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I suspect that when Silicon Valley loses its dominance it will be to China, not to other parts of the United States.
by twblalock 9y ago
I suspect that when Silicon Valley loses its dominance it will be to China, not to other parts of the United States.
- gowld 9y agoDoes China export consumer webtech? The unique "Chinese characteristics" as they call it would seem to make it hard to export consumer services.
- zachguo 9y agoMany Chinese tech companies are expanding overseas, just not much in North America, mostly in high growth areas in Asia. They also own and control many well-known mobile game studios. TBH, apps like Facebook and even Snapchat copied features from Chinese apps like Wechat and Alipay.
- gaius 9y agoNo one knows if Chinese consumer sites/apps like Weibo, Tencent etc can compete in an open market. Maybe they can but if so, why hide behind the Great Firewall?
- varjag 9y agoAnd the few Web companies from China that took off globally all seem to specialize in selling physical goods originating from China.
- dangerbird2 9y agoWhile China is well on its way to becoming a key player in fields like AI, by far the greatest thing preventing it from becoming the "next Silicon Valley" is censorship and protectionism of the Chinese government. The fact that online social platforms in China have to play by the CPC's rules makes it extremely difficult for a service to have both a mainland Chinese and international market. Places like the E.U. and large democracies like India have a huge competative advantage due to the fact that there are very few bureaucratic and political hurdles to get a business started.
- chaostheory 9y agoIt's not just censorship and protectionism. China is just too used to attempting to centralizing everything. There's a cost. The reason why is because central offices will eventually lack needed localized knowledge to make optimal decisions, resulting in inefficiency, less creativity, and slowdowns when it comes to changing in response to problems or other new conditions. It's a bit ironic that the country that revolutionalized guerilla warfare fails to see this.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoChina is the best place in the world to start a startup if...you are chinese focusing on the chinese market. China’s outright hostility to immigration and the lack of much international diversity means that it will necessarily be a closed system for the foreseeable future. That’s not even to mention the great firewall and still wicked pollution problems.
- paulddraper 9y agoAs long as your product does not need to cross the great firewall, you might be right.
- zachguo 9y agoIt may not be China, but it's very likely somewhere in Asia. Asia Pacific market is huge, next billion middle-class will mostly be in Asia.