Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the reasons US-based startups grow so quickly is that the ones with traction here tap into a (relatively) homogeneous 300+ million market. A Chinese company with similar market share potential has tapped into about 4X that market. Growth rate is much faster in such a market, as opposed to global growth that has to deal with diverse sources of friction (e.g. Uber's challenges in London, Paris, etc. vs in the US…
I'm curious about how much of the considerable Chinese population is actually available to market tech products to. Something tells me comparing the populations straight up is misleading.
We did ethnographic research on smartphone usage in China back when I used to work for Intel, back in 2007. Even then, smartphone usage had penetrated the least educated segments. Blue-collar workers living six to a room were heavy users of smartphones, some were heavy gamers.
The percentage of their income they spent on technology and entertainment was more than in the West. The growth rate was also amazing.