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What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

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Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#51

Post by Gigablah »

WaterSponge wrote: post #4

With those huge user bases for these Chinese sites how come we don't get much feedback on the web about there scaling issues and challenges? What platforms are these massive sites built on? as they seem to dwarf the US darlings we regularly discuss on HN. Where can I find the Chinese dev and admin forums and read via google translate? Thx

Check out Tengine, it's a fork of nginx made by the Taobao engineers. They also contribute back to nginx.

Couple of links to mailing lists, presentations, papers, etc on that page.

http://tengine.taobao.org/

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#52

Post by alaskamiller »

robbiep wrote: post #47
alaskamiller wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 has Africa.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#53

Post by turingbook »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #34
turingbook wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GFW did do something but can not explain everything. China Internet companies have their own advantages: local leaders can make agile decisions to local market need, employees are more motivated, the management structure is flatter... For example, ecommerce was not regulated much here, but Amazon and eBay were beat heavily by local competitors.

This is quite ridiculous. If the GFW didn't block Facebook or Twitter, they would have market shares in the mainland similar to those that they have in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Chinese Internet companies are still quite Confucian in their organization with meaningless titles and lots of seniority plays; they are hardly flatter than the typical American internet company. Many of them still rely on freaking time cards for…

>If the GFW didn't block Facebook or Twitter, they would have market shares in the mainland similar to those that they have in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

They would have some market shares but not very much, just like Amazon.com is a small player and one of few foreign survivors in China although I also like its service. In the past, MSN messenger, Yahoo, Google, eBay, MySpace, to name a few, all failed in competition with local China players. That is not by chance.

As for management, the biggest problem of foreign companies is that decisions especially critical ones are always made in USA, which is normally slow and ignorant. And founders and top guys in China companies(still very young at their 20s or 30s) like Pony Ma at Tencent and Robin Li at Baidu can directly attention the specifics of key products or services even at pixel level.

Who will win?

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#54

Post by seanmcdirmid »

turingbook wrote: post #53
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite ridiculous. If the GFW didn't block Facebook or Twitter, they would have market shares in the mainland similar to those that they have in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Chinese Internet companies are still quite Confucian in their organization with meaningless titles and lots of seniority plays; they are hardly flatter than the typical American internet company. Many of them still rely on freaking time cards for…

>If the GFW didn't block Facebook or Twitter, they would have market shares in the mainland similar to those that they have in Hong Kong and Taiwan. They would have some market shares but not very much, just like Amazon.com is a small player and one of few foreign survivors in China although I also like its service. In the past, MSN messenger, Yahoo, Google, eBay, MySpace, to name a few, all failed in competition wit…

> They would have some market shares but not very much, just like Amazon.com is a small player and one of few foreign survivors in China although I also like its service. In the past, MSN messenger, Yahoo, Google, eBay, MySpace, to name a few, all failed in competition with local China players.

Then why doesn't the CCP just unblock twitter, facebook, g+, and so on? I have a hard time to believe its for reasons of porn (easy to find in the GFW) or subversion (also easy to find in the GFW). And how do you explain Facebook's success in HK and Taiwan? People outside of China just being afraid of Chinese services? That could make sense...

> As for management, the biggest problem of foreign companies is that decisions especially critical ones are always made in USA, which is normally slow and ignorant.

The biggest problem is that we can't play very well at all in the market. First, foreign companies have to follow all the rules very strictly: local companies have the ability to be "flexible" until (and if!) the government cracks down; they also don't have to deal with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The lawyers of most foreign companies also won't go near ambiguous China privacy and secrecy laws with a 100 ft. pole, meaning anything that deals with data or communication inside the GFW absolutely requires a local partner (say TomTom).

I have friends who worked or are working for local companies, and they tell stories of extreme shadiness. These are not even small no-name companies, but companies you've probably heard of before; I won't name names since the foreign community that works in these companies is very small. They work very hard, but the market is cut throat and they do what they need to do to survive.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#55

Post by turingbook »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #54
turingbook wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the GFW didn't block Facebook or Twitter, they would have market shares in the mainland similar to those that they have in Hong Kong and Taiwan. They would have some market shares but not very much, just like Amazon.com is a small player and one of few foreign survivors in China although I also like its service. In the past, MSN messenger, Yahoo, Google, eBay, MySpace, to name a few, all failed in competition wit…

> They would have some market shares but not very much, just like Amazon.com is a small player and one of few foreign survivors in China although I also like its service. In the past, MSN messenger, Yahoo, Google, eBay, MySpace, to name a few, all failed in competition with local China players. Then why doesn't the CCP just unblock twitter, facebook, g+, and so on? I have a hard time to believe its for reasons of por…

＞Then why doesn't the CCP just unblock twitter, facebook, g+, and so on?

