Amazon Quits China Market • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#251

Post by paganel » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 5:16 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #239

paganel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon has literally won everywhere else in the world I've mentioned it in another comment, too, but Amazon is not present in my Eastern European country (Romania), where Alibaba beats them by a large margin (even though they're also not officially launched here). I've just done a quick search and it seems Amazon is not winning it in Russia either, nor in Ukraine, to say nothing of India. As such, to say that they…

I’m a Romanian. What do you mean Alibaba is beating Amazon in România? I’d say that’s hyperbole. Neither of them are present here and if I were to guess judging by my own experience, I’d say that Amazon is still more popular. Do you have hard numbers? Of course neither of them hold a candle to the local eMag, but that’s only natural.

It’s hard to get hard numbers on this but in my circle of acquaintances “you can find it on Alibaba” and variations of this has become almost like a noun, like “I’m going to make a Xerox (i.e. a photocopy) of this paper”. I’ve never heard anything similar concerning Amazon. My acquaintances are mostly non/tech people, 25 to 35 years of age, from Bucharest. Emag is of course a totally different beast but I had chose to ignore it because it didn’t directly concerned the article.

Slightly OT, I’m also curious how come no analyst is mentioning FB marketplace as a competitor to Amazon.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#252

Post by echaozh » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 5:40 AM UTC

pesmhey wrote: post #204

rossdavidh wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't this been obvious for years? Like, centuries? No major power allows other nations, especially nations which are not close military allies, to dominate its economy. China acts in its own self-interest, as does...every other nation in the history of the planet which is able to. The U.K., the U.S., or any other major economic power, will not allow its economy to be dominated by companies from countries that it do…

Schneider Electric has a fairly large presence in the US...to what I can imagine is a huge benefit to both Europe and the US. Bosch, VW (let’s forget the scandal for a minute)... This goes beyond so much more than this particular article. The ‘western’ world is building a global civilization, and it seems like anyone is invited if you play by the rules. All of the China doves over the last 3 decades probably thought…

Yeah, you play by rules, as long as it benefits you. Why does US so strongly advocate banning of Huawei devices, in the whole world? You say Huawei may have backdoors, but who don't? And Huawei may be the cleanest as it just "may", while the other competitors have a history of "do".

The slogan "America First" doesn't sound so globalistic. And playing by rules is definitely not before America, which is first.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#253

Post by Sutanreyu » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 5:42 AM UTC

Should be obvious... Amazon has become a peddler of goods manufactured in China, at inflated prices. Why would they pay more for the things they can get cheaper locally?

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#254

Post by benzheren » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 5:43 AM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #137

contingencies wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never used z.cn but saw a few neighbours ordering from them in Shenzhen. Probably recent tech books in English I guess. I did try AWS in China and it was absolutely shocking . Clearly they never prioritized China and the inevitable happened. I run a business in China, it's not easy but it's interesting.

AWS in China is not run by AWS: "To provide the best experience for customers in China and to comply with China’s legal and regulatory requirements, AWS has collaborated with China local partners with proper telecom licenses for delivering cloud services. The service operator and provider for AWS China (Beijing) Region based out of Beijing and adjacent areas is Beijing Sinnet Technology Co., Ltd. (Sinnet), and the se…

As an active user of AWS China, let me tell you that don't take those words at face value. AWS China business actually is growing really fast for past several years.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#255

Post by echaozh » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 5:50 AM UTC

mahranch wrote: post #174

tekkk wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the evidence in this case seems to be against this statement (Amazon indeed offered worse service than competitors) I think it is otherwise valid. Chinese are really driven to become the world's superpower number 1 and give no quarter to Western companies trying to establish themselves in China. So the big dilemma is, do we let them? Or more precisely, do we as the outside world let Chinese stifle all the forei…

> Chinese culture of copy-catting freely doesn't help. The problem with that, is that it's a vicious circle. Innovation is the foundation for future innovations. It builds on itself. It lays the groundwork and foundation for what comes next. By leapfrogging and cheating its way to the top (or near the top) they are sacrificing that crucial infrastructure for future discoveries and innovations. China has to copy & ste…

I wonder if this comment is racist. China never was and is not the least innovative countries on Earth. The Chinese internet companies are micro-innovating at a speed no country in the world can compete.

