In front of a packed audience at the Stanford Center at Peking University, Victor Koo, Chairman and CEO of Youku Tudou Inc., described the convergence of China and Silicon Valley in terms of innovation. "Success in China is a matter of localization," Koo commented in his keynote address at the 2014 China 2.0 Forum, because many industries remain fragmented at the local level. This fragmentation has necessitated the transformation of China's internet ecosystem into a hotbed of innovation, going a long way to catch up with Silicon Valley.

The convergence described by Koo also means that China's internet space and its players are increasingly globalized. WeChat, for instance, recently made headlines for its new partnership with LinkedIn in China. Hugo Barra, Vice President of Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone maker, shared the company's international expansion strategy. With its international headquarters in Singapore, Xiaomi is expanding into Singapore and plans for many more countries by the end of the year, the compant aspires to become a truly global company. Vaughan Smith, Vice President of Special Projects at Facebook, shared with the Forum audience how Facebook represents an opportunity for thousands of developers in China to reach a worldwide audience, citing the success of the game Family Farm, which was developed by Beijing-headquartered FunPlus and "has the highest retention rate" of any game on Facebook worldwide.

Shift to mobile

Arguably one of the most disruptive forces in the internet industry today, Koo explained how the shift to mobile is even more drastic in China, where hundreds of millions of people in rural areas and small cities have little access to personal computers and rely on smartphones to access the internet. In addition, the widespread use of public transportation in China, in contrast with America's car-centric culture, means that Chinese commuters spend much more time on their mobile phones.

Koo noted that various internet companies have struggled to adapt to mobile, while others such as Tencent's WeChat, have prospered. Valued at $30 billion, China's popular social media and messaging app counts around 300 million users and an expected revenue of $1.1 billion in 2014.

Yongfu Yu, CEO of UCWeb Inc., discussed how disruptive the shift to mobile could be in the near future, predicting that the surge in apps that has followed the shift to mobile will lead to the emergence of an "app browser," enabling the integration of all apps on a unified platform. In such a scenario, this 'mega app' would challenge traditional web browsers such as Firefox or Google Chrome.

The multi-screen internet

The ubiquity of mobile phones does not put an expiration date on the use of computers and TVs, according to Koo. Instead, it has led to the emergence of the multi-screen internet. This phenomenon is particularly visible in China, where users continuously switch from their mobile phones to computers and TVs, and vice versa. Think about this: these users watch a show on their smartphones or tablets in the subway as they commute to work, then resume the same show once at home on their TVs or computers. According to Koo, the multi-screen internet unequivocally represents one of the major changes that content strategists and marketers have to deal with.

The integration of offline and online

O2O (Online-to-Offline) is another key trend that is dramatically reshaping many industries and the internet industry worldwide, Koo said. For example, Captain America 2's promotion in China took place offline and online with a premiere in Beijing and content broadcast simultaneously on Youku Tudou.

The convergence of online and offline spaces is probably faster in China than anywhere else, noted Koo, due to the large number of sectors highly regulated by the government. The central role of the state in entire industries has left a void for private companies to fill since they don't have to compete with an incumbent offline company also competing in the online space. For this reason, Koo argued that "offline industries in China are changing much faster and in a more fundamental way than in developed countries like the United States."