
How does Chinese tech stack up against American tech? - YouAreGreat
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21737075-silicon-valley-may-not-hold-its-global-superiority-much-longer-how-does-chinese-tech
======
andr
One thing I think every Silicon Valley startup and investor should be afraid
of is the incredible rate and depth of adoption of new technologies in China.

I came across two examples recently. First, in China e-books have taken over
paper books, not just in volume, but in publishers' minds [1]. Second, payment
systems like AliPay are becoming the dominant in just a few years, completely
circumventing credit cards [2].

Now, neither of these are technological breakthroughs in themselves. The
Kindle has been around for over 10 years, and Apple Pay and its precursors are
not news, either. However, neither of those technologies has had the impact on
their respective markets that the creators hoped for. Paper books are still
frequently cheaper than their Kindle versions, and there have hardly been any
noteworthy straight-to-Kindle publications. Likewise, Apple Pay, which is only
a replacement for your physical card, but still a transaction mostly owned by
Visa/MasterCard, and not Apple, is still far from a dominant purchase
mechanism, even in the Bay Area. All in all, the pace of adoption of
disruptive technologies in the US is pretty poor.

So, as an entrepreneur, I'd be much more worried not about inventing the cool
new tech before China, but actually getting people hooked on it.

[1] [https://www.economist.com/news/business/21731860-tencents-
ch...](https://www.economist.com/news/business/21731860-tencents-china-
literature-should-profit-millions-chinese-smartphone-bookworms-chinas) [2]
[https://www.wired.com/story/age-of-social-
credit/](https://www.wired.com/story/age-of-social-credit/)

~~~
tjoff
Vendor lockin is a big issue. Why should I buy a book that I can't use the way
I want because of DRM, I can't get in my native language and is completely
tied to a company? Oh, and it also costs _more_...

It is insane but greed has made the above commonplace across all aspects of
the digital world.

Personally I think ebooks are still worth it, even if I have to buy it, strip
the DRM (which is illegal) before reading it (on an eink display of course).
But it has never been ready for mainstream (will it ever?) and it is not the
techs fault.

We still don't even have a decent movie streaming service, and even if one
existed it wouldn't matter because the content you want to watch makes that
choice for you.

A decade ago we had awesome home theater software, they still exist but they
aren't compatible with the media that is offered today. For that we need
another device (chromecast) which is probably the dumbest device you can buy
but somehow that is the best option available for consumers in 2018.

~~~
Steltek
Some random thoughts to what could be going on, in no particular order:

1\. Yarr, pirate it. Easier to consume things when you have few qualms as to
how to obtain it.

2\. Nothing lasts forever. Lock-in only exists if you can't let go for the
next thing that comes along.

3\. Upward mobility in quality of life and social class leads to a
renaissance.

~~~
cyphar
> 1\. Yarr, pirate it. Easier to consume things when you have few qualms as to
> how to obtain it.

Don't some e-Book readers disallow you from reading things that you didn't
download from them (or they don't support epub)?

> 2\. Nothing lasts forever. Lock-in only exists if you can't let go for the
> next thing that comes along.

But you also can't migrate your old library to the new one, which is the main
problem with lock-in (the issue isn't that you physically cannot switch away,
it's that you cannot switch away without losing things that you've bought
into).

~~~
Steltek
> Don't some e-Book readers disallow you from reading things that you didn't
> download from them (or they don't support epub)?

If theory 1 is true, then the readers without this user hostile approach will
thrive. Obviously pirates don't care for DRM locked devices.

> But you also can't migrate your old library to the new one, which is the
> main problem with lock-in (the issue isn't that you physically cannot switch
> away, it's that you cannot switch away without losing things that you've
> bought into).

My point was mental, not physical. People might naturally just drop old stuff
for new shiny things. If things appear plentiful compared to the old ways,
this attitude is easier to adopt. Do you regret throwing away your coffee cup
in the morning?

~~~
jimjimjim
do you regret throwing away your family photos? your car? your friendships?

------
leggomylibro
Everyone is talking about software, and maybe that's because this goes without
saying, but China's hardware production capabilities are just staggering.
Embedded development has a hugely promising future, especially as microchips
continue to add richer feature sets for lower power (and money) costs. And
China has been taking that idea of the future and sprinting with it. 'IoT' is
a popular buzzword, but IMO the success of companies like DJI better reflects
China's growing expertise in blending together a broad range of technical
disciplines, many of which are comparatively scorned by educational
institutions in the US.

Lately I've been floored by the fact that ARM Cortex-M0 and -M3 development
boards (48-72MHz, 8-20KB RAM, 64-256KB flash) cost less than $2 each. They
blow 'Arduinos' out of the water by an order of magnitude on both cost and
capability, as do the similarly-cheap ESP8266 WiFi development boards.

What ever happened to _making_ useful things?

