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Summary.
China’s two retailing powerhouses, online commerce pioneer Alibaba and social media-gaming pioneer Tencent, have systematically established a duopoly of record proportions in record time. Combined, they have spent more than $20 billion in the past 12 months alone to change the way people in China shop. (The precise value of their investments cannot be determined, given that many of them are undisclosed or private deals. This figure, along with some others in this article, are drawn from a Bain analysis.)