The Internet with Chinese Characteristics The exemplar of both is China: an internet that has gone its own way. I sometimes have difficulty in persuading my American clients that the digital ecosystem in China has become more sophisticated and more far-reaching than it is in the US. The “Great Firewall” acts as a perceptual screen, and is conflated into a general miasma of China detraction. Yet the reality is that, just as Deng Xiaoping’s formula has worked for socialism, so it has worked for the internet: digitalization with Chinese characteristics. In September of 1987, just a few subway stops to the west of Ogilvy’s Beijing offices, at the Institute of High-Energy Physics, China sent its first international email. The famous subject header read: Crossing the Great Wall to Join the World “I sometimes have difficulty in persuading my American clients that the digital ecosystem in China has become more sophisticated and more far-reaching than it is in the US.” Ironically, the first 30 years of China’s internet has not been characterized by “joining the world”. Far from it. The prevalent theme has instead been one of a domestic internet that has, in many ways, developed in parallel to the world’s internet. Although the sender of that email was wrong about the first 30 years, he might be right about the next 30. Looking forward, I think we will see an outbound flow of internet innovation. Arguably, the non-Chinese internet will begin to look more and more like its Chinese counterpart. And as this happens – and it has already started – marketers will be looking to China to understand how to address challenges and opportunities faced years ago by their more experienced Chinese counterparts. Every commentator has their own way of describing the scale of China’s internet – a population of 688 million, at the end of 20153. To drive home the enormity of this number, some will tell you that that’s twice as many Chinese internet users as there are Americans. Others might note that there are more Chinese internet users than there are people in Germany, Iran, Turkey, France, Thailand, the UK, Italy, Colombia, Spain and Canada combined. Wittier China watchers might tell you there are more Chinese internet users than there are teenagers in the world, or than there