China WTO Accession

Wang Jianlin belongs to Group 2 - Reform-era pioneers. The reform-era pioneers group covers founders who built their businesses in the 1980s and 1990s opening of China's economy under Deng Xiaoping, spanning telecom equipment (Huawei), personal computing (Lenovo), home appliances (Haier), beverages (Wahaha), and automotive components (Wanxiang), often starting from township-enterprise or small-collective origins.

Ding Lei belongs to Group 3 - Internet 1.0. The Internet 1.0 group covers founders who built China's first generation of consumer-internet platforms in the late-1990s and early-2000s dot-com era — search (Baidu), e-commerce (Alibaba), portals (Sohu), gaming and portals (NetEase, Tencent), security software (Qihoo 360), and smartphones-plus-software (Xiaomi) — a cohort shaped by the 2001 WTO accession and the PC-to-mobile transition.