Shenzhen, photographed in November 2010. The city is now home to more than 11 million people. In 1985, its population was just 117,000 Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

A few months ago, I stumbled across a line in a business title that stopped me in my tracks: at that point, 15 Chinese startups had reached unicorn status that year alone; effectively, 30 per cent of the world’s billion-dollar companies were created in China in 2017.

The relentless nature of a news cycle dominated by the commotion of Trump and Brexit has served to mask the potent undertow of what is likely to prove the most significant shift of this century – namely, the transfer of global power from the west to China. As political turmoil transpires elsewhere, China is re-shaping the world around trade, economics and technology, placing itself firmly at the centre.


The difference between China and other leading nation states is that it doesn’t seek to export its politics and ideology. Rather, it is seeking to build, to innovate, to prevail. We are witnessing the ascendance of a superpower through prodigious mercantile and technological influence.

While US infrastructure continues to age, and initiatives in Europe such as HS2 become mired in complex procedures and delays – a consequence of democracy’s messy complexity – China’s one-party system means that it can plan projects on a scale barely imaginable in the west and can plan generations ahead – its $124 billion “belt and road” project is planned to extend from its eastern border to the English Channel. Yet this is the same authoritarian regime that maintains the country in isolation behind a firewall.

Didi Chuxing took on Uber and won. Now it's taking on the world Long Reads Didi Chuxing took on Uber and won. Now it's taking on the world

China’s long-term strategy means that it could lead the world in technologies such as machine learning (in July, its government published a roadmap for AI with ambitious targets up to 2030), the blockchain (which plays to China’s significant geopolitical advantages), and energy, in which the Chinese are assuming leadership in the deployment of electric vehicles and the manufacture of solar panels.

Our cover story this month focuses on Didi Chuxing, a ride sharing service that – for what these things are worth in 2018 – is now the most valuable startup on Earth. There’s a chance you might not have heard of it, but Didi forced Uber to retreat from the Chinese market. In December last year, it announced that it had just secured another $4 billion in investment, which will be ploughed into AI, electric vehicles and international expansion. Didi is likely to be just one of the many powerful Chinese startups looking beyond its own borders. In a special on Chinese tech ascendency, we look at what’s next for Didi, how China became the people’s republic of tech and identify the startups to watch.