At the forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

High-tech and innovations may not come up as the most intuitive or relevant topics to China, since China has been branded a "copycat" for decades. Some Western media outlets and pundits paint a picture that China's industrial regulations represent forced technology transfer, confer unfair advantages on domestic companies, penalize foreign participants and cheat on the country's commitments to the World Trade Organization.

But China has gradually moved away from its "copycat" image, especially in the past 10 years, and emerged as a global innovation hub. Grassroots innovations have proliferated. In 2017, the growth in the internet and technology sector - from ride-hailing to e-commerce, and robotics to artificial intelligence - was 18 percent, substantially outpacing the overall economy which grew 6.9 percent, according to Xinhua.

In the same year, a report by Deloitte and China Venture said China accounts for more than a third of the total number of "unicorns" globally, becoming the world's second-largest birthplace of companies valuing more than $1 billion. Internet giants such as Alibaba and Tencent, benefiting from the scale and speed of China's market as well as the prevalence of technology, are rapidly scaling up and have already created extensive sophisticated and lucrative business ecosystems. Today, Alibaba and Tencent are two of the world's 10 most valuable companies, according to Kantar and WPP's 2018 BrandZ? Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands.