What Makes China's Internet Growth So Fast And Volatile?

source: forbes.com by  Russell Flannery

Alibaba's billionaire chairman Jack Ma danced to a medley of Michael Jackson songs during an Alibaba annual party in September: It's still early days for China's global expansion. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

How has China’s Internet market grown so fast for so long?  What makes China’s Internet market so dynamic and volatile?  What will happen as more Chinese Internet companies go global?
Those are some of the interesting questions posed in a new data-heavy report, “Decoding the Chinese Internet,” published by the Boston Consulting Group. Most of the report uses 2016 figures.  It starts off with the basics, such as the number of Internet users in China compared with other countries, but then moves on to look at timely questions.  Here are some of the data presented:
1.    China easily has the most Internet users in the world– 710 million. That compares with 460 million in India and 290 million in the United States. Online spending is a two-country race:  China is No. 2 in online spending with $967 billion in 2016 versus  $1.1 trillion for the United States.   China’s online spending is almost three times No. 3 Germany, the leader in Europe.

2.    China’s Internet spending has been growing fast -- 32% annually for the past five years.
3.    China’s Internet growth potential is still huge: Internet penetration as of July 2016 was a mere 52% compared with 88% in the United States.
4.    China has five of the world’s 10 largest publicly traded internet companies (as of June 30): Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, JD.com, NetEase. The United States. has the other five.
5.    China as of May 31 accounted for 29% of the world’s unicorns by quantity (63) and 41% by value, compared with 50% and 46% for the United States.