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Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

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Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#61

Post by seanmcdirmid »

argonaut wrote: post #57
Hondor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear if many of these things are good or bad or if they're any worse than silicon valley. I wouldn't count any of them as serious obstacles for Beijing tech success. Focused on the local market. I often run into SV companies that I'd like to use as a customer but can't because they only serve America. Either because of IP restrictions, money transfer, shipping, or they just haven't figured out other countri…

You're rebutting almost all of seanmcdirmid's arguments by essentially saying "it's not a problem because some SV startups/companies do it too." But: 1) You don't become the next Silicon Valley through cargo-cult entrepreneurship. 2) SV is successful in spite of those things, not because of it, because SV is starting from a position of strength and inertia. SV succeeds in spite of its current problems because of the…

what-about-isms are pretty standard rebuttals to any criticism on China these days. I just got used to it :).

After the air gets cleaned up housing bubble pops, it could become a really cool place for startups. But those fixes come first; China cannot fix its problems by encouraging tech startups first.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#62

Post by argonaut »

chw9e wrote: post #56
api wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been told that the great firewall is actually more about protectionism than censorship. They know they can't really contain information, but they can block or degrade foreign services to favor their own. Of course this does serve a state censorship and surveillance agenda indirectly since home grown services can be more easily controlled. As much as I can't stand Trump and could never vote for him, I do think he…

Chinese social media and search platforms employee loads of people to only censor information. If any of the Western companies tried to match the level of censorship required it would dramatically increase costs of operation. If Facebook or Google agreed to censor their content to the degree that Chinese companies do, I believe they could operate in China. Google and Facebook claim to be morally opposed to censoring…

1. You're conveniently ignoring the fact that Google did self-censor from 2005 to 2009. So the idea that it's "too expensive" being the reason is just FUD. Unsubstantiated speculation.

2. The question about whether or not Facebook/Google will succeed today is more misdirection. The real question is whether Google would have succeeded 11 years ago, and whether Facebook would have succeeded 7-8 years ago, because that's when they would have entered the market.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#63

Post by argonaut »

bnegreve wrote: post #55
api wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been told that the great firewall is actually more about protectionism than censorship. They know they can't really contain information, but they can block or degrade foreign services to favor their own. Of course this does serve a state censorship and surveillance agenda indirectly since home grown services can be more easily controlled. As much as I can't stand Trump and could never vote for him, I do think he…

Interesting point, but to be fair China is not the only one to find ways to implement protectionism. The F35 program or even Nasa contracting SpaceX could be seen as examples of the US implementing some level of protectionism.

Every nation has protectionism. Every single one. What's important is the degree of protectionism. So pointing out examples of a nation engaging in protectionism contributes little to the discussion unless you compare it to other nations.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#64

Post by sandGorgon »

jasim wrote: post #51
sandGorgon wrote: post #45

the title is clickbait. If we are looking at Asia then India is the more relevant competitor. With a huge Valley-returned entrepreneur community as well as being open for Silicon Valley to do business, I am betting that India will grow faster. Indeed Ola and Flipkart's senior management comes from Facebook and Google at this point ... and were forced to innovate faster and harder when Amazon and Uber entered India. T…

Valley-returned entrepreneur community doesn't mean anything in terms of innovation. App-powered logistics companies are no longer innovative; the wave was in the realization that commerce can be driven through smartphones and the internet, and that logistics can be massively improved by a combination of location-aware devices with abundant cheap labour from under-privileged population (not a value judgement). We are…

That is where you are wrong. There is already fundamental work happening around vernacular linguistics, robotics (especially Grey Orange) and fintech.

People misunderstand how much technology needs to be built to be able to reconcile something like cash on delivery.

We are definitely far away from valley level innovation, but having people germinate the ecosystem with management styles and culture is extremely important.

What is fundamentally broken is somewhere else - the investor ecosystem. Indian investors are young, barely out of college and are professional MBAs without a lot of experience in a startup. It is very hard to explain the value of technical debt, innovation etc...when we can chase copycat business models without innovation. It's been extremely hard finding bthe right culture fit in investors. Combine that with the fact that most entrepreneurs have not become billionaires in India...so you don't have that savvy, experienced angel investors with deep pockets (the Paul Grahams or the Peter Thiels of India).

