China is the great economic success story of the past 30 years. It is currently the world’s second largest economy and the most populous country with over 1.35 billion citizens.

The spending power of China’s domestic market has exploded and so has the opportunity for Western brands, their agencies and media, advertising and design tech startups to connect with Chinese consumers through digital media.

The scale is staggering. 600m users on Sina Weibo, 490m on WeChat and messaging platform Tencent QQ has 830m users. Single’s Day, highlighted as an shopping event by Alibaba in 2009, saw $14.3bn worth of transactions in 2015 with a 4 hour TV show featuring Daniel Craig.

This massive opportunity is not without significant challenges, the Digital Mission China 2016 will explore the benefits and tackle the challenges of Chinese expansion by taking a carefully curated group of startups, agencies and brands on a week-long programme of visits, networking events and briefings in China.