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Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

nytimes.com

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Re: Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

#41

Post by marincounty »

contingencies wrote: post #12
fspeech wrote: post #5

I am sure there is demand for authentic foreign food in China but I wonder how foreigners get in to open restaurants. I am not sure if you can just come in and open a restaurant in the US if you are not a legal immigrant. Legal immigration into China is a lot harder. For non immigrants it is not clear that there is any Chinese visa that allows for this type of activity. For example the only Chinese visa that sounds r…

I wonder how foreigners get in to open restaurants. I am not sure if you can just come in and open a restaurant in the US if you are not a legal immigrant. Legal immigration into China is a lot harder. Legal immigration into China is a lot harder Actually unlike in the US, it's very easy here. You register a wholly foreign owned company, get a visa connected to that, and you're sorted. Total cost can be as low as ~US…

How about the bribes? I heard it's difficult for an American to set up shop? Someting about local government officials?

Personally, I won't doing business in China. I did look into buying property there a few years ago, and it seemed impossible. I don't know why we let rich foreigners buy our (U.S.) realestate with a phone call, and money. You don't even need to be a citizen of this country in order to buy an apartment building in San Francisco. All you need is money, and a few phone calls. I'm not picking on the Chinese, I would like to see the U.S. all foreign realestate ownership, unless we can buy reciprocally. Hell, if I were king, I would outlaw REIT's, and limit realestate holdings to maybe a handful per Social security number? I feel a home is more than an investment, and community ties matters.

Got off topic, but rent is on my mind, and I don't like this kind of realestate spculation that's going around me. I'm seeing too many people being kicked out of their communities, while homes sit empty.

There's a ton of links about corruption in China, here's the first one of many-

http://www.businessinsider.com/china-corruption-in-business-...

Re: Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

#42

Post by [deleted] »

justabystander wrote: post #25
contingencies wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees will attempt to steal IP and copy the business. This sounds a lot like the unfounded "don't tell anyone your idea, it might be stolen!" fear in Silicon Valley. If you are relying on security through obscurity to protect your business' viability, you're doing it wrong. You need locals to handle staff. You're just a foreigner to be taken advantage of. In my experience if you speak basic Chinese, personally hi…

> > Employees will attempt to steal IP and copy the business. > This sounds a lot like the unfounded "don't tell anyone your idea, it might be stolen!" fear in Silicon Valley. If you are relying on security through obscurity to protect your business' viability, you're doing it wrong. This is completely different. An idea itself doesn't have a lot of value without the business plan and capital to make it happen. The S…

[deleted]

Re: Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

#43

Post by snarfy »

contingencies wrote: post #13
Gustomaximus wrote: post #4

Biggest rules I've seen from working with chinese JV's; 1) Employees will attempt to steal IP and copy the business. This may happen while they are still working for you. If it's easy for your business to be stolen this way don't even bother setting up. 2) You need locals to handle staff. You're just a foreigner to be taken advantage of. They push rules and issues at you all day trying to get more. A local manager wi…

Employees will attempt to steal IP and copy the business. This sounds a lot like the unfounded "don't tell anyone your idea, it might be stolen!" fear in Silicon Valley. If you are relying on security through obscurity to protect your business' viability, you're doing it wrong. You need locals to handle staff. You're just a foreigner to be taken advantage of. In my experience if you speak basic Chinese, personally hi…

I bought a cat exercise wheel off kickstarter. There were a lot of problems shipping the product, but eventually they shipped. The fascinating part is explanations given by the company. They said they paid 50K+ for a master injection mold which was tested extensively and shipped over seas. The parts that were shipped back didn't quite have the tolerances they were expecting and the wheels didn't fit together very well.

It turns out the supplier they were working with in China cloned their product and were selling similar cat exercise wheels in China. A second mold was made and used to ship parts back to the US, and that mold was not made to the same quality as the first. At least, that's their story.

Re: Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

#45

Post by hitekker »

An overseas entrepreneur planning to go to China might refrain solely on the basis that she or he will never be "China" chinese.

You can learn the language, adopt the customs, marry, have a house and children-- and yet still, forever, be judged by your ethnicity. If the people you live around always consider you the "Outsider" and see you as little more than your stereotype, does it matter how much money you're making? What about trying to raise a family in that kind of environment?

Sure: the U.S.'s culture wars are by no means settled and racism can happen everywhere to anyone (especially to minorities). The difference here is how much xenophobia the society at large will tolerate. And in racially (mostly) homogeneous China, the meaningful conversations about how to integrate or assimilate new people are in dear short supply.

Further reading:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/mark-kitto-youll-...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/world/asia/a-disillusioned...

