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But WeChat’s present-day popularity only tells part of the story. Several factors dating back to the early 2000s caused chat, not email, to become the default language of China’s internet—and Tencent won big by foreseeing that.
China’s internet cafes
In the US and other parts of the world, as the web was just emerging into mainstream use in the late 1990s, PCs were relatively abundant. In 1999 there were 50.5 computers for every 100 people, according to the World Bank. Most first-time internet users were working adults or college students about to join the work world. Email became a primary mode of communication in the office. And as desktop PCs began to move from the office to households and schools, parents and teachers were well-placed to teach younger people how to use the internet. Step one: set up an email account.
In China, however, the situation was much different—there were only 1.2 computers per 100 people. Outside of China’s major cities, most ordinary households did not own a computer, much less one connected to the internet. In crowded dormitories, there wasn’t much space for students to cram in a desktop PC. And China’s white-collar population was far smaller proportionally than that of the US, giving office culture less sway over the broader internet culture.
Internet cafes emerged throughout the 2000s to provide PCs for people who couldn’t own one themselves—and a cheap place to have fun. Fritz Demopoulos, a Los Angeles-born entrepreneur who co-founded Chinese travel site Qunar in 2005, describes China in that decade as an “under-entertained economy.”
“There weren’t a lot of movie theaters, not many karaoke bars, not many bowling alleys,” he says. Internet cafes “were one of the few ways for Chinese people to entertain themselves.” PCs and the internet became a youth phenomenon in China—according to Pew Research, in 2007, 70% of China’s internet users were under the age of thirty.
Many internet cafe owners lured in young customers with video games. But chat was also a perfect application for China’s internet cafe dwellers. Users could waste away hours talking with friends, or make new ones online. Email wasn’t as instant—since they weren’t using their own computers, users weren’t sure when they might be able to check in and reply. SMS was expensive by comparison, especially when sending messages across different provinces.
