China’s Social Media Apps

China has super apps, so it’s hard to compare US apps to Chinese ones. For example, you can run your entire life with just one app: WeChat, which is a combo of Facebook + PayPal + Venmo + Uber app + Skype + Apple Pay + Yelp + DoorDash + much more. (See video at the bottom for 22 things that WeChat can do). That said, here are some of the Chinese equivalents to American social media and other internet companies:

Google => Baidu and Sogou Mobile
Apple Pay => Alipay, WeChat Pay
Facebook, Venmo, Paypal => WeChat (owned by TenCent) and Pengyou
Amazon => Alibaba, PinDuoDuo and JD.com
Uber => Didi Chuxing
Ebay => Taobao
Twitter => Weibo
YouTube => Youku Toudu and Tencent Video
Yelp + Foursquare + Groupon + DoorDash => Dianping, Meituan
Spotify + Soundcloud => Douban
Pinterest + Etsy +Ebay => Meilishuo
Instagram => Nice, Meitu
Video App => Douyin
News Feed Apps => ByteDance (parent of Tik Tok), Toutiao
Food delivery => Ele.me
O2O (Online to offline) => Meituan-Dianping (sells movie tickets, delivers food, booking hotels etc.)

Now, 9 out of the Top 20 most valuable Internet companies are Chinese:

Unicorns and Venture Capital

Chinese VC funding has exceeded that of the US for the first time! and about 40% of the funding comes from outside China. US venture capitalists are pouring in $20 billion in 2018.

Unicorns are privately owned (pre-IPO) startups that are worth $1 billion or more. China now not only has plenty of unicorns, but also they are bigger in valuation. The most valued startup in the world in Oct 2018 is ByteDance, which is now worth $75 billion. Chinese startups are also turning into unicorns much faster.