Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

recode.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 161 posts

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#151

Post by [deleted] »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #139
bbody wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying that their policy is good or that I agree with it. I just think there are two sides to the picture. Many countries have protectionist policies, in particular in the automotive industry. The United States even had limits on Chinese parts imports[1]. China had an interesting policy to allow its automotive industry to grow through joint ventures with foreign companies (e.g. Hyundai[2]). They have done so…

I'm aware that protectionism is rampant around the world and that the US does it too. I also oppose that and believe US protectionism harms US consumers.

[deleted]

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#152

Post by yummyfajitas »

contravert wrote: post #148
yummyfajitas wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does China actually gain from this? For the government the answer is clear: locally situated companies that they have total control over. WeChat will obviously never pull a Google style "encrypt all the things" - they'll happily help the state reduce the credit scores of political dissidents and anyone who is friends with them. For politically connected cronies (e.g. WeChat owners), the answer is also clear. But…

China doesn't want to end up like Europe, which has no major Internet companies of its own on the same level as Google or Facebook. There has been immense political consequences and soul searching in the EU, and they are trying to push a single digital market concept to better compete against American firms. However, it remains to be seen how effective this strategy will be.

How does it benefit a Chinese or a frenchie if apps are provided to them by another frenchie, as opposed to by a foreigner?

Would I benefit if I received a haircut or transportation from a white man or an American as opposed to a Marathi?

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#153

Post by dputtick »

IsaacL wrote: post #99
dilemma wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As it was explained to me... If you want to do business in China and you're not a citizen, you damn-well need to find one to start a Chinese business which can transact with you formally. If you want to scale your business and you don't have a midlevel member of the Communist Party running your HR department, you damn-well need to find one who can drink baijiu with the right people. If you want to scale your busine…

What's a fishing story? I haven't heard that phrase. Anyway, yeah, it's funny how often you meet experts on Chinese business who haven't actually done business in China but can go into elaborate detail about why it's a bad idea. I met lots of Western entrepreneurs out there - there are tons of foreigners running bars, restaurants, outsourcing firms , language schools, etc without much hassle from the government. You…

I'm guessing fishing story == a huge exaggeration.

As in, when you catch a normal sized fish and then go home and tell your friends about the massive fish you caught and how it put up a fight for two hours.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#154

Post by gbog »

golergka wrote: post #121
gbog wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why only military infrastructure? Image a war between, say the USA and Russia, and imagine that the USA manages to shut down or cripple all Windows machines in Russia, this will probably put the enemy on the kneels, even more than weeks of airstrikes. And it may also be better PR as it do not directly "kill" anyone. I have always thought that Microsoft holding 95% of PCs in the world is extremely dangerous, and can't…

Because unlike oil, computers running on different OS create difficulties for users and developers. Apart from the point of national security, I think it's reasonable to assume that in an alternative world, where 20 operating systems competed on desktop market with more-or-less equal market shares, everybody would suffer from neverending compatibility problems, we would have worse applications, a lot of businesses wo…

20 different operating systems would have shown the necessity of a common open protocol for the filesystem being it, and would have given much more space to creativity on the computer.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#155

Post by x5n1 »

Drakim wrote: post #146
[deleted] wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I don't want a world where my birthplace decides what news outlets I may read (can't have a non-local news source spill the beans!), what services I can use (use our local email variant, the government has approved it!), what products I may buy (special imported legally at only x20 markup after governmental approval). I see myself as a citizen of the world, and I don't want to be put into a tiny nationalistic box as…

There are many wants such as the want to be able to move to wherever or get a job wherever. The fact is that there are serious impositions of limited mobility on everyone as it is. You can't just become an American citizen because you want that, why should have some sort of birthright to use their products for the benefit of their economy and their country. Does it not make sense to shore up the economic systems of your own country?

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#156

Post by bx_ »

50CNT wrote: post #145
bx_ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Kylin and not Xubuntu or Lubuntu?

