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What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

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Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#41

Post by dengnan »

itchitawa wrote: post #31
dengnan wrote: post #20

To those who are interested in startups in China: I personally know some people who worked on start ups in China. From their experience, I see no hope for start ups without connection with government. I will show you some facts and some real examples here. Here are some basic facts: Chinese government controls Internet content tightly . Note that it is not the same level as NSA's surveillance. NSA's surveillance is b…

MegaUpload, Silk Road shut down by US government. Piracy, drugs, child porn, online gambling. These are things Americans feel are OK to silence. Inciting violence (they have deadly anti-government riots), destabilizing the government. These are things Chinese feel are OK to silence. Different stokes for different folks. In either case you need enough staff to monitor for such illegal content.

Well. According to Ugly duckling theorem[0], any classification algorithm is biased. It's not about finding an unbiased system, it's about which side should be preferred by the system. Specific to the discussion about network surveillance, it's about which group of people should be protected: The mass majority or the minor elite/politicians.

If we have limited resources to control speech, I would argue that those resources should be mainly used on to government/politicians. Because they have much more power over the others.

Piracy, drugs, child porn, online gambling, blocking these things online is supposedly by the people through direct or indirect votes. (NOTE: I'm not talking about the facts in the U.S. or any country. I'm talking about how things should work.) The things blocked in China, on the other hand, are only decided by the government, not the people.

> In either case you need enough staff to monitor for such illegal content.

Until there's a clear definition of "illegal". As I mentioned, Chinese government can shutdown any website at their will, without any warranty. No need to say that the government is not voted by the people, which by itself is illegal.

0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_duckling_theorem

EDIT 1: add another graph to clarify my point.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#42

Post by marme »

digitalzombie wrote: post #9

I would love to see the down sides. It feels like he's on his honeymoon stage with the country. I know of a few downsides but the current article make it seems like a tech paradise. * pollutions * the # of people graduating college doesn't imply that the quality of education in China is the same as USA. I've heard stories and my ex went to China to study abroad and cheating is rampant. It's mostly rote learning. * th…

absolutely never buy chinese stocks, especially on the chinese stock markets. They all, every last one of them lie on their balance sheets. There is no morality in chinese business world, people will cheat their own family members to make some quick money, literally cheat their brothers, cousins etc. Insider trading is rampant, especially pump and dump schemes. There is virtually no regulation for insider trading and the few regulators that exist are easily paid off to turn a blind eye to what is going on. Unless you personally know an executive in the company you should not invest in any chinese company

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#43

Post by 1stop »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #25
WaterSponge wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I think the world understands that doing business in china requires some special attention. Despite all of that they are doing business in China. Serious dollars are being made and value being delivered to millions of users. We should want in on that or to at least have some understanding of how its being done in comparison to US/EU.

You assume the Chinese market is free, which it is not. The barriers are high, and the government just doesn't want you getting in on the business.

The last 30 years of Chinese economic growth (fuelled by foreign investment) disagrees with you.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#44

Post by 1stop »

caprad wrote: post #19
digitalzombie wrote: post #9

I would love to see the down sides. It feels like he's on his honeymoon stage with the country. I know of a few downsides but the current article make it seems like a tech paradise. * pollutions * the # of people graduating college doesn't imply that the quality of education in China is the same as USA. I've heard stories and my ex went to China to study abroad and cheating is rampant. It's mostly rote learning. * th…

All of the amazing websites and apps created here are just copies of other apps, localized for China. I don't see this as anything to be too proud off, creating the apps isn't hard, and china has a huge number of people so you have that going for you. Show us were China is innovating, that is where the real story is.

- WeChat (On all smartphones and old java shitty ones too)... Tencent in general.

- BYD

- taobao

These are all innovative companies (one with Warren Buffet backing them).

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#45

Post by jotm »

caprad wrote: post #19
digitalzombie wrote: post #9

I would love to see the down sides. It feels like he's on his honeymoon stage with the country. I know of a few downsides but the current article make it seems like a tech paradise. * pollutions * the # of people graduating college doesn't imply that the quality of education in China is the same as USA. I've heard stories and my ex went to China to study abroad and cheating is rampant. It's mostly rote learning. * th…

All of the amazing websites and apps created here are just copies of other apps, localized for China. I don't see this as anything to be too proud off, creating the apps isn't hard, and china has a huge number of people so you have that going for you. Show us were China is innovating, that is where the real story is.

