Welcome to the China Region Special Section

Wenguang Chen and Xiang-Yang Li, China Regional Special Section Co-Organizers

China’s unique language, culture, governance practices, and research funding systems have had great impact on its Internet industry and technology development. For example, people in China seem less sensitive about privacy, which may be an important factor in the fast acceptance of mobile payment systems; combining that with the huge population of China could motivate many exciting technology innovations.

Some have speculated the Chinese government’s strict supervision of Internet content and exclusion of some multinational competitors are important factors in the development of China’s Internet industry, but it is difficult to assess the validity of such conjecture. In some non-content-based areas, such as e-commerce, the sharing economy, and Internet travel agencies, Chinese Internet companies have matched, and even surpassed, their international competitors.

For this special section, we invited contributors from a wide range of academic and industry communities spanning the Chinese mainland, Macau, and Hong Kong. We brainstormed article topics in a workshop in Beijing in March 2018. The response was terrific, and the resulting collection of articles, while far from comprehensive, offers an excellent snapshot of the most exciting computing trends and activities in the China region.

We are pleased to present the China Region special section, which includes:

A series of short articles (“Hot Topics”) that provide context and flavor of the region’s distinctive growth, ranging from tech idols and computing culture to gaming, and
Longer articles that document some of the “Big Trends” shaping the computing landscape of the China region, ranging from financial technology and last-mile autonomous delivery to SuperAI and cloud bursting.

— Wenguang Chen and Xiang-Yang Li China Regional Special Section Co-Organizers

Editorial Board

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Andrew A. Chien
eic@cacm.acm.org

DEPUTY TO THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Lihan Chen
cacm.deputy.to.eic@gmail.com

CHAIR, REGIONAL SPECIAL SECTIONS
Sriram Rajamani

CHINA REGION SPECIAL SECTION CO-ORGANIZERS
Wenquang Chen
Tsinghua University

Xiang-Yang Li
University of Science and Technology of China

Figure. Members of the China Region Workshop. Top left: Tong Zhang, Haibo Chen, Xiaoyang Wang, Hai Jin, Yuan Qi, Xiang-Yang Li, Xundong He, Wenguang Chen, Jing Xiao, Huaxia Xia, Liang Yu, Chaoyang Lu. Seated from left: Lihan Chen, Hong Gao, Andrew A. Chien, Yue Zhuge, and Yutong Lu.