Hong Kong authorities will reportedly soon issue digital banking licenses to six different companies in a bid to shake up the former British crown colony's financial sector. The lucky six include Chinese internet banking heavyweights Ant Financial and Tenpay, Zhongan Insurance (in a tie-up with Citic), Hong Kong Telecom, smartphone maker Xiaomi, and England's Standard Chartered Bank.

It wasn't so long ago that China's tech firms were panned as second-rate copycats. The best example might be Baidu, the search giant that is often less effective than Google in Chinese-language searches.