It seems that you believe China government helped local players succeed. That is not true in general. The private local Internet companies are not the government's child. They are mostly controlled by foreign investors.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#56

Post by seanmcdirmid »

turingbook wrote: post #55
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They would have some market shares but not very much, just like Amazon.com is a small player and one of few foreign survivors in China although I also like its service. In the past, MSN messenger, Yahoo, Google, eBay, MySpace, to name a few, all failed in competition with local China players. Then why doesn't the CCP just unblock twitter, facebook, g+, and so on? I have a hard time to believe its for reasons of por…

＞Then why doesn't the CCP just unblock twitter, facebook, g+, and so on? It seems that you believe China government helped local players succeed. That is not true in general. The private local Internet companies are not the government's child. They are mostly controlled by foreign investors.

The CCP likes companies they can control, whether there are foreign investors or not. This is especially important since the rule of law isn't so developed in China and often directives go through non-legal channels, which Google couldn't deal with while Baidu has no problem with it. Both of these companies are listed on the Nasdaq, but one is controlled by Americans and the other by Chinese.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#57

Post by taproot »

philosophus wrote: post #29
random9dude wrote: post #24

Is it just me or HN users are shitting their pants after knowing that China is bigger than US on some aspects

I think it's that much of his evidence doesn't really prove anything. Example: "Weibo is like Twitter, except bigger. Barra only ever had 6,000 Twitter followers. In two months, he has 200,000 Weibo followers." The second sentence does not prove the first sentence.

Weibo has about 60m daily, twitter has around 100m daily users

Source: random & recent google result titles

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#58

Post by robbiep »

alaskamiller wrote: post #52
robbiep wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 has Africa.

again, what does that mean? China has africa as a source of resources? of people? Because so does the rest of the world, and the fact remains that africa's infrastructure is so poor, the continent so corrupt, the level of education so low (on a comparative basis) that it is going to take at least a generation, even with huge investment, to reach any point where Africa is a major contributor to GWP

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#59

Post by turingbook »

marme wrote: post #48

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 ramp…

Again, you just told one side of the story.

It is true that quality of large number of universities in China is poor, but they still provide millions of Chinese teens every year the opportunities to know more about the world outside their native towns or villages. They learn a lot from Internet and classmates even nothing valuable taught in classroom. They will be more confident and be important part in make everything in China better and better.

And it is also true that China invested more and more in education. The average quality is not that good, and the efficiency is low, but there still are big positive impact on China society in general. Before the big leap in higher education, only very few teenagers can enroll the universities. The overall education level is much lower.

As for bots and zombies, it is true that the numbers especially of Weibo are a bit overstated. But the real number is still big, very big. After all China has the biggest population. The smart phones sold in China has exceeded USA last year. Most of the users will install some apps like Wechat, QQ, Weibo and Alipay, etc. So you can calculate the real numbers. The order of magnitude is the same (in hundreds of millions).

Regulation is a problem, but the government does not rule everything. You can find your ways to survive and grow. Nearly all Internet giants including Big Three (we called BAT=Baidu，Tencent, and Alibaba) in China grew from nothing, without a large bank roll or good government connection at least at the beginning.

Re: What The Chinese Tech Industry Is Like

#60

Post by turingbook »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #56
turingbook wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

＞Then why doesn't the CCP just unblock twitter, facebook, g+, and so on? It seems that you believe China government helped local players succeed. That is not true in general. The private local Internet companies are not the government's child. They are mostly controlled by foreign investors.

The CCP likes companies they can control, whether there are foreign investors or not. This is especially important since the rule of law isn't so developed in China and often directives go through non-legal channels, which Google couldn't deal with while Baidu has no problem with it. Both of these companies are listed on the Nasdaq, but one is controlled by Americans and the other by Chinese.

If CCP wanted to control the Internet, it should help Renmin, Xinhua, Wangfujing or China Mobile to be market leaders, not Baidu, Sina, Taobao or Tencent.

Actually except Baidu vs. Google, you can not think out other examples the government made big impact. The other competitions in Internet between Yahoo vs. Sina, eBay/Amazon vs. Taobao/JD, MSN messenger vs. QQ, are all good counter-examples.

Foreign companies can not adapt to needs from local users. That is the key. The market is the king to decide the fates of Internet companies and products in China generally. Others are important but not critical.

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