Re: Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

#46

Post by HiLo »

fsloth wrote: post #37
contingencies wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your secret server sauce could show up at another company with source code, documentation, comments and everything. If you rely on "secret server sauce", you are probably sunk anyway, since a half-decent reverse engineer can probably replicate your business just by looking at it as a black box system from a client's perspective. Many times they'll even use your logos and deliver a lesser product based on your brand n…

"a half-decent reverse engineer can probably replicate your business just by looking at it as a black box system " Think of a program with business logic spanning millions of lines, with intricate detail spent on lots of domain specific automation steps.

I'm actually at a bit of a loss for words that somebody thinks a business can be reverse engineered just by looking at it as a black box system. There are so many intricacies with cash flow forecasting and management alone, requiring deep understanding of each market's nuance and settlement mechanisms, simply to pay the bills. That's not even to get revenue in the door. Sorry, but most businesses aren't software programs, they're social systems and local contracts that were socially agreed upon to get something done in a politically acceptable way.

Re: Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

#47

Post by brazzledazzle »

fsloth wrote: post #37
contingencies wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your secret server sauce could show up at another company with source code, documentation, comments and everything. If you rely on "secret server sauce", you are probably sunk anyway, since a half-decent reverse engineer can probably replicate your business just by looking at it as a black box system from a client's perspective. Many times they'll even use your logos and deliver a lesser product based on your brand n…

"a half-decent reverse engineer can probably replicate your business just by looking at it as a black box system " Think of a program with business logic spanning millions of lines, with intricate detail spent on lots of domain specific automation steps.

Or even relatively small secret sauce that took thousands of iterations by geniuses. This guy seems to be asserting that Google may as well just give up because they need their algorithms to be secret.

At this point I can't help but think that he made an assertion based on a misconception (someone stealing your source code == someone stealing your idea) early in the thread and is just digging himself deeper trying to stick with it.

Re: Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

#48

Post by contingencies »

argonaut wrote: post #35
contingencies wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mechanical drawings, materials processes, and electrical designs that might have taken thousands of man-hours to develop, test, and refine are actually valuable Sure, but even these things are not valuable unless you can actually use them to start a successful rival business within a reasonable amount of time. In other words, if there are 10 idle factories tooled to copy your product for the same price or less and yo…

I think this is missing the forest for the trees. It is totally fine to tell people in China your idea. But the point is, your local employees might steal the execution as well. That is, they'll steal blueprints, designs, code. They'll poach other employees. They'll take with them knowledge of your suppliers, your buyers, your customers. And so on. In SV the common wisdom is that it's fine to tell people your ideas.…

Where did you get the idea "Evil Chinese want to steal all your goodies"? I am sitting here on the ground in China with actual experience getting things done, and you are someplace else making some ridiculous hand-waving assertions about the character of 1.4 billion people you've never met, and I am getting downvoted ridiculously. Thank god I don't live in the US: the arrogance, introversion and ignorance is absurd.

Re: Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

#49

Post by contingencies »

KJP191 wrote: post #34
contingencies wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China gives out green cards to foreigners who apply after they have stayed for something like 5-10 years paying taxes with a registered business. However, they are in practice also a lot more friendly about being in-country on random visas, happily provide extensions, and do not kick you out within 10 days under threat of imprisonment if a business-linked visa expires, like they do in the US.

This is not actually true. Although the conditions for permanent residence are pretty lenient on paper, they are hardly ever given out. Less than 5000 were issued in the 10 years to 2014 (in total, ie less than 500 per year). In practice it's FAR harder to get a Chinese green card than an American one. Also, many of those 5000 "foreigners" are actually the children of senior Chinese officials who have taken foreign c…

Everything I said is true. Everything you said is a tangent regarding numbers.

Re: Smaller Overseas Entrepreneurs Find China Too Frustrating

#50

Post by abandonliberty »

hitekker wrote: post #45

An overseas entrepreneur planning to go to China might refrain solely on the basis that she or he will never be "China" chinese. You can learn the language, adopt the customs, marry, have a house and children-- and yet still, forever, be judged by your ethnicity. If the people you live around always consider you the "Outsider" and see you as little more than your stereotype, does it matter how much money you're makin…

I have fond memories from Beijing where random patrons loudly and extensively scolded a clerk for not serving me in my (accented yet understandable) mandarin. Any foreigner who has spent enough time in China has been refused service even when speaking the local tongue and respecting local customs, but I've never heard of anyone else having a crowd of boisterous Beijingers come to their rescue ;)

In Vancouver, Canada, it's not uncommon to hear mainland Chinese refer to locals/non-Chinese as "laowai" among themselves (literally "alien" - an informal or slang term for "foreigner," possibly impolite). Some find a way to not speak survival-level English years after arrival, in spite of school and free education programs for new arrivals.

You may be confusing tolerance of xenophobia with the celebration and institutional support of it.

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