Jun 29, 2021 · 57m · another-podcast
Tech in china, from inside and outside
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Venture capitalist and writer Lillian Li joins Toni Cowan-Brown and Benedict Evans to unpack the unique architecture, operational innovations, and regulatory landscape of Chinese tech. Challenging Western copycat tropes, the discussion presents China's digital ecosystem as a parallel evolutionary universe that redefines product strategy, super apps, and platform competition.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 47.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.0 Guest teaching 5.2 Guest disagreement 1.0 The hosts pushing back 2.0
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 17:20 Challenging the copying trope as tech orientalism
Lillian directly identifies the Western knee-jerk reaction of dismissing Chinese innovation as merely copying as a form of tech orientalism.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 11:56 Benedict counters othering with structural market mechanicsBenedict pushes back against explaining the Western perception solely through othering and orientalism, citing concrete structural and geographic market differences.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 18:59 De-risking product innovation via copyingLillian breaks down the internal logic of Chinese product managers who view copying as an efficient, pragmatic way to reach the frontier before innovating.
The host holds their own ▶ 22:05 Apparel and retail analogies for copyingBenedict demonstrates his domain expertise by illustrating how Western retail and fashion industries operate entirely on copying successful products.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lillian Li's Journey to China and Chinese Characteristics | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Toni opens the episode inviting Lillian to share her background and reasoning for moving to China. Lillian details her journey and explains why she started her newsletter to demystify Chinese tech companies like Bilibili on their own terms. | |
| Perception, Language Barriers, and Othering Chinese Tech | 7 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Benedict offers detailed parallels between 2000s Japan (DoCoMo i-mode) and present-day China, pushing back on pure 'othering' narratives to explain market distinctiveness, while Lillian adds context on tech orientalism. | |
| De-Risking Product Innovation: Rethinking the Copying Trope | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Lillian explains the Chinese PM mindset of copying as a rational de-risking strategy before iterating. Benedict agrees and supports this by comparing it to standard practices in the retail, fashion, and shoe industries. | |
| Horizontal Super Apps, Scarcity Mindsets, and Founder Feuds | 7 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Benedict contrasts Western vertical winners with Chinese horizontal conglomerates, drawing parallels to family dynasties in smaller economies. Lillian details how domestic market boundaries and scarcity mindsets drive aggressive horizontal expansion and CEO feuds. | |
| Super App Mechanics, Ecosystem Enablers, and Global Adaptation | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Benedict and Lillian discuss why super app features like mini-programs and embedded payments work in China and developing markets but fail to translate directly to Western apps like Facebook Messenger. | |
| Antitrust Regulation, Growth Plateaus, and Apple's Role in China | 7 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Benedict questions how macro shifts, antitrust enforcement, and Apple's App Store rules impact China. Lillian details the domestic regulatory crackdown on exclusivity agreements, maturing user growth, and Android's dominant market presence. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Li: Bilibili is multifaceted and makes most money from games, not video
“Most people also reduce it to China's version of YouTube, but when you look at it, it's actually very multifaceted. You know, it gets most of its money from mobile games, it does advertising, it has live streaming, it sells e-commerce product on top of it, so …”
Evans: Beyond superficial UI cues, Xiaomi does not copy Apple
“And you think, well, yes, up to a point, the calendar app looks the same as the Apple calendar app, but Xiaomi does not look like Apple at all.
And as soon as you push under the surface, it's like you can find reasons to support that, that, that presumption.
B…”
Li: Chinese Tech Workers View Copying as a Pragmatic Product De-risking Strategy
“When I talk to Chinese PM and Chinese tech workers, first of all, they don't view copying as inherently shameful, because their mentality is, you have come up with a very successful UX or product, therefore, you know, for me to learn and to catch up to you I s…”
Li: Meituan Won China's Clone Wars by Localizing Fastest
“When Meituan first started and they started off in kind of group buying, they were the part of the Groupon clone wars, as it was called. There was, you know, Startups doing Groupon cloning, and then Meituan localized the fosters and went with a different strat…”
Evans: Silicon Valley Holds a Narrow, Selective Taboo Against Copying
“There is that sort of slightly interesting sort of actually quite narrow view in Silicon Valley of what you can and can't copy. And also it's only goes on some axes, even in Silicon Valley. So no one would say like, you know, if you're doing a two-sided market…”
Evans: Western tech produces vertical winners, whereas Chinese tech produces horizontal empires
“The sort of text structure in The rest of the world is you tend to have vertical winners. So Google won search, and there's a couple of other people trying to do search. Amazon won sort of generalized e-commerce, not market-specific e-commerce, won general e-c…”
Li: Barriers to international expansion force Chinese tech companies into horizontal domestic competition
“China has a much more defined Market into itself. It's very hard to leave China. And so what that means is, yes, you have a very big market, but that's essentially your market, right? So I think every player knows from the outside, you know, rather than thinki…”
Evans: Japan Has Not Represented the Tech Future for 15 Years
“The whole thing of going to Japan, and they're like three to four years ahead in adoption, which ironically has not been the case for like 15 years, like nobody would go to Japan to see the future now.”
Evans: Facebook Tried and Failed to Turn Messenger into a Super App
“Can you turn a Facebook messenger into a super app? Answer. And they clearly tried to do that, and the answer was no.”
Evans: Google Maps Is the West's Closest Equivalent to a Super App
“Google maps, which is maybe the closest that the West has to a super app.”
Li: Sea, Grab, Gojek, and Rappi Credit Chinese Tech Rather Than US Giants
“See, which is like a super app in, in Southeast Asia credits a lot of its innovation and the way they think about app building to Tencent as do Grab, Gojack, and Rappi in Brazil. You know, they credit Chinese tech for, and the way of kind of, you know, buildin…”
Li: Chinese platform fines targeted exclusive vendor lock-in agreements
“So if you're a supplier to Alibaba, you can't go on Pinduoduo or JD. They would sometimes make you sign an inclusive, exclusive agreement with them, which would be very, you know, anti-competitive in most parts of the world. But they've managed to sort of have…”
Li: Chinese internet and mobile user growth has plateaued
“They've realized that internet penetration and mobile penetration has slowed down massively in the last few years, so they're kind of dealing with the fact of, oh, the market that, that's been growing for the past few years because of new users, that's coming …”
Li: Chinese enterprise software lags far behind the West
“Enterprise software is actually relatively I wouldn't say non, I wouldn't say non-existent, but much further behind relative to what we see to the west.”
Li: Chinese tech should be framed as parallel evolution, not the future or past
“And I think the way to look at China might not, the framing in which I find the most helpful is to view it as this parallel world. You don't, you shouldn't view it as like the future. You shouldn't view it as like the past, but you just view it as like, Had th…”