Update #87 - Everything is Bigger in China, Western Investment, and Global Internet

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We update you on the most essential news from Asia in tech, media, and business—the things you need to know that you probably haven’t heard in Western media.

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I’ve recently joined the OnDeck Writer Fellowship. I’ve met some great people and received some amazing advice regarding the frequency of posting newsletters.

As per some feedback, I’m going to experiment with sending a news update on a weekly basis, rather than daily. It has taken A LOT of work to write 86 weekday updates over the last few months, and I think a weekly update should provide the same level of value.

Of course, I will still be having interviews and longer-form analysis on topics in Asian tech, media, and business.

Always feel free to reach out and give me any feedback!

Everything is Bigger in China

A few months ago, I read an article in the Financial Times called The Asian century is set to begin. It sounds pretty obvious, but the FT put together the most cohesive, data-driven argument I had ever seen on the rise of China.

Last week, billionaire hedge fund investor and macro-thought leader Ray Dalio wrote an article in the FT called “Don’t be blind to China’s rise in a changing world.” It’s another amazing article that succinctly summarizes why you should care about China.

In the US, there’s a saying that “everything is bigger in Texas.” My takeaway about the modern world today is that “everything is bigger in China.’

In 2020 so far, 23 Chinese companies have gone public on American stock exchanges, 180 companies have gone public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, 115 in Shenzhen and 99 in Hong Kong.

Ant Group, a financial services company spun out of Alibaba, is in the process of going public on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Exchange. This will be the biggest IPO of all time, with the company aiming to raise $34.5 Billion on a $313 Billion valuation.

The last biggest IPO in the world was Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, which raised $29 Billion last year.

Many investors are betting on Ant Group as a bellwether for the Chinese economy, as Ant Group is essentially the biggest fintech company in China, a country of 1.4 Billion people who likely all need financial services.

At the same time, Bytedance is making plans to take their short video app Douyin public, either in Hong Kong or Shanghai. Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok, so does this mean a TikTok IPO comes next? Probably.

I don’t think it’s hard to see that TikTok is following the path of Douyin, which is probably 18 months ahead of TikTok in terms of product development. As an example, TikTok just announced a partnership with Shopify to have a more integrated social commerce experience on the app.

Douyin has had much deeper social commerce features for a while. As described in an