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I'm a China hawk, but this is what has been happening and what will continue happening unless something massively more drastic than blocking a single minority f

I'm a China hawk, but this is what has been happening and what will continue happening unless something massively more drastic than blocking a single minority foreign app happens. I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers and to underestimate the Chinese market. It's almost laughable that people think blocking WhatsApp will make any difference to Chinese people. eg., the Chinese tech/online market is so huge it can sustain multiple competitors of its own in each sector - ride-hailing, search, shopping, food delivery, maps, chat, mobile payments all have massive players providing their own competition and innovation. Genuine ground-breaking technological innovation is rare. When it happens, it's not like China won't get it (eg. touchscreens) because it blocked Google. In a lot of ways, because Chinese consumers are so quick to adopt new technology, there's sometimes more low-level innovation/adaptation because companies can rely on new apps/tools getting traction quickly.

FabHK 9y ago
In FinTech in particular, China is years ahead [1]. WeChat Pay had 100m users in 2014. [1] https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21717393-advanced-technology-backward-banks-and-soaring-wealth-make-china-leader https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2171739...
- elefanten 9y ago
  This claim gets made a lot, especially by China's government in it's "four great modern inventions" marketing campaign. [1] I don't get it. None of those are Chinese inventions. They're all technologies China adopted really fast. It's a testament to market size, development speed and certain idiosyncrasies about Chinese demographics, etc. But it has nothing to do with invention or innovation. [1] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/tech/2017-08/08/content_30370096.htm http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/tech/2017-08/08/conten...
  - averagewall 9y ago
    What's worth more, inventing something or commercializing it? It sounds a bit like USA vs Israel. Israel invents a lot while the US commercializes on a bigger scale. If the US isn't very good at developing new products because of burdensome regulations, small market size, slowness, demographics, etc. then maybe it's just not very good at technology. Other countries are bad at technology because of poor education, access to finance, skill of workers, culture, etc. They're still bad at technology, whatever the reason.
    - usaar333 9y ago
      I think the point though is that it's only fair to compare companies when they compete head to head in similar markets. It isn't that interesting to say China has a huge mobile payments market dominated by Chinese companies when that is almost entirely due to a lack of an existing CC infrastructure. It is interesting when Chinese network companies (Huawei, TP-link, etc.) are able to out-compete US based companies in their home market.
    - dahauns 9y ago
      > What's worth more, inventing something or commercializing it? And hasn't been "successfully commercializing inventions, no matter who invented it" been a staple of the US economical success for decades, nay, over a century?
  - dis-sys 9y ago
    WeChat has almost 1 billion active user, operating any system to support customer base that big requires innovations and inventions at various levels. for example, WeChat group published quite a lot high quality papers regarding their backend systems, the latest one probably being the VLDB 2017 paper on their PaxosStore capable of handling billions of strong consistency queries a second. This puts WeChat at the same level of Facebook, twitter, etc regarding innovation/invention.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Remember that comment, because it applies even better to everything e.g. Apple or Uber, notoriously "innovative" companies, are doing.
    - FabHK 9y ago
      Indeed. Remember the infamous comment by CmdTaco on slashdot when Apple released the iPod: > No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
chaostheory 9y ago
> I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) > eg., the Chinese tech/online market is so huge it can sustain multiple competitors of its own in each sector Doesn't China have bigger aspirations than just the mainland? People are missing the bigger point. I'm not talking about the current state of things. This is about the future. Most things are derivatives of other things. It's much harder to create these derivatives without easy access to free flowing data. People are saying, "It's fine, Chinese students just study and work in the West and bring it back to China after a few years." This is extremely inefficient. 1. there's the monetary cost involved compared to a open internet connection2. only a very small portion of the population will have this opportunity compared to potentially millions more with an open internet connection. 3. the amount of time it will take for this data to come back to China is huge compared to the instantaneous sharing you get with an open internet connection Getting more control isn't free, the price is growth.
- twelvechairs 9y ago
  > Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) China would rather be in control of tracking/surveillance internally, rather than let it be done by foreign companies and nations. Thats all
  - pertymcpert 9y ago
    WhatsApp doesn't do surveillance, it's end to end encrypted. Foreign surveillance is not the reason they block these services and you know it.
    - twelvechairs 9y ago
      China wants their own surveillance. Regardless of what you think of Whatsapp's encryption or the US govs potential to break it.
    - miopa 9y ago
      WhatsApp knows your contacts and when are you talking with whom. Also their closed source app has access to most of your phone.
usaar333 9y ago
The argument is more along the lines that China gets it slower due to a combination of tech not being released and research and communication with foreign users being more difficult due to web censorship. As one example, outside of tech areas that lacked strong traditional incumbents (fintech, e-commerce) or where strong cultural/linguistic context is needed (Chinese NLP), what areas are there where Chinese products enabled through blocking foreign ones are superior? (e.g. I'd argue that Google's products for photos, email, maps/navigation, video conferencing, and translation -- all blocked in China -- exceed that of any competitor, Chinese or otherwise)
- inimino 9y ago
  > I'd argue that Google's products for photos, email, maps/navigation, video conferencing, and translation -- all blocked in China -- exceed that of any competitor, Chinese or otherwise I'd be interested to hear why you think so. As far as I know none of these are better than their Chinese counterparts in any meaningful way. (Competition isn't the right word as these are different markets.) Baidu Translate is at least as good as Google Translate, certainly better for translating to and from Chinese. Google Maps is not relevant at all in the Chinese market because they don't have the data. Setting that aside, I am not aware of any technical edge they have over Baidu. Chinese people generally don't use email, but there are mail providers that are comparable to what Google has.
  - usaar333 9y ago
    > VC This was really striking to me how bad Chinese-based ones were (which got me thinking about this issue). The QQ client doesn't even seem to work when I attempt to visit the international one; WeChat lacks a webapp with VC, has no Linux desktop app and the Windows desktop app I used had rendering difficulties with the self pip screen -- far worse experience compared to Skype and Google Hangouts. > Baidu translate Are your referring to http://translate.baidu.com/ http://translate.baidu.com/? Unless I'm missing something, that doesn't even offer speech to text or text to speech, making it far less viable for conversation. > Maps Right, I'm comparing US to China here. As a simple example, of something Baidu maps seems to omit, it doesn't offer time estimates for travel at an arbitrary point in time. I can see historical traffic data, but can't seem to get routing/time to drive under that historical data. I'm not even sure how well Baidu reroutes based on current traffic data.. > Email Even at work is this true? I'll give you that I don't have great comparison on this one (hard to use random email providers).. and that Outlook is quite good.But the integration between gmail and other services is extremely powerful -- e.g. extracting appointments + flights from my email and auto-populating maps and sending reminders.
rdlecler1 9y ago
>I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers Yes, because foreign companies compete on an asymmetric playing field.
surge 9y ago
Right, don't most people use WeeChat as the defacto method of payment there? To the point they're a little bit ahead of the game in terms of ability to make mobile payments.

