Some authors are good at spotting and analyzing trends. Others go in deep and provide detailed explanations of how an industry ecosystem or specialized sector is evolving. But in China's Mobile Economy, Winston Ma delivers the rare book that is both an outstanding survey of a fast-changing and vitally important economic landscape and a delightful “field guide” that will enrich your understanding of what's really happening on the ground.

Start with the headline: even those generally aware of the scale of the country's ongoing digital transformation may have missed this news – 2014--15, Ma insists, marks “the most important inflection point in the history of the internet” in China. Almost overnight, the world's largest digitally-connected middle class went both mobile and multi-screen (smartphone, tablets, laptops and more), with huge implications for how consumers behave and what companies need to do to successfully compete.

How have China's Big Three, the group known as “BAT” (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) responded so effectively to the shift to a mobile platform and how are their business models converging as the lines between e-commerce, social media, and entertainment blur? What does the swift rise of more than 600 million mobile consumers and the rapid merging of online-to-offline shopping (O2O) mean for Western multinationals in traditional industries such as autos and beverages, as well as for digital stalwarts like Apple and aspiring newcomers such as Uber? (Quick quiz: guess which three cities are now Uber's most popular in the world, measured by rides per day? Answer: Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Chengdu.) What role has government policy played in helping drive China's digitization and how will future regulation shape the fates of fast-growing sectors such as online banking?

Ma offers rich insight into all these macroeconomic and industry questions, making a convincing case that, as next-generation mobile devices and services take off, China's strength in this arena will transform it from a global “trend follower” to a “trend setter.” At the same time, in a delightful array of boxes and sidebars, he supplements his analysis with a depth of cultural reporting and definitions of popular terms that would make a social anthropologist proud. Are Chinese consumers “shai”-ing your products in social media, as they have express-delivered fresh Canadian blackberries purchased online? Well, good for you. But be careful that they truly view your goods and services as “gao-da-shang” versus dismissing them as “tu-hao-jin.” Understanding these phrases and the behaviors behind them, Ma rightly suggests, is no less critical than understanding what your next round of Big Data market research may be telling you.

As befits a successful investor, deeply grounded in both Western capital markets and in local equities, through his distinguished career at the China Investment Corporation (CIC), Ma strikes the right balance between enthusiasm for the opportunities that China's mobile marketplace offers and a clear-eyed assessment of potential challenges ahead. At McKinsey and Company, we too believe every company – and every country – must succeed at digitization to compete successfully in the 21^st century. In many of our recent reports we have cast a bright light on some of the themes explored here, from China's growing capacity to innovate to the role the internet can play in its next wave of productivity-driven growth.

As Ma concludes, “The development of China's mobile economy is one of the most important trends that will reshape the future of business, technology and society both in China and the world.” We couldn't agree more. From our work with leading global private and public sector clients across many industries and regions, we know just how keenly they are following the next phase of China's economic evolution. This independent, richly reported and highly readable book is a welcome addition to our understanding of this exciting, continuously unfolding story.

Dominic Barton
Global Managing Partner, McKinsey and Company