expanding.
【Moving forward in the wind and waves】
However, it is undeniable that while facing a larger market, Chinese Internet players have also been experiencing strong winds and waves.
For more than ten years, Facebook and Google have suspended or removed Chinese apps or even completely banned, including TouchPal, Bear Bowang, Cheetah and other products have been suppressed to varying degrees.
In addition to the crackdown on overseas platform giants, there is also pressure from overseas governments. In 2018, Taobao was again included in the list of "notorious markets" in the United States after two years; and in 2019, Pinduoduo was also included in the list.
Time into 2020, the United States, India and other countries began to take intensive crackdown on Chinese Internet products. The Trump administration signed a ban on apps like Tiktok and WeChat, and although it was lifted after Biden took office, Chinese internet products still face stricter scrutiny. Chinese Internet products have also been banned on a large scale in India.
In the Middle East, overseas enterprises are also facing challenges at the policy level. In 2021, Egypt requires social products to be licensed for operation, which has aroused widespread concern, and it is understood that At present, Naked City has obtained the No. 001 social license issued by the Egyptian government. There are rumors that subsequent unlicensed social platforms may face the risk of being banned.
In 2021, China's Internet has made remarkable achievements in going to sea, but we still can't forget that going to sea is not a simple thing, but a set of systematic engineering, a protracted away battle, cross-regional policy, culture, economic level, religion and other differences, doomed to China's Internet going to sea can not be a simple copy and paste.
Chinese Internet companies have also learned from the experience of riding the wind and waves, and it can be seen that a major trend of China's Internet going to sea is to shift from tools to all categories of sea, breaking the situation of being subject to the platform.
Facebook's suspension of the China toolbar App, Cheetah Mobile's all apps were completely banned by Google and other incidents seem to have occurred yesterday, and Amazon banned more than 50,000 Chinese sellers to give the overseas players a blow.
Everyone realizes that China's Internet needs its own platform to go to sea.
After Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com and other cross-border e-commerce layouts, ByteDance has also launched a cross-border e-commerce App - Fanno, providing new choices for cross-border e-commerce brands. The establishment of the "overseas digital business plate" by e-commerce giant Ali also gives people endless reverie.
Another trend is the emphasis on "localization" in various segments, and in the past year, almost all Internet companies have been discussing localization.
In fact, looking back at the cases of foreign Internet products entering China, we can well understand the importance of localization. For example, MSN, Yahoo, Google, etc., are undoubtedly undefeated in China. One of the most important reasons is that there is no habit of adapting to Chinese users.
Counting the companies with the highest current overseas achievements, they have made sufficient efforts in localization. There has always been a slogan within the Huanju Group – globalization is localization. Bigo Live, a subsidiary of Huanjue, has established more than 30 local operations centers around the world and requires the relevant teams to work full-time on-site. At the same time, it deeply integrates into the culture of different regions and sets up special teams to conduct special research on political, linguistic, religious and other issues in different regions.
The overseas team of ICO's parent company, Naked City, also pursues the ultimate "localization", requiring the local customer service team to answer within 10 seconds and solve the core problems of users in 10 sentences.
"Old players" like Huanju Group and Chizicheng have long been rooted overseas, and they are witnesses and beneficiaries of the thriving growth of China's Internet. Like them, more and more companies are heading overseas to try to break through the walls of foreign companies, but it is not easy.
Cheetah CEO Fu Sheng once said that if you want to break through the defense lines of Facebook and Google and establish an ecology, you need large traffic, a good platform brand and a very strong algorithm, which is a very arduous process.
Today, the above defense line has been loosened under the impact of China's Internet. Along the way, Baidu, Cheetah and other players have been blocked or even fallen, and finally only become a stroke in the history of the Internet, and today's victory can be said to be based on countless failures and suppressions. It is foreseeable that there will still be enterprises that will go forward to pave the way for China's Internet to go to sea.
Imitating, catching up, surpassing, and becoming more and more courageous in the suppression, China's Internet has used more than ten years to move towards a new era of navigation. This is a new era of big waves and sand, and it is also a new era of resistance.
【References】
[1] "Media Internet Industry 2022 Annual Strategy" Galaxy Securities
[2] "Unbroken, Not Standing, The Internet Goes to Sea 2021" Xiaguang Society
[3] "Internet Adventures" is a bit of finance
[4] "Social Entertainment Goes to sea in a thousand countries and a thousand faces": byte, happy gathering, and the localization breakthrough road of the naked city" to understand the new economy
[5] Review of the History of Mobile Internet Going Global What are the new trends in going to sea? People's Daily News
[6] From hugging the thigh to being a big brother, the Chinese Internet has changed its way of playing abroad? The Paper
[7] "China's NetWen Has Gained and Lost in 20 Years of Going to Sea", Lookout Newsweek
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