FabHK 9y ago

In FinTech in particular, China is years ahead [1]. WeChat Pay had 100m users in 2014. [1] https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21717393-advanced-technology-backward-banks-and-soaring-wealth-make-china-leader https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2171739...

elefanten 9y ago
This claim gets made a lot, especially by China's government in it's "four great modern inventions" marketing campaign. [1] I don't get it. None of those are Chinese inventions. They're all technologies China adopted really fast. It's a testament to market size, development speed and certain idiosyncrasies about Chinese demographics, etc. But it has nothing to do with invention or innovation. [1] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/tech/2017-08/08/content_30370096.htm http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/tech/2017-08/08/conten...
- averagewall 9y ago
  What's worth more, inventing something or commercializing it? It sounds a bit like USA vs Israel. Israel invents a lot while the US commercializes on a bigger scale. If the US isn't very good at developing new products because of burdensome regulations, small market size, slowness, demographics, etc. then maybe it's just not very good at technology. Other countries are bad at technology because of poor education, access to finance, skill of workers, culture, etc. They're still bad at technology, whatever the reason.
  - usaar333 9y ago
    I think the point though is that it's only fair to compare companies when they compete head to head in similar markets. It isn't that interesting to say China has a huge mobile payments market dominated by Chinese companies when that is almost entirely due to a lack of an existing CC infrastructure. It is interesting when Chinese network companies (Huawei, TP-link, etc.) are able to out-compete US based companies in their home market.
  - dahauns 9y ago
    > What's worth more, inventing something or commercializing it? And hasn't been "successfully commercializing inventions, no matter who invented it" been a staple of the US economical success for decades, nay, over a century?
- dis-sys 9y ago
  WeChat has almost 1 billion active user, operating any system to support customer base that big requires innovations and inventions at various levels. for example, WeChat group published quite a lot high quality papers regarding their backend systems, the latest one probably being the VLDB 2017 paper on their PaxosStore capable of handling billions of strong consistency queries a second. This puts WeChat at the same level of Facebook, twitter, etc regarding innovation/invention.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Remember that comment, because it applies even better to everything e.g. Apple or Uber, notoriously "innovative" companies, are doing.
  - FabHK 9y ago
    Indeed. Remember the infamous comment by CmdTaco on slashdot when Apple released the iPod: > No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