~~~
Clubber
>What ever happened to making useful things?

Lots of things.

    
    
      - The patent debacle that started in the Clinton administration
      - Not enforcing anti-competition laws allowing companies to consolidate. 
      - Companies giving away all their IP to China in exchange for cheap labor.
      - Allowing our tech manufacturing sector to rot on the vine.
    

The US still makes lots of useful things, they just can't make them within our
borders.

------
superasn
I think Silicon valley's biggest contribution is innovation. All the Chinese
or Indian startups I see (no matter how big their size) are generally China's
answer to Uber/WhatsApp/Facebook or India's answer to Amazon.

I've yet to see one startup which is America's answer to some chinese/indian
startup. I hope that day comes soon.

~~~
gumby
> I've yet to see one startup which is America's answer to some chinese/indian
> startup. I hope that day comes soon.

What about Twitch, which makes its money from sponsorship and virtual gifts to
streamers, a model pioneered in China and then Korea? Or the US esports
leagues which copy, again Korea and China?

There are many technologies which appear later in the US but Americans think
are indigenous (and the reverse as well -- I don't mean to pick on the US,
simply responding to your comment). Consider chip cards (commonplace in Europe
for 20+ years, still not well adopted in the US) or text messaging (adopted
very late in the US).

~~~
plopz
I know of AfreecaTV that launched in 2005, and Twitch (Justin.tv) which
launched in 2007. But what was the pioneering China platform?

~~~
nimbyest
yy.com I believe.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YY.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YY.com)

------
mobilemidget
China can only “win” if English usage gets better there. Because to win means
to get Europe e.g. to see them as example. But we understand too little of
Chinese in general, the culture and the language. We do however almost all get
taught murican, I mean English at high school (have to note that few year
after my high school time, you can now study Chinese and do some exams on it)

~~~
echevil
Well, China itself has more than 1 billion people, and there is still plenty
of room to grow its domestic market. That market is large enough to sustain
tons of companies. More and more Chinese actually feel they’ve wasted too much
time learning English, which is only need for a small number of jobs

~~~
devsafrun
...but 1 billion ppl != 1 billion consumers...

the huge income gap (pretty surprising given it's "communism" and everything
lol) between peasants-workers-in-cities and the others is...

~~~
echevil
that's why there's huge room to improve

------
peter303
I read similar stories about Japan in the 1980s

~~~
obscurantist
I also remember Back to the Future Part II

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omarforgotpwd
Yeah so much great high quality software coming out of China. Many of these
apps aren’t even a national security risk!

~~~
landryraccoon
They're not a national security risk for China though.

~~~
wavefunction
A backdoor's a backdoor, whether it's in an American product or a Chinese one.

~~~
lopmotr
That's a political rhetoric. But most popular software has backdoors in the
form of automatic updates.

------
yusuke10
The paper cites a few things

> But now the number of cited AI papers by Chinese scientists is already at
> 89% of the American level

Every article that wants to claim that China AI is on par with American AI
claims this. But US has 10X the amount of AI scientists as China, which means
Chinese AI scientists produces 10X amount of papers as American scientists.
Quantity over quality, spurred by government cash rewards. Lots of noise, no
bite.

> China’s e-commerce sales are double America’s. Chinese firms are
> collectively 53% as big as America’s, measured by market value

That's because China has 1.3B population, about 4X times more than America's
350B. However, it is projected that China will have peak population in this
decade, and will be around 800M population sometimes in 2100. America has alot
better demographics, vs China who has one of the oldest, and whose working
population will contract by a few hundred millions by 2050

> Chinese non-tech firms are relatively primitive and only 26% as digitised as
> American ones. As for investment, Chinese tech’s absolute budget is only 30%
> as big as that of American tech. And it is still small abroad, with foreign
> sales of 18% of the total that American firms make.

that's the gist of the article. China is nowhere near as big as America's tech
currently. And China is on its way to the lost decade (that's why xijingping
recently wanted the provinces to focus on things other than GDP, since the
local governments are levered to the hill with debt)

~~~
mrep
> However, it is projected that China will have peak population in this
> decade, and will be around 800M population sometimes in 2100.

WOW! Population declines have hugely negative effects on economics like GDP. I
don't know if that has been factored into their GDP estimates but that makes
me extremely question their GDP growth.

