The four years leading up to Tencent’s Pearl Harbor moment saw many of the pieces of China’s alternate internet universe fall into place. Gladiatorial competition between China’s copycat startups had trained a generation of street-smart internet entrepreneurs. Smartphone users had more than doubled between 2009 and 2013, from 233 million to a whopping 500 million. Early-stage funds were fostering a new generation of startups building innovative mobile apps for this market.
