Meituan-Dianping and Pinduoduo embody the excitement over digital China

News Snapshot:

The Economist: Business 9 Jul 2020 C HINA’S BUSTLING digital economy has spawned thousands of startups. Yet in the eyes of many it remains “BAT or bust”, to cite a saying among jobseekers from the country’s elite universities. The BAT in question refers to the original trio of Chinese internet stars: Baidu, a search engine; Alibaba, an online emporium; and Tencent, a mobile-payments and video-game titan. The acronym is overdue an update. Alibaba and Tencent continue to lord it over digital China. With market capitalisations of nearly $700bn apiece, they are the world’s seventh- and eighth-biggest listed companies, respectively. Having...