BEIJING - China has firmly established itself as a global leader in consumer-oriented digital technologies. It is the world’s largest e-commerce market, accounting for more than 40 percent of global transactions, and ranks among the top three countries for venture capital investment in autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, robotics, drones, and artificial intelligence (AI). One in three of the world’s unicorns (start-ups valued at more than US$1 billion) is Chinese, and the country’s cloud providers hold the world record for computing efficiency. While China runs a trade deficit in services overall, it has lately been running a trade surplus in digital services of up to US$15 billion per year.

Powering China’s impressive progress in the digital economy are Internet giants like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, which are commercializing their services on a massive scale, and bringing new business models to the world. Together, these three companies have 500-900 million active monthly users in their respective sectors. Their rise has been facilitated by light – or, perhaps more accurate, late – regulation. For example, regulators put a cap on the value of online money transfers a full 11 years after Alipay introduced the service.

Now, these Internet firms are using their positions to invest in China’s digital ecosystem, and in the emerging cadre of tenacious entrepreneurs that increasingly define it. Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent together fund 30 percent of China’s top start-ups, such as Didi Chuxing (US$50 billion), Meituan-Dianping (US$30 billion), and JD.com (US$56 billion).

With the world’s largest domestic market and plentiful venture capital, China’s old copy-cat entrepreneurs have transformed themselves into innovation powerhouses. They fought like gladiators in the world’s most competitive market, learned to develop sophisticated business models, such as Taobao’s freemium model, and built impregnable moats to protect their bus