Chapter 188: Friends and enemies
Sometimes Su Can thought about what Qiao Shuxin had told him that day. Sometimes he recalled his days as an exchange student in the United States. Sometimes he began to feel that the future he had always held so tightly had grown hazy once again, and he no longer knew what it looked like.
2003 was a transitional year in which the international internet moved steadily toward maturity, carrying both the pain of the earlier internet bubble and the hope of new growth rising from the ruins. That year, Liu Qiangdong, a graduate of Renmin University of China who had spent years working counters in Zhongguancun, founded JD Electronics Mall.
Baidu, QQ, and Joyo, companies that would become leaders of the internet, were all developing rapidly as governments across China's provinces, cities, regions, towns, and counties increased investment in information infrastructure.
Back then, many people had believed that possessing the internet meant possessing everything. With the Chinese government's full support, Beijing had been ablaze with activity. But when the internet bubble burst at the millennium, countless ambitions were shattered, countless people lost everything, and countless Chinese internet companies bent on listing on and conquering Nasdaq in the United States fell one after another, their endeavors ending in defeat. Countless companies tumbled from their pedestals, their names never heard again. Yet three years later, new standard-bearers stood upon that scorched earth and resolutely marched forward.
Perhaps this was the vitality of the internet industry, along with a passion and fervor no longer seen in many other fields, like a person's indelible youth; Facebook Chinese's user count had reached eight million, and the social networking craze in the United States was driving a rapid surge in its influence in China. Its user numbers grew every day. Newspapers