chaostheory 9y ago

> I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) > eg., the Chinese tech/online market is so huge it can sustain multiple competitors of its own in each sector Doesn't China have bigger aspirations than just the mainland? People are missing the bigger point. I'm not talking about the current state of things. This is about the future. Most things are derivatives of other things. It's much harder to create these derivatives without easy access to free flowing data. People are saying, "It's fine, Chinese students just study and work in the West and bring it back to China after a few years." This is extremely inefficient. 1. there's the monetary cost involved compared to a open internet connection2. only a very small portion of the population will have this opportunity compared to potentially millions more with an open internet connection. 3. the amount of time it will take for this data to come back to China is huge compared to the instantaneous sharing you get with an open internet connection Getting more control isn't free, the price is growth.

twelvechairs 9y ago
> Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) China would rather be in control of tracking/surveillance internally, rather than let it be done by foreign companies and nations. Thats all
- pertymcpert 9y ago
  WhatsApp doesn't do surveillance, it's end to end encrypted. Foreign surveillance is not the reason they block these services and you know it.
  - twelvechairs 9y ago
    China wants their own surveillance. Regardless of what you think of Whatsapp's encryption or the US govs potential to break it.
  - miopa 9y ago
    WhatsApp knows your contacts and when are you talking with whom. Also their closed source app has access to most of your phone.

usaar333 9y ago

The argument is more along the lines that China gets it slower due to a combination of tech not being released and research and communication with foreign users being more difficult due to web censorship. As one example, outside of tech areas that lacked strong traditional incumbents (fintech, e-commerce) or where strong cultural/linguistic context is needed (Chinese NLP), what areas are there where Chinese products enabled through blocking foreign ones are superior? (e.g. I'd argue that Google's products for photos, email, maps/navigation, video conferencing, and translation -- all blocked in China -- exceed that of any competitor, Chinese or otherwise)

inimino 9y ago
> I'd argue that Google's products for photos, email, maps/navigation, video conferencing, and translation -- all blocked in China -- exceed that of any competitor, Chinese or otherwise I'd be interested to hear why you think so. As far as I know none of these are better than their Chinese counterparts in any meaningful way. (Competition isn't the right word as these are different markets.) Baidu Translate is at least as good as Google Translate, certainly better for translating to and from Chinese. Google Maps is not relevant at all in the Chinese market because they don't have the data. Setting that aside, I am not aware of any technical edge they have over Baidu. Chinese people generally don't use email, but there are mail providers that are comparable to what Google has.
- usaar333 9y ago
  > VC This was really striking to me how bad Chinese-based ones were (which got me thinking about this issue). The QQ client doesn't even seem to work when I attempt to visit the international one; WeChat lacks a webapp with VC, has no Linux desktop app and the Windows desktop app I used had rendering difficulties with the self pip screen -- far worse experience compared to Skype and Google Hangouts. > Baidu translate Are your referring to http://translate.baidu.com/ http://translate.baidu.com/? Unless I'm missing something, that doesn't even offer speech to text or text to speech, making it far less viable for conversation. > Maps Right, I'm comparing US to China here. As a simple example, of something Baidu maps seems to omit, it doesn't offer time estimates for travel at an arbitrary point in time. I can see historical traffic data, but can't seem to get routing/time to drive under that historical data. I'm not even sure how well Baidu reroutes based on current traffic data.. > Email Even at work is this true? I'll give you that I don't have great comparison on this one (hard to use random email providers).. and that Outlook is quite good.But the integration between gmail and other services is extremely powerful -- e.g. extracting appointments + flights from my email and auto-populating maps and sending reminders.

rdlecler1 9y ago

>I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers Yes, because foreign companies compete on an asymmetric playing field.

surge 9y ago

Right, don't most people use WeeChat as the defacto method of payment there? To the point they're a little bit ahead of the game in terms of ability to make mobile payments.