
Things I’ve learned in China so far - edw519
http://scobleizer.com/2008/11/10/things-ive-learned-in-china-so-far/
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liuliu
haha, I am a Chinese! There are indeed rare geeks to start up companies in
China. Din Lei, the founder and CEO of Netease(NTES) is a geek. Ma Huateng,
the founder of Tencent is a geek, too. So, somehow, Netease and Tencent are
the two local companies with strongest human resource in development.

For decades, there is no emerging startups with solid and independent business
ideas. Even some startups I know have a profound background in technology,
things they do are not new. Shang Mail, a copy of Blackberry push mail have a
solid tech team. Ucweb, copy of Opera mobile in China was invested by Lei Jun,
someone can be compared to Paul Alan in China.

There are some reasons for this.

1\. New ideas have no tech or patent barriers. Due to the mess patent applying
process and all the people to review applications are not professional. The
quality of China patents are very low. It is hard to find valuable patent and
sue someone with that. You can find all kind of patents in the database, from
perpetual motion machine to how to compile linux kernel.

2\. Due to No.1, new ideas can be copied by large companies. Tencent copied
twitter model, Sina and Netease copied blog model. Merely startups survived in
the battle field with large companies.

3\. Chinese investors are conservative. That is good thing from some
perspectives, they value the cash flow beyond everything else. Thus, if you
don't have a persuasive revenue model, you can not raise any money. A most
persuasive model is a copycat of successful service in other countries.

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jhancock
Excellent analysis!! There are many local Chinese that are very competent and
much better equipped to be successful here than foreigners. Best of luck to
them all ;)

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markessien
Going to Shanghai or Beijing and living in the expat community is not the real
China. Lots of foreigners in China live like the English used to live in Kenya
- in a separate upper class society that has little in common with, and little
contact to the local people.

It's a bit sad actually, there are really fresh perspectives to be had there.

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Prrometheus
I don't see how it is sad. If I go to a third world nation, I am staying in a
nice, western hotel.

If my purpose in going is to start a business or see the sights, then there is
no reason to get down in the muck. If my purpose is to write a novel about the
life of the Chinese, then I should thoroughly investigate it. It all depends
on your purpose for visiting.

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asdflkj
It's sad because it shows stunning lack of curiosity. The reason to "get down
in the muck" is because you'd want to, and the opportunity is right there.

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charlesju
I think this is a sign that I've been programming too much, but Scroble forgot
to close his brace in paragraph 3.

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unalone
You might also be a grammar geek. That bugged me too.

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potatolicious
Actually... I don't think the English language technically allows for nested
parens. That's more of an invention by hackers for the internet, I think.

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unalone
I've seen it done before (once, actually, I used it for the visual effect (you
wouldn't think it, but a set of nested parentheses look odd when it's in
literature (rather than coding, for instance (though I think it's possible
that I borrowed the idea from a computer science class)))).

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rms
Budweiser is popular in China because it's practically a Chinese beer... it's
brewed in Wuhan and made with rice. This means that in Germany it isn't beer.

The internet censorship isn't intended to change the attitudes of the upper
class -- the government figures that anyone who can understand English enough
to read foreign news is already lost. And they don't care about foreigners
circumventing the filter for personal use, as long as you aren't actively
spreading subversion. Definitely don't spread subversion.

They want to keep the common person ignorant and the censorship helps. If the
momentum of the people ever shifted, things could change, so there is enormous
reason for the government to maintain the status quo. The protectionism is
incidental (but is a nice perk0, the censorship of ideas is why they do it.

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mattmaroon
I imagine nothing could taste as bad as I expect chicken feet to.

~~~
joshwa
oh there are worse foods than chicken feet, without question.

two words: stinky tofu.

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potatolicious
It may smell bad, but it's _so very good_.