Well, the OS I'm running is Ubuntu, and Kylin is "Ubuntu for China", with fcitx set up for Chinese already, and a separate Software Center that has a delightful page that shows Linux alternatives for Windows software. Haven't quite gotten around to playing with other linux distros to be honest.

Interesting. The Chinese devs I work with hate Kylin (probably because it's approved by the Party) and seem to really prefer other Chinese-created variants, particularly Lubuntu and Xubuntu. I've got no experience with Kylin, so it's interesting to hear these points.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#157

Post by tluyben2 »

voxic11 wrote: post #134
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bing is not that bad as far as useful dev results go. I still use google at work (I'm an MS China employee) but Bing is perfectly reasonable at home, especially compared to the huge pile of crap that Baidu is. Didi is great if you can speak a bit of Chinese. I've had a decade of perfecting my taxi driver Chinese though (since I seem to only use Chinese to talk to taxi drivers these days). YouTube is still way better…

Bing is really reasonable for dev search results. Honestly not sure if the people bashing it have ever tried it for that purpose.

I have in China and it's not compared to Google. My colleagues there are missing a ton of efficiency because of it. When I switch on the VPN (which mostly does not actually work otherwise it would stay on) and use Google, we work far faster and more efficient. I can even find datasheets which are only in Chinese faster on Google than they can on Bing.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#158

Post by tluyben2 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #150
simlevesque wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet the MS employee has tried it for that purpose. He still uses Google at work.

I'm a researcher, Google still has benefits in that area. For dev, Bing brings up about the same information that Google does. And it is hard to tell the difference these days. I also resent not being able to use google at home, so I like using it at work.

> And it is hard to tell the difference these days.

For dev results or? Because that's simply not true. Try finding things like knitting/wool shops in Shanghai on the Chinese Bing and on Google. You won't be getting any knitting done if you use Bing; all the hits you get there are closed many many years ago. There are many other examples from daily life which we encounter when in China; we're going there in a few weeks again and i'll jot down the differences then; there is an awful lot which you simply cannot find in Bing while it's in the top hits in Google. We might search for different things but 'hard to tell the difference' is really just weird to say.

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#159

Post by turingbook »

igravious wrote: post #49
turingbook wrote: post #22

Native Beijing guy here. I'd like to answer any question about the city or the startup ecosystem.

Is Beijing the biggest tech hub in China? Silicon Valley is really a long corridor of tech between two cities, SF and San Jose. Is there something similar in China? Would you say that China has multiple tech hot spots or is Beijing it? Is Beijing more like New York in this respect? Do you see what I'm driving at?

Beijing is absolutely the counterpart of Silicon Valley in China with similar area and much bigger population. Although two of big old three (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) is located outside of Beijing, most Internet companies especially new stars such as Didi, Meituan-Dianping, Xiaomi are all here.

Beijing has two tech hot spots now: [Zhongguancun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhongguancun) and [Wangjing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wangjing_Subdistrict).

Re: Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

#160

Post by turingbook »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #52
igravious wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Beijing the biggest tech hub in China? Silicon Valley is really a long corridor of tech between two cities, SF and San Jose. Is there something similar in China? Would you say that China has multiple tech hot spots or is Beijing it? Is Beijing more like New York in this respect? Do you see what I'm driving at?

Beijing is more like the DC area, but even then the comparison is flimsy. As a long time Beijing resident, I would say Shenzhen and Shanghai have more to offer. Beijing's importance is mostly driven by the government.

Beijing's importance is not driven mainly by the government (although open-mindedness of the government definitely contributed to this), but by the ecosystem: best universities (Peking University and Tsinghua University among dozens of others) and best research institutions (the Chinese Academy of Sciences and research centers of big companies), most big VCs, IT communities/media, and most important, entrepreneurs.

In Beijing, if you have time, you can attend some interesting IT meetup everyday. It is what you can not see in Shanghai or Shenzhen.

Talk to somebody in Shanghai or Shenzhen startup community. You will have the insights.

Post reply on HN