The Exchanges

Q No, no, no. I was sort of posing that as a, both my perception and also a question of, you know, what, what, what interesting things can one say about that, that perception and that structure?

A Yeah, completely. Um, definitely agree with that perception of, uh, Feeling like everyone is at everyone else's throats all the time. Um, and kind of thinking back, I think there's a few starting conditions that has caused this, right? First of all, it's, as, as you kind of pointed out earlier, Ben, 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 thinking, hey, we can go to Europe very easily. They know it's very hard to go internationally. And so for them, then they think once I've saturated this market space, then I need to look for the next areas of growth. And then that leads to more competition. Across different verticals. I think for the players like Google, right? Okay, Google has one search in the US, so obviously the next category, next stop would be for them to go internationally. You can just do that, um, in a vertical across different geos. And I think you can do a lot of, um, do a lot before you sort of get to a natural world boundary in that sense, uh, before you have to look for other revenues and growth. Whereas I think for Chinese tech, they think, hey, search in China, we've done, okay, so what now? And you've seen that for Alibaba, and Tencent, uh, and Baid…

AI assessment note: “definitely agree with that perception of, uh, Feeling like everyone is at everyone else's throats”

Q you've got this sense of a lot of sort of great kind of reorientations going on in how the consumer internet works in, certainly in America and Western Europe, um, probably in Japan as well. And I'm just curious, are there sort of those sort of great shifts going on or equivalents of those sorts of shifts in, well, what is the internet and how does it work in China?

A Uh, yeah, definitely. So, um, as I think the Western media has definitely picked up and kind of made Jack Ma kind of the face of it, uh, you know, took the regulatory crackdown, but I think it's not just on Ant and Jack Ma, it's internet more broadly. Uh, and so I would say the tectonic shifts that's been happening here has, you know, firstly been Chinese regulators in the year of More vocal and visible about cracking down on what they term monopolistic behavior on the part of platforms. And this isn't, I guess, I mean, definitely, this in some ways is kind of always playing catch up because the kind of behavior that Chinese tech platforms have been able to get away with would not have, um, they would not have been able to get away with this in the West. So Chinese kind of regulators reaching parity. So for example, the biggest one is making, um, Um, so these platforms are making kind of their suppliers pick, uh, one platform over everything else. So if you're a supplier to, uh, 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. Um, but they've managed to sort of have these until very recently. So that's what all the finds on Alibaba, um, and Meituan have been about. Which is them kind of, uh, almost making their suppliers, um, take …

AI assessment note: “the tectonic shifts that's been happening here has, you know, firstly been Chinese regulators”

Q interesting looking at it and, and realizing over time that China is deliberately shifting from a successful, maybe low-tech manufacturing economy to a very much innovation-based, high-tech economy. Like, that shift is happening. But what are the other things that we, like, need to shake that we might have misconceptions about? Tech in China. Um, or is there another question that we should be asking, and that's the wrong one?

A Yeah, I mean, so I, it's hard to sort of go through the misconceptions, um, because, because I don't quite know, um, what exactly everyone has. I mean, but actually maybe let's, let's take the one that, um, we have talked about kind of China, or China does is copying, because I think that's actually quite a good one, right? And I think as Benedict correctly pointed out, um, on some surface level aspect, yes, there is some lots of similarities, and Um, and actually, it's, you know, just taking a step back, I think there's very different attitudes to copying, which I think is very interesting. So 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, Um, I should first copy what you do, because that's just showing that I have, I can go very quickly, get to a de-risked product. And then once I'm at the, you know, technology frontier, product frontier as well, then I can innovate quicker. But it would be kind of silly for me if I'm so far behind you to sort of say, I'm going to try to get to my way and try to reinvent the wheel to get to where you are. Surely the easiest way for me and my team is just to copy. Um, and then Once we've made sure we've covered all the bases, then we ca…

AI assessment note: “let's take the one that... China does is copying, because I think that's actually quite a good one”

Q or you're trying to take out one feature that actually wouldn't work if it's trying to be implemented in a different market because, again, just the differences between the horizontal approach to the vertical approach. I'm just... What is it going to take if it's like beyond the willingness to do so? Like, are there fundamental things that need to shift for those technologies and that innovation to be applied?

A I've definitely still seen successful cases of people having, uh, kind of seen Chinese innovation having kind of, uh, like applied it in the West. I mean, actually I've been reading like the Jingdong, um, Mai Cai and Miss Fresh IPO perspectives, but you know, they're all about the 30 minute gross, the 30 minute grocery deliveries in first year cities, which reads a lot like the current wave of startups that's raising huge amounts of money in both Turkey and like Uh, Europe during the pandemic, right? So, um, definitely never say never. And also, you know, companies like, uh, Cider that just recently raised, you know, they were, they're saying they're kind of doing the Gen Z version of Shen and Italics to a certain degree as well, right? Kind of copying this kind of consumer to manufacturing model. Um, so I would say definitely it is still possible for Western startups, um, to, Borrow, uh, inspirations from kind of successful Chinese startups. I think it starts off with probably, you know, being, having an Understanding what's happening there, and then kind of going one little level deeper to sort of, you know, getting to understand, like, okay, understanding that successful and hot, and then knowing why exactly that is, and then thinking what enablers does China have that we don't have that would make this impossible, or at least, um, or maybe, you know, it doesn't have this, s…

AI assessment note: “I think it starts off with probably, you know, being, having an Understanding what's happening”