China has seen an influx of highly valuable tech firms in recent years, the most prominent being Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd, with a total market valuation of almost a trillion dollars.
Yet Chinese companies with lesser known private investments have recently made a lot of positive noise, with rapid growth and international aspirations. Based on Forbes' Global 2000 List, 5 of the leading 10 companies in the world are Chinese.
Here are three of which many people may not be aware of:
ByteDance - The firm, established in 2012 and currently based in Beijing, is often referred to as the most successful startup in the world.
The software company - with a market value of $78 billion - runs one of the most-read news aggregators in China, Toutiao. But its biggest draw of late was the wildly popular TikTok short-video app (known as Douyin in China), with more than a billion active users worldwide.
TikTok was particularly popular in the U.S., with one survey finding that one out of eight Americans aged 18-24 use the app - many of whom don't know it's operated by a Chinese company.
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Didi Chuxing Technology Co. - The service is a clone of Uber, established in 2012 and based in China. In fact, after a bitter price war and the American ride-hailing giant's spending of billions of dollars in its failed attempt to win the China market, it acquired Uber's China operations in 2016.
While Didi won the war, now owning almost 80 percent of China's ride-hailing industry, and counting some of the country's largest tech firms as shareholders, its forays into non-core areas such as food delivery and bike sharing have not been so successful. Didi, valued at $65 billion, is still considered to be a money-losing operation after $1.6 billion in 2018 allegedly went down the drain.
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Cainiao Smart Logistics Network - The company was created in 2013 by Alibaba and eight other companies to modernize logistics and distribution in China and abroad.
Alibaba has gradually increased its stake in the company since its formation to a majority 51 percent in 2017. It reported last week that it was spending an extra $3.33 billion in Cainiao, which would bring a 63-percent stake to the e-commerce company.
The dream of Alibaba of Cainiao - recently estimated to be worth $28 billion by Reuters - has become highly optimistic, with the goal of shipping goods domestically within 24 hours and make efficient use of smart technology to simplify and speed up services.
Alibaba is deep in the process of creating a whole ecosystem for its business lines- with Cainiao in distribution, Alipay's partner in the processing of digital payments, and acquisitions in a slew of related businesses.
