The Next Silicon Valley is China

Wow, oh, wow.

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How many of China ones are copy of US ones? Will tell you something about Innovation. Success in a large market that provides real protections from competitors and direct capital support from state is not innovation. Innovation is not related to success. Actually most innovations fail. We should look at failed innovations stats between the two regions and I am sure that gap would be huge.

China is Japan of today plus the large population that gives it a large regional market. But it wont move beyond the copy stage which Japanese actually did. Too much success build on capital support vs real engineering and process innovation.

I think you are mistaking invention as innovation. Most innovations are just daily grinds that improve an existing product or process by 1 or 2% and overtime that accumulates into something substantial.

China is not the modern day Japan. You can tell by the risk-taking attitudes of the Chinese. They are even more risk-tolerant than Americans.

I don’t think so at all. The internet revolution in China has already surpassed that of the US. The Chinese internet now is much more innovative.

Agree with definitions but I was talking about Innovative Tech. Not the process innovations that can be incremental.

The risk taking is because they are flush with easy money. It’s not contributing to real innovations but copying west or east (Japan). Typically easy money leads to best people trying new ways of making money. Not copying.

Since Chinese companies have a captive market for themselves, success build on copying has a long runway. Its a shortcut to success. Most Chinese are busy doing that.

The copying is due to china’s catching up. Every developing country goes thru that phase and that has nothing to do with state support or easy money. America went thru that stage in the latter 1800s. It’s much easier to copy than coming up with your own inventions.

But after the country has caught up more or less it’s forced to invent rather than copy. China is starting to invent more and more. Where did china copy for its mobile payment? Wechat is much more advanced than WhatsApp and I wish FB ramp up its copying machine. The recent crop of scooter sharing in SF is a direct copy of china’s bike sharing.

No doubt you will see more and more of these in the years to come.

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Civilizations take turn to flourish.
During Europe’s dark ages (500-1000), China was doing very well.
Tang dynasty, 618-907, golden age of China.

Modern Europe & USA is a consequence of the enlightenment age 1685-1815.
China was so screwed, and got conquered by the Manchus. Qing Dynasty 1644-1911.
PRC was established in 1949. Deng Xiao Ping took over in 1978 and China started the long route to catch up with Europe and USA.

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Fake it till you make it is abreal phenomenon. China will do well.

1%, 2% improvements are not innovations or inventions. They are boring, and dont bring anything on the table - these are the things that most employees can do.

That’s not the modern view. Manchuria is now considered part of China and Qing is one of the 3 golden ages. During Qing China’s territory grew a lot. It was actually much bigger than today.

No, they are very meaningful innovations. Ask intel how much money they will pay you if you can improve their yield by 1%.

Dude i do that all the time. They are not hard :slight_smile: improving advertising revenue by 1% is noy a big deal.
Plenty of bugs and nobs exist to tweak things - ads going into an auction, the color of a button, the font face of a t3xt etc… Calling them innovations is only lying.

China has always been at the forefront of civilization until it failed to adopt capitalism which was invented in Western Europe. It’s march back to the forefront of civilization started in 1978 when Deng kickstarted the capitalist revolution in China.

Time to tell us how much google pays you @tomato.

If you “do that all the time” you should have doubled or even tripled google’s ad performance during your time there?

Having a lot of territory doesn’t mean much. Russia has a lot of territory but it’s not considered a front runner. Neither is having a lot of people – look at India.

200k base salary plus 100k options.

:slight_smile: i wont tell

I know that. That’s why I responded for you.

Too low.
$225k base.
$75k cash bonus.
$300k RSUs.

Oh… didn’t know that you’re actually his manager.

I think China has real potential. The population, resources (mostly annexed though but that’s a different topic), a central rule that can keep things focused to achieve an objective (till only one point) and unique trade advantage they have acquired.

But China will be poor cousin of west because they are trying to ape west. Nothing wrong in it if you are couple of centuries behind and want to catch up fast. But at one time you need to find your own course. I don’t see fundamentals for that beyond good and cheap capital access. But thats leading to shortcuts to acquire success by pure copy and and restricting competition.

Japan did the same (copying part) but Japan case is slightly different. They were tech driven after they came out of the shogun rule and realized early on that west dominance is based on tech. They caught up fast (defeating western power Russia in 1905) and almost made it before their ambition tanked them (WWII). They recovered (but lost the potential though) only to look inwards, copied tech and exceeded it in someplace, but the manufacturing culture killed the innovation. Plus the rigid engineering mindset (again legacy of manufacturing) and top down culture that makes it hard to think out of the box.

China took the same route as Japan because the origin in Manufacturing and trade were same as Japan. Large investment created a domestic market. Trade surplus created additional capital. Soft restrictions by state kept competition at bay for local companies to start and thrive. But what after that? It’s been couple of years. All we see is Chinese companies trying to use that muscle to acquire more assets abroad and trying the conglomeration route. Large tech companies are straight copy of west and acquiring M-cap because of large domestic market with western firm really did not allow to compete freely. And Chinese people using the money to run out of China and a mad rush to settle kids outside China (even in Malaysia).

This is long post. Not to rile my Chinese America brothers and sisters here but just what I think based on my love of history and my frequent travels to all these places in east.