Young Chinese business leader charts his success

Tian Ning, founder of Zhejiang Panshi Information & Technology and young leader of World Economic Forum says China is taking lead in the ongoing global industrial revolution. [Photo by Fu Jing/chinadaily.com.cn]

When Tian Ning was still a student, he started his own business and last November his company, Zhejiang Panshi Information & Technology, was listed on China's stock market, despite upheavals.

The present market value of his company stands at one billion dollars, says Tian, now 39, as he spoke to China Daily in Davos, Switzerland when he attended the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum recently.

"The similar expansion stories in China's Internet industry are many and so I am quite confident that China can take the lead in the ongoing industrial revolution, of which information technology is in the central," says Tian, a young business leader of WEF.

Tian's company formed Chinese-language website alliances of throughout over 100 industrial sectors in China and specializes in offering advertisement platforms for its customers, especially those small and medium-sized companies.

Both revenues and profits have increased rapidly last year, according to Tian, although he wouldn't reveal detailed figures.

"So we want to expand overseas quickly to meet the market demands," says Tian.

Tian says his company plans to set up more than 30 overseas offices in the world, especially in Europe, the US and Southeast Asia. As of now, it has 16 overseas offices.

"We want to enter into partnership with mobile services providers in the world and we want to bring China's advertisement customers to them," says Tian.

In Europe, he plans to open offices in London, Brussels and other cities in Europe, in addition to existing operations in France and Spain.

Tian says Chinese investors have already got their eyes on overseas markets and his company has already taken noticed of this trend. "Our professional advertisement services will go hand in hand and especially we focus on mobile phone users," he says.

By using his company's example, Tian says China will be become even competitive in the latest industrial revolution.

He first believes that the huge number of China's Internet users, roughly equal to the combined population of the US and the EU, is the advantageous factor which allows China to take the lead in the so-called the fourth industrial revolution.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology revealed recently that China has more than 1.3 billion mobile phone users, which means that nearly every Chinese has one mobile. And 29.6 percent of them are 4G users.

The ministry also says newly subscribed 4G users increased by 289 million in 2015, nearly tripling that of 2014, which brought the total number to 386 million by the end of last year.

"We must pay special attention to these trends and figures, which will continuously transform our business and industrial landscape in the future," says Tian.

Tian says that Klaus Schwab, chairman of World Economic Forum, set a timely agenda to debate on how to master the fourth industrial revolution in Davos, Switzerland last week

Tian says China has a lot of advantages, which will allow Internet and information technology to reshape every sector of economic and social development.

"As an industrial insider who is from China's economic powerhouse, I am quite confident that such a revolution is already happening in China and China will take lead in the race," says Tian.

Tian says currently Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are leading companies in driving economic and social changes of China right now. They are so influential that even British Prime Minister David Cameron appointed Alibaba's chairman Jack Ma as business advisor last October.

Years ago, Jack Ma was also a young leader of WEF.

"Apart from such big names, Internet-based companies have been set up in their thousands every year while China's Internet and mobile phone users have been on steady rise," says Tian. "Compared with other sectors, most of them are profit-making,"

Tian also says that furthermore, the Internet and automation-based technologies have already started to change the country's manufacturing sectors and he says China has become competitive in new energy, high-speed trains and in nuclear power.

"What we have achieved in manufacturing in the past decades have never happened in any other country, the market potentials resulting from such big internet and mobile users are so huge and the sense of innovations are also improving rapidly," says Tian.

He says for China had missed the first two industrial revolutions and was just a follower of the Internet economy in the turn of 20th century.

"We have no reason to be left behind in the fourth industrial race and for sure, China can take lead," Tian says.

To contact the reporter: fujing@chinadaily.com.cn