Zheng Yangpeng: New energy and commitment

Best story: In late July, I reported on a little known company, Lianjia Licai, a peerto-peer lending platform backed by the Homelink Real Estate Agency. Just six months after its launch, Lianjia Licai has made impressive headway, becoming the country’s fourth-largest P2P platform in terms of turnover. Its ascendancy in the fiercely competitive sector was down to one crucial reason: Its parent company is China’s largest preowned home broker, and the new company was able to cash in on its parent’s gigantic offline customer base. It was an “aha” moment for me, because beyond all the hype of “Internet-plus” or “online finance”, the key is really not about the “Internet”, but the “plus”, or the company’s offline resources. The Internet is just part of the infrastructure, like electricity in the 19th century. The key is how you transform existing businesses with the Web and align online and offline components. Those who own offline resources ultimately gain the upper hand.

Most unforgettable reporting experience: In November, I visited Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Group, an old-style, Stateowned enterprise that’s attempting to transform itself into an incubator for mobileage startups. It has built a technology platform that enables startup teams — both from inside and outside the group — to develop apps quickly, and most important, free of charge. What impressed me most was

witnessing how entrepreneurial zeal was spurred by a new management structure. Former managers, now in startup teams, booked economy seats for non-rush-hour flights to save money, and tirelessly approached us (journalists), to ask us to download apps they had developed —unimaginable behavior if the businesses had not been theirs, but the company’s instead. Think of the exuberance that could unleashed if SOEs really underwent a complete overhaul.