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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

China has startups, they are definitely many high in quality, but they aren’t really world class in terms of talent used (almost completely Chinese) and markets targeted (ditto). China will have trouble getting its tech companies to compete abroad when they have closed off their own market so much. Likewise, until China embraces immigration rather than emigration, talent is unlikely to flock to China in any significant numbers.

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Worldclass valuation maybe? Might be more controversial to say, but when it comes to internet, there is China and the rest of world, those are 2 disconnected system, quite literally. So I don't think YC China is priortized to create companies for the whole world, probably just companies that would operate mainly in China, built and run by the locals.

Yes, word class valuations for sure. There are many meanings of world class, but one of the popular ones is of global scope.

That's not 100% true. Amazon and (previously) ebay operate in china without problem but don't get a chance facing alibaba. Microsoft also do things fine. Uber was also there. The market that's really closed off are mostly limited to companies that don't support censorship.

Also speaking of world class, have you heard of DJI?

I did work for MS China for almost 10 years, and Microsoft does sell shrink wrap software in China, but they don't really do services there, they've tried and even though they are on the government's good side, it just never worked out for them. Microsoft is a good example of my claim.

Not trying to move the goalpost, but DJI is more of a hardware company, it isn't really an internet one. Any company that can operate outside of a services model will do just fine in China, since they are just shipping product for export.

How is MS a perfect example of your claim? It's proves even US company without much friction operating in China might not succeed. It had nothing to do with China closing off the market. Except the one really banned (google & fb etc), others just don't have a competitive product suitable for chinese market.

Also aren't we talking about tech company? Not internet company alone?

Or do you consider a market closed off if no foreign internet service company is doing well? In that standard US is also closed off because I can't think of a single successful non US internet company here.

China's internet market is closed off, not its hardware product one, so Intel still sells a lot of CPUs in China, while DJI sells plenty of drones outside of China and Xiaomi and Huawei even sell phones abroad like Apple can sell phones in China. If you count those as success and proof China is open, then that is definitely your prerogative.

But take the typical YC startup business models, most of those aren't going to be in those safe categories.

Azure Cloud is operating fine in China, so does Office365. Are these services?

Also AWS China is a huge deal.

You mean the one run by the Shanghai water company?

>Likewise, until China embraces immigration rather than emigration, talent is unlikely to flock to China in any significant numbers.

Isn't it the case already? In our company, the preference to host an overseas talent always goes to China's office for simplicity of immigration process. Secondary to that, I have to admit, is the significantly reduced chance of hostile talent poaching.

What was the reason you left China?

BTW. Ever crosses paths with Shanghai Bill of Slashdot fame?

1. There are almost as many foreigners in Tokyo as there is in China.

2. Most of us left because of the really really bad pollution. You can’t have kids breathing that.

3. I was based in Beijing, not Shanghai.

The only country had world-class Internet products are US companies.

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