They have a lot of existing and potential users. Roughly three times more than the US. And the thing is that there will come a point where they'll go from copying to actually innovating, just like Japan and South Korea did.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#46

Post by turingbook »

dengnan wrote: post #20

To those who are interested in startups in China: I personally know some people who worked on start ups in China. From their experience, I see no hope for start ups without connection with government. I will show you some facts and some real examples here. Here are some basic facts: Chinese government controls Internet content tightly . Note that it is not the same level as NSA's surveillance. NSA's surveillance is b…

The stories you told are true but just tell one side of things.

On the other side, nowadays big companies such as Sina, Tencent, 163(Netease formally) you mentioned and Alibaba, Baidu, among others all grew up from small startups without government connections at the beginning.

And more and more new startups are founded everyday, some of which will be very successful, just as in USA. Qunar and 58.com are the newest ones with market value of more than 3 bilion dollars.

As for content-based business, there are still room for startups. We have seen several new technology news websites emerging these days. Even user-generated content business is possible if you avoid risky political discussion.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#47

Post by robbiep »

alaskamiller wrote: post #30
digitalzombie wrote: post #9

I would love to see the down sides. It feels like he's on his honeymoon stage with the country. I know of a few downsides but the current article make it seems like a tech paradise. * pollutions * the # of people graduating college doesn't imply that the quality of education in China is the same as USA. I've heard stories and my ex went to China to study abroad and cheating is rampant. It's mostly rote learning. * th…

http://www.vice.com/vice-special/ant-and-rat-tribes-in-beiji... http://unitedphotoindustries.com/exhibitions/rat-tribe/ China is a dystopic nightmare for the poor and greenzone dreamland for the rich. It's also the future. With generations of population growth, it will be the only country that can manage the crowded future.

With generations of population growth, it will be the only country that can manage the crowded future.

Sorry, it's not clear to me what you mean. Do you mean with generations of population growth to come? But then what does that mean?

The truth is that China will gentrify so rapidly over the next 40 years (whole population aging and a generation of strict family planning resulting in too few to replace them), that if China wasn't industrialising and becoming wealthy as fast as it is, it would be destined to the 'has beens' of history due to an inability to care for it's aging.

India is the real future. An extremely young population, with an (arguably) high level of education, which will provide workers for the factories of the world once China is all out of cheap labour both through economic growth and population aging.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#48

Post by marme »

All those numbers are very misleading. China has shit load of college grads because 90% of the universities are just diploma mills that you put in 4 years and you get your degree, there is almost no way to fail out. Most of those graduates cant even find jobs because they know nothing when they graduate.

The chinese stock market is a joke, there is little regulation, insider trading and pump and dump schemes are rampant.

All those apps have lots of user but many of them are bots. Companies will use bots to self promote and repost their shit. I have a weibo and have maybe 4 or 5 posts over the last year and have around a 1,000 follower almost all are bots who just repost everything i have posted. They are used to boost other people follower count to make them seem more popular and gain more legit followers, people call them zombies, they will follow random people just to make themselves seem more legit and not get deleted by the system.

The biggest hurdle in china is regulation. The Didi app got shutdown last year because they were allowing people to add tips to their request for taxi, i.e. you would say i need to go to x location i will give you 5 dollars extra if you are here in 5 minutes. This was declared illegal as taxi prices are set by the government and tipping the driver is considered an illegal bribe. They had to remove this feature before they were allowed to continue operation but it took weeks of them negotiating with the government before they could go back online. Apps like Momo are filled with hookers soliciting guys and other illicit activity.

Google play is actually not banned in china. It is just not the default app store for android phones and many providers have disabled the ability to install the play store on their phones. But if you have a compatible phone it works just fine. There may be so money being paid by other apps stores like baidu to make sure the google play store is hard to use in china.

This article is look at things with rose colored glasses. Things are not that great for startups in china. In fact if you dont have a large bank roll or good government connection chances are your chinese startup will be shutdown by some form of government intervention since the internet is so heavily regulated almost everything you do on the internet required special permission from the government

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#50

Post by seanmcdirmid »

1stop wrote: post #43
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume the Chinese market is free, which it is not. The barriers are high, and the government just doesn't want you getting in on the business.

The last 30 years of Chinese economic growth (fuelled by foreign investment) disagrees with you.

The Chinese are totally ok with taking our foreign money (or HK, Taiwan), they just don't want us to get rich off of it (at least very easily). The economy is still very protectionist and you have to be very careful when investing here; many industries are just completely off limits and even those that are left open are often hobbled by protectionist ownership rules (e.g. 51% must be owned by a well connected Chinese company).
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