Li: Chinese tech should be framed as parallel evolution, not the future or past
Lillian Li · Tech in china, from inside and outside · Jun 29, 2021 · at 55:43
Venture capitalist and writer Lillian Li offers a framework for understanding Chinese tech models without falling into technological determinism.
0:00 / 0:20exact quote · 20.6s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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 the petri dish been slightly different, and you just started off with, like, initial different building blocks and then let things grow in a slightly different way, this is how they might have emerged”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Lillian Li
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: 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…”
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: 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 …”