That is what needs fixing. China already has a couple of Jack Ma who are being the second wave of investors.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#65

Post by bnegreve »

argonaut wrote: post #63
bnegreve wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point, but to be fair China is not the only one to find ways to implement protectionism. The F35 program or even Nasa contracting SpaceX could be seen as examples of the US implementing some level of protectionism.

Every nation has protectionism. Every single one . What's important is the degree of protectionism . So pointing out examples of a nation engaging in protectionism contributes little to the discussion unless you compare it to other nations.

Every nation has protectionism.

Yes, that's my point. Not every one agrees with this and GGP's comment doesn't mention this fact.

So pointing out examples [..] contributes little to the discussion.

It adds examples of US protectionism so you can compare them with the ones from China that were mentioned before. Hopefully, this contributes to a more objective point of view. Why do I need to justify this?

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#66

Post by uola »

api wrote: post #8
supster wrote: post #4

It must help Chinese startups that many SV companies are blocked from competing in China. For example no competition from Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Youtube, Gmail, Dropbox, Vimeo, SoundCloud... more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...

I've been told that the great firewall is actually more about protectionism than censorship. They know they can't really contain information, but they can block or degrade foreign services to favor their own. Of course this does serve a state censorship and surveillance agenda indirectly since home grown services can be more easily controlled. As much as I can't stand Trump and could never vote for him, I do think he…

Europe has done pretty much everything the US wants, from spying on our citizens to foreign companies paying little to no tax. All you hear these days is how lame Europe is because we don't have a Facebook and how we should all move to the overpriced small town of SV. China doesn't only have a Facebook, it has a Google, an Amazon and an Uber. Which are in many ways surpassing their US counterparts. Since when was trade ever fair? I think the bigger thing here is just that China isn't in the US sphere of influence in terms of politics, but also in terms of culture and it's treating them quite well.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#67

Post by sangnoir »

argonaut wrote: post #63
bnegreve wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point, but to be fair China is not the only one to find ways to implement protectionism. The F35 program or even Nasa contracting SpaceX could be seen as examples of the US implementing some level of protectionism.

Every nation has protectionism. Every single one . What's important is the degree of protectionism . So pointing out examples of a nation engaging in protectionism contributes little to the discussion unless you compare it to other nations.

> What's important is the degree of protectionism

The US complaining about China's protectionism is hypocritical. Let's talk about America's farm subsidies. How is that not competing unfairly? It leads to American agricultural produce being dumped on foreign markets at subsidized prices, destroying entire countries' agricultural base. What would you say is the degree of protectionism here?

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#68

Post by argonaut »

sangnoir wrote: post #67
argonaut wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every nation has protectionism. Every single one . What's important is the degree of protectionism . So pointing out examples of a nation engaging in protectionism contributes little to the discussion unless you compare it to other nations.

> What's important is the degree of protectionism The US complaining about China's protectionism is hypocritical. Let's talk about America's farm subsidies. How is that not competing unfairly? It leads to American agricultural produce being dumped on foreign markets at subsidized prices, destroying entire countries' agricultural base. What would you say is the degree of protectionism here?

I'll just repeat my extremely short comment:

> pointing out examples of a nation engaging in protectionism contributes little to the discussion unless you compare it to other nations.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#69

Post by argonaut »

bnegreve wrote: post #65
argonaut wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every nation has protectionism. Every single one . What's important is the degree of protectionism . So pointing out examples of a nation engaging in protectionism contributes little to the discussion unless you compare it to other nations.

Every nation has protectionism. Yes, that's my point. Not every one agrees with this and GGP's comment doesn't mention this fact. So pointing out examples [..] contributes little to the discussion. It adds examples of US protectionism so you can compare them with the ones from China that were mentioned before. Hopefully, this contributes to a more objective point of view. Why do I need to justify this?

Because China's space program and defense industry are protected as well. So if we're really going to try to decide whether China or the US are more protectionist than the other, in that comparison the examples cancel each other out. All you've done is add examples to both sides of the balance beam.

And we're still left with examples of Chinese internet industry protectionism.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#70

Post by igravious »

igravious wrote: post #47

Interesting article but I feel it's light on actual hard data comparisons. One fact is wrong though. > Startups can achieve massive scale quickly, because the domestic market is 1.3 billion people, which is four times the U.S. or European population. I don't know what definition of Europe (Western maybe?) gives you 300 million people. Demographically Wikipedia says Europe had 70 million people in 210 so presumably it…

Aaargh. That 70 should read 740 :( 740 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe

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