Ahah, the old eastern asian vague social structure narrative. You'd be surprised how closely knitted Chinese companies are with SV, and how they replicated the SV in every possible way, even the interview process.

So I will say guanxi is not an noticeable factor here. If you look back, how many SV startups are funded by people with a lot of resources, under the name of, networking? Does that count as your definition of social currency? In fact, guanxi, or 关系, in Chinese means connections. Sounds familiar, isn't it?

The reason China has a huge startup scene is not that hard to understand if you are willing to come out of your idealogical/cultural bubble:

1. Presence of GFW. It bars the competition from outside of China.

2. Cheap local talents. They work twice the hours, but possible rewarded with 1/2 or 1/3 of what their SV counterparts are earning. The Chinese system allows such exploitation, while not anywhere else in the world.

3. Vast market. There are 1B cellphone users in China, that alone could sustain several 100B companies.

To put things in a Western perspective,

- "guanxi" = old boy's club

- "face" = Italian mobster respect

Also, not mentioned on that list is DJI, which is pretty dominant in the drone space, and it was only founded in 2006. I know it's not a software startup, but you'd be hard-pressed to say it's not a tech company.

There are a number of Chinese phone startups that are doing quite well.

Just walk around a BestBuy in the US and you'll quickly realize how many Chinese brands there are: TP-Link routers, Huawei routers and phones, Lenovo laptops, Hisense TVs, ZTE phones, DJI drones, Haier appliances, Ninebot scooters, Instantpot press cookers, etc. If you also count brands owned by Chinese companies than include GE appliances and Motorola, Alcatel, Blackberry smartphones.

Go on Amazon.com and Chinese brands are bestsellers in many electronic categories: Anker/Sunvalleytek in phone accessories, Yi in action cameras and dash cams and security cameras, TCL in televisions, etc.

Also the rest of the world isn't just US. Chinese smartphone brands have 50% marketshare world wide. Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO are growing fast in South Asia, South East Asian and MENA. Transsion (you've probably never even heard of this company) owns phone brands that dominate Africa and is the marketshare leader there. Chinese home appliance and consumer electronic brands are also big in non-western countries.

Look at your computer equipment...