Over the coming years, Alibaba, Tencent, and thousands of Chinese startups would race to apply these tools to every nook and cranny of Chinese urban life, including food delivery, electricity bills, live-streaming celebrities, on-demand manicures, shared bikes, train tickets, movie tickets, and traffic tickets. China’s online and offline world would begin rubbing shoulders in a way not seen anywhere else in the world. They were refashioning China’s urban landscape and the world’s richest real-world datascape.
