China's internet in 2010 was split between rival telecom networks that did not connect well, and a page hosted on one could crawl for users on the other. ChinaCache, founded in Beijing in 1998, fixed that by keeping copies of its customers' content on servers spread across the country and across those networks. Portals, game companies and video sites paid it to make their pages load fast. When ChinaCache listed on Nasdaq in October 2010, online video in China was taking off.

A Network of Copies

Song Wang founded ChinaCache in 1998. The company built a content delivery network: servers placed inside data centers run by different Chinese carriers. When a user requested a page or a video, ChinaCache served it from a nearby copy. Customers paid for the traffic it carried. The bet was that as China's internet grew, every large website would need a service like this, and that ChinaCache's head start would be hard to copy.

Undercut by the Clouds

ChinaCache priced its American depositary shares at $13.90 each in October 2010. The giants of Chinese tech later built their own cloud and delivery services and cut prices hard. ChinaCache lost money and customers. In 2019 its former chief executive was arrested, and the company fell behind on its filings. Nasdaq removed its shares from listing in November 2019, and the company said they would trade over the counter.

Cover: Landscape with Daoist Immortals Playing Weiqi, Dai Jin. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a Chinese mountain landscape.