A picture taken at the opening ceremony of the Second World Internet Conference in Wuzhen on Wednesday went viral in recent days.
Chinese enterprises in the picture have combined assets worth of more than $600 billion, surpassing their counterparts in Seattle worth $400 billion. It has been dubbed the "most expensive group photo in the history of China's Internet".
The picture has much information while leaving room for people's own interpretations－since there are more than 2,000 people attending the conference but only 84 shown in the photo.
Who is facing the flashlights and where they stand was apparently not decided randomly.
President Xi Jinping and foreign VIP guests took the first row; while the position of bosses from China's giant Internet companies radiate from the center of the second row backward and outward.
Prominently, company leaders from China's Internet big three, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (collectively nicknamed BAT), stand behind China's central government leaders.
Jack Ma, Alibaba Group executive chairman, Ma Huateng, founder and CEO of Tencent, and Li Yanhong, chairman and CEO of Baidu, occupied center spots of the second row.
Highly successful enterprise leaders, including Liu Chuanzhi, founder and chairman of Lenovo; and Zhang Ruimin, CEO of Haier; are on the flanks of the second row.
Other rising stars of China's Internet world, including the founders of Xiaomi, JD.com and Qihoo 360, are placed in the second and third rows.
The owner of Chinese major information portals Sina.com, Sohu.com and 163.com, stand in the third and fourth rows.
This photo includes representatives of almost all Chinese leading companies in every sector of the Internet.
Entrepreneurs of companies that are believed to be "pioneer leaders" and BAT have become synonymous with success, because of their massive size and ability to redefine the industry, beat their competitors one after another and keep expanding into other areas.
In addition, two other figures appear in the photo－two young company leaders both born in 1983.
One is Zhang Yiming, founder of Toutiao, a personalized news app; and the other is Cheng Wei, chief executive of cer of Didi Kuaidi, China's largest car-hailing service provider.
Coinciding with earlier media reports that new generation business leaders, including Cheng and Zhang, attended the summit, the appearance of the duo in the photo clearly states that younger Internet entrepreneurs are taking center stage.
Zhang, who is tech-savvy, created Toutiao to cater to different reader's habits and provide information tailor-made to individuals.