Let's say this, the counterparts of Facebook and Twitter has already fallen or on its way to fall out of favor in China because people found more interesting ways to waste their time and find useless information. Soon, you will find Facebook and Twitter doing the same, and in that order.

Sites and apps surviving the Chinese market are the real winners, and those who cannot will fail in other countries too. That is the power of a large enough testbed.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#256

Post by echaozh » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #215

tanilama wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Apple's competitor is cheaper...literally 40%-50% of its price, if you are talking about Xiaomi/Vivo/Oppo. Those are decent phones, not as premium but offer great experience. 2. > Boeing or Airbus get a significant lead over each other in their controlling market Isn't that the smart thing to do? Government ALWAYS chooses multiple vendors, DARPA wants to use AWS as its sole cloud computing provider and it gets SUE…

The conversation has drifted. It's not about whether you see a problem. It's just how things are done in China where the government has total control over the market unlike many other countries and the US. Amazon couldn't compete because it was not allowed to compete.

So buying from Airbus instead of Boeing is an act now to allow Boeing to compete? So do you or do I have a wrong understanding of the word "compete"?

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#257

Post by HeavenFox » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 5:58 AM UTC

Cookingboy wrote: post #223

seemuch wrote: post #220

The discussion in this thread shows how blind people are about China's development. They are pointing fingers to the Chinese government partly because they simply cannot imagine how much better the China competitors are. The US do have some advantages in the IT industry, but that advantage is getting slimmer and slimmer. In fact, in so many ways, people in China are enjoying much better services from the internet com…

Seriously, Alibaba's e-commerce side operates at a scale that makes Amazon's entire North America (if not global) operation look like a 7/11 store hosted on Geocities. Last year on Single Day alone, Alibaba handled over $30B in orders with 24 hours, and more impressively those are spread over 1,000,000,000 separate deliveries orders. It means it handled the ordering and payment processing of 11,574 orders per second…

While it is an impressive technological feat indeed, note that Alibaba doesn’t handle their own logistics. It’s more like eBay where the sellers are supposed to fulfill their own orders.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#258

Post by profalseidol » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

stone-monkey wrote: post #244

thetechlead wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just in e-commerce, the convenience living in China has far passed America, such as in mobile payment, food delivery, bike sharing, WeChat with its tremendously useful ecosystem, the subway system, high-speed rails, etc. Having lived in both China and America, I have to say the living standard in Chinese cities has passed America's in many ways and, more importantly, the speed of China building new facilities is…

Food delivery and bike sharing work well in China because of the scale of the cities and lower cost of living. When you have millions of people densely packed together, dumping a ton of bikes everywhere may be feasible. Even then, there's known issues, like how currently the biggest bike vendors are struggling for profitability. Food delivery is occasionally cheaper than buying at the store, due to VC style subsidies…

One should try to find out why the cost of labor is lower than in the US.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#259

Post by profalseidol » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

product50 wrote: post #32

Amazon has literally won everywhere else in the world. But in China they were slow at execution? Does this read right to you? Or maybe there is a regulatory angle which no one is talking about because...China.

> Amazon has literally won everywhere else in the world.

Amerikan exceptionalism! In my country, Amazon doesn't even exist. And we use several different ones. The song "We're all living in Amerika" doesn't apply anymore you know?

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#260

Post by manigandham » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 6:09 AM UTC

echaozh wrote: post #252

pesmhey wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schneider Electric has a fairly large presence in the US...to what I can imagine is a huge benefit to both Europe and the US. Bosch, VW (let’s forget the scandal for a minute)... This goes beyond so much more than this particular article. The ‘western’ world is building a global civilization, and it seems like anyone is invited if you play by the rules. All of the China doves over the last 3 decades probably thought…

Yeah, you play by rules, as long as it benefits you. Why does US so strongly advocate banning of Huawei devices, in the whole world? You say Huawei may have backdoors, but who don't? And Huawei may be the cleanest as it just "may", while the other competitors have a history of "do". The slogan "America First" doesn't sound so globalistic. And playing by rules is definitely not before America, which is first.

>> Huawei may have backdoors, but who don't?

Apple doesn't. The American company.