Chinese Internet Giants Disrupt Traditional Markets.

Three large Chinese Internet firms known as BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) have now become the largest private sector companies in China by market capitalisation and revenues. These technolology conglomerates have become known in Asia as the new “tech kereitsus” because of their ability to disrupt a range of industries and markets including media, transport, retail and financial services. By adopting a marketplace model, which allows merchants to interact with customers and avoids any physical shipment of goods, these `pure Internet` firms are changing the economics of many traditional state-owned business sectors. This is a trend that has been triggered by the rapid diffusion of smartphone ownership, with 500 million Chinese citizens using mobile devices to transact business over the Internet.