September 10, according to plans announced a year ago, Jack Ma will step down as chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group today, handing the baton to current CEO Zhang Yong.

For Ali, Ma's stepping down as chairman of the board today signals the end of an era. As China's largest e-commerce company, Ali's revenue exceeded $56 billion last fiscal year, and made Ma China's richest man, with a net worth of more than $40 billion.

China's Internet economy has led the world in the past two decades. Internet giants and unicorns have come to rival U.S. companies in number and size.

We have analyzed the survival of Chinese Internet companies and their development strategies behind this phenomenon, but in fact, the general environment of China's Internet economy is changing, which makes people wonder how much longer their brilliant performance can last.

1. Demographic dividend is declining

Currently, the average age of Internet users in China is 28 years old, which is much lower than 42 years old in the U.S. They are fond of new Internet products and are more likely to accept new things, but with the arrival of the aging society, the advantage of this younger population is decreasing. The percentage of the population will reach 38%.

2. The talent dividend will not grow

While the return of overseas talent is accelerating, the overall supply of talent is still unable to keep up with the speed of the industry's development. 2016, in the face of the capital winter, the Internet industry's annual salary still rose by 17%, and the cost advantage of the talent of China's Internet industry is no longer the same as it was in the past, and salaries have risen for years, The situation of talent supply exceeding demand will continue.

3. Capital dividend decline

On the one hand, monetary policy is tightening, on the other hand, China's Internet capital market, will be accompanied by the maturity of the stage of development and gradually cooling.

4. Infrastructure dividend flat

In recent years, the Chinese government has strongly supported the construction of infrastructure for the Internet industry, such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, big data, etc.,

BCG expects that over the next five years, China's IT spending will grow steadily at an average annual investment increase of 4%.

While the overall dividend advantage is declining, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), AliResearch, Baidu Development Research Center, and DDT Policy Research Institute are optimistic. In the recently released "China's Internet Economy White Paper: Interpreting the Characteristics of China's Internet," they said the situation is changing, and so are the innovation strategies of China's Internet companies.

Chinese companies are becoming more and more like U.S. companies

Unlike U.S. companies' "technology flow," Chinese Internet companies in the past 20 years have largely been able to follow and learn from each other, and to innovate through application-driven innovations (which favored the business model, application, and content dimensions).

But recently BCG has observed that Chinese companies are quietly moving into the "technology stream" as well.

Yangtze crocodiles are going to sea

As the domestic scene stabilizes, China's Internet companies are also shifting their strategic focus. With Tencent's data center in Silicon Valley in operation and Alibaba setting a target of 50 percent of overseas revenue by 2025, overseas expansion has become the focus of the next round of competition for the "Yangzi crocodiles".