Baidu turns to personal transport for growth

Editor’s note: Baidu’s shares began trading in Hong Kong on March 23rd, after this article was published. It raised a disappointing US$3.1bn through the listing, nearly $1bn less than it had hoped. Even so, its share price has tripled in the past year

ROBIN LI SMILED when asked at a corporate shindig in 2014 to reflect on his path to becoming, at the time, China’s richest man. “I’m just lucky,” he insisted. Mr Li, co-founder and boss of Baidu, a Beijing-based search engine, may have been trying to project modesty. But his words could also have been taken literally. Thanks to government censorship, Google is inaccessible in mainland China. That leaves Baidu as the unrivalled leader in Chinese search. Slowing advertising revenues, however, are now taking it down a different road.