China’s internet ecosystem had become: a coliseum where hundreds of copycat gladiators fought to the death. Amid the chaos and bloodshed, the foreign first-movers often proved irrelevant. It was the domestic combatants who pushed each other to be faster, nimbler, leaner, and meaner. They aggressively copied each other’s product innovations, cut prices to the bone, launched smear campaigns, forcibly deinstalled competing software, and even reported rival CEOs to the police. For these gladiators, no dirty trick or underhanded maneuver was out of bounds.
