The words ‘technology’ and ‘innovation’ are almost automatically linked with American companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Tesla or Amazon in most people’s minds. But this association has created a huge blind spot in the West.

While the world focuses on what is happening in Silicon Valley, the Chinese innovation train has left the station and is moving forward at high speed. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are the well-known standard-bearers of this fast and furious innovation surge, ...