China BAT is the collective term used to describe three largest software conglomerates: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. These three companies today practically run Chinese internet.
Baidu is the Chinese version Google. It is the largest search engine and is, in terms of business interests, as diverse. Alibaba is the world largest ecommerce operator that runs Taobao and Tmall, two main shopping sites in China. Tencent is the company behind WeChat, the most popular mobile based social app, as well as QQ, the messenger service.
All three China BAT giants, however, almost never get along. In fact, the war between them often comes at the expense of users’ convenience, although everyone accepts it as another fact of life in China.
For example, Baidu blocks search results from Alibaba ecommerce sites. Tencent doesn’t allow users to open Taobao and Tmall links in WeChat browser. Alibaba blocks rival payment systems on their sites and the list goes on.
Here is our latest infographic on those three companies.
China BAT: Baidu Alibaba Tencent
