Alipay moved its headquarters from Huangzhou to Shanghai. (Photo : Getty Images)
Experts in the technology industry observed that China has already taken the place of Silicon Valley, where Facebook and the iPhone started.
Carmen Chang, a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates in Menlo Park, said, "China was able to develop a lot of innovative business models, which arose in a different kind of economy. Whether or not we admit it here in Silicon Valley, it's had an impact on us and our thinking."
Her observation is based on the many innovations that China has developed that are now more advanced, when at first, China was following the Silicon Valley trend.
China has now gone further that American giants like Google and Amazon are now lagging behind the equities of Alipay and Baidu.
Ted Livingston, the founder of Kik, which is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, said, "We just see China as further ahead."
U.S. companies are now shifting to use the QR code or bar-code-like symbols and is used to connect people with a camera shot. Facebook Messenger is now trying to use the code in its app to hail cabs and make online payments.
Users of e-commerce in China have surpassed American users. China is now using mobile technology to find taxis, order food and find dates.
In the food industry alone, online orders amount to $9.4 million a day. Business to commerce online sales are growing at a fast rate of 25 percent annually, according to a survey by Bain and Company, a global business consulting firm.
The survey also stated that China now is the largest online marketplace. Last year, 80 percent of shoppers in China are buying online, and 20 percent of these people bought a mobile phone.
Experts believe that the country will be at the forefront of technology for the next years to come and the U.S. will be following China's lead.
According to Ben Thompson, the founder of the tech research firm Stratechery, "Quite frankly, the trope that China copies the U.S. hasn't been true for years, and in mobile, it's the opposite: The U.S. often copies China."
