VC Lillian Li explains the regulatory crackdowns and antitrust fines against Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Meituan.
Insight
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…”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Partly supported
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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 …”
Assertion Supported
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 …”