SILICON DRAGON NEWS
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Silicon Dragon Circle
 

China VCs Wayne Shiong, James Mi,
Wei Zhou with
Rebecca Fannin.
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Hong Kong 2019
April 17
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Speaking Gigs
Rebecca Fannin chats with  
Venture Supremo
Sanjit Singh Dang
January 14, 4-6pm
San Francisco
Invitation only for

  We're kicking off the New Year 2019 with our top 10 predictions for China tech and venture. 
* Alibaba and  Tencent  will increasingly duel over major segments of the Chinese tech economy. The BAT companies are becoming the AT companies, though Baidu is shaking things up in artificial intelligence.
The TMD + X ( Toutiao, Meituan, Didi  and 
Xiaomi) will have a bigger impact in China's digital world, and disrupt more sectors.  Xiaomi will gain market share against  Apple in China and Asia.   Meituan will angle deeper into Alibaba's turf in e-commerce. News app  Toutiao and video app  TikTok will go mainstream in the West from China. Any IPO of ride-hailing leader Didi could be delayed until 2020 in wake of safety issues this past year.
N ewcomers such as social commerce company 
Pinduoduo  and digital content provider 
ByteDance will gain traction and compete with the more established net brands in China - think  Tencent and  Alibaba.
Chinese venture investment will hit new levels as the major funds begin to deploy the mega capital they raised in 2018. Southeast Asia will gain as a new venture target for promising companies.
* China will continue to innovate within its own borders and surge ahead in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and mobile communications, getting an edge on Silicon Valley.  
China will cautiously invest in US tech as a regulatory crackdown kicks in and investment flows slow to a trickle.
Read more here at Forbes: Top Ten Predictions
Rebecca's new book will be published this year

See more  Silicon Dragon Predictions for 2019 
from VC contributors.  Here's a sampling: 
* Drone-based taxi services will emerge in major congested cities.
China's social credit system will go mainstream this year and could lead other nations to follow. 
Alibaba and Tencent will enhance their enterprise offerings. 
Biotech will expand at an exponential rate in China. 

FUNDS
James Mi, Rebecca Fannin
Lightspeed China Partners has raised two new funds totaling $560 million, capping an active period of new Chinese funds from other major venture firms: Qiming Venture, GGV Capital, Sinovation Ventures, Matrix Partners China, GSR Ventures and Sky9 Capital.
The surge in fund raising by several notable Sino-US venture firms comes as China climbs up the tech innovation ladder and its startups invent their own rather than copy from the West. Fund raising and Chinese venture investments are surging, coming close to US levels. 
Lightspeed China Partners made its mark in 2018 with two major IPOs of next-generation Chinese companies. E-commerce services super app Meituan went public in Hong Kong and raised $4.2 billion while social commerce upstart Pinduoduo drew $1.6 billion for a Nasdaq IPO. LCP made a 40 times return on its $10 million Pinduoduo investment made in 2015. 
Read more here: Lightning Speed in China

Former Kleiner Perkins VC Mary Meeker is targeting $1.25 billion for a new fund, called Bond. 

IPOs
 First Nasdaq IPO of 2019: China STX Pharmaceuticals raised $10.2 million in an IPO on January 3. The traditional Chinese medicine company seeks to expand its national reach from eastern China's Jiangsu province and gain approvals for more modernized products.  

  DEALS
Advantech Capital has led a $55 million investment in Connect Pharmaceuticals, a clinical stage drug company in Suzhou. Existing investors Qiming Venture, Northern Light Venture Capital and Cowin Venture joined the series B financing.  

Sequoia Capital China and HighLight Capital put $80 million of pre-IPO capital in Bright Gene Bio-Medical Technology Co.   

NOTEWORTHY
China's booming middle class has taken a fancy to pets and is pampering them like no generation before. A telling sign of this uptrend is the nearly 4 million orders of pet products placed during Taobao's 12.12 shopping event.  

DATA 
37 Chinese tech companies scored IPOs in the U.S. and raised $9.2 billion in 2018, up from 16 at $3.4 billion in 2017.  
  
VIEWPOINT
 China scholar Nick Lardy concludes China's economic reforms have hit a wall and the state is overtaking the market.   The State Strikes Back.