Opinion | Beijing, at one time a helping hand, is now hurting China’s tech chances
- Brilliant people generally want to get away from totalitarian rule, not embrace it
- Beijing likes to anoint national champions and set specific goals tied to plans
“The Chinese can take a test, but what they can‘t do is innovate. They are not terribly imaginative. They’re not entrepreneurial … that is why they are stealing our intellectual property.”
Contrary to what Fiorina thought at the time, the Chinese – at least in the tech sphere – have proven to be world class entrepreneurs. Look no further than the founders of companies like Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, Didi Chuxing, Meituan, Tencent, Xiaomi, and many more.
They all check the box as successful entrepreneurs. What about innovation? Fiorina was half right. The Chinese are good at adapting other people’s ideas, adding value, and making tons of money in their home market – which is a valid form of “innovation”.
Take Tencent’s WeChat. It took its inspiration from WhatsApp, right down to a similar green logo, but developed it into a super app that enables 1 billion people to connect, shop, pay bills, buy food, and much more. In recent years, features of WeChat have been copied by western apps like Facebook.
In Alibaba’s case, founder Jack Ma was inspired by an old school business model that connected buyers and sellers via ads in printed magazines. He adapted that into an online business that today is an e-commerce behemoth.
