Amazon Quits China Market
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All of this is to say nothing of the additional restrictions imposed by the government -- I agree with contingencies that it's "not easy" to run a business in (AWS) China, but I think that at this point everybody who's seriously thinking about doing so knows what to expect.
[0] https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/new/2017/now-add-additional-prot...
"To provide the best experience for customers in China and to comply with China’s legal and regulatory requirements, AWS has collaborated with China local partners with proper telecom licenses for delivering cloud services. The service operator and provider for AWS China (Beijing) Region based out of Beijing and adjacent areas is Beijing Sinnet Technology Co., Ltd. (Sinnet), and the service operator and provider for AWS (Ningxia) Region based out of Ningxia is Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology Co., Ltd. (NWCD)."
You see that is the thing. Actually I was too afraid to type this in my another comment as it might anger man. But that is exactly what I felt.
And I don't even understand why, they didn't even try.
TMall ( Spin off from Taobao offering higher quality products ) was only established in 2014, and that was targeted as slightly premium segment where Amazon could or should have been. So it proves the market did exist, Amazon for what ever reason failed to capture it.
Last year on Single Day alone, Alibaba handled over $30B in orders with 24 hours, and more impressively those are spread over 1,000,000,000 separate deliveries orders. It means it handled the ordering and payment processing of 11,574 orders per second, and then fulfilled and delivered those ONE BILLION orders within the next 48 hours.
Can you even imagine being an Alibaba warehouse worker during that couple days?
True, but remember "slow" means something quite different in China where same/next day delivery is very often expected in top tier big cities. So 3-5 days delivery is definitely considered slow, and during these crazy period you may see the glacier speed of one week delivery time :)
Doesn’t take anything away from what Alibaba is doing. It’s a huge spike over their normal business operations. I would be surprised if it didn’t cause a disruption of some sort.
Having lived in both China and America, I have to say the living standard in Chinese cities has passed America's in many ways and, more importantly, the speed of China building new facilities is at least 10x of the US. Many American believe there's a competition between two countries, but IMO the competition is already won. Chinese no longer see the US as a competitor in many areas - you rarely hear Chinese Internet companies learning something new from their American counterparts today, or people envying America for their way of living. It's the opposite I found worrisome, that America is losing confidence and becomes more insecure day by day.
https://www.bain.com/insights/embracing-chinas-new-retail/ https://www.alizila.com/new-retail/
Pro tip: at least try to submit something unrelated to China every now and then, otherwise people may rightly or wrongly call you a troll.
On the other hand, the consequences for a nation or a business of underestimating China could be catastrophic. It could mean finding your business or nation suddenly cut off by a competitor you didn't plan for. It seems to me that rational self interest alone should bias the west towards overestimating rather than underestimating China.
It almost feels like an anxious insecurity, as if admitting that China might catch up might make it so, when sticking our heads in the sand about the possible threat is way more likely to ensure we are overtaken.
I see no problem submitting China-related news since I live in the country and Chinese technology is my focus, and HN folks deserve to know more about the development of Chinese technologies. I should submit more often. The fact that people are 'shocked' to hear Chinese company winning western counterparts as shown in the comments under various China posts in HN proves my point.
Competition only works when the market is fair. Perhaps Amazon could not make as good of an offering but their marketshare was 15% 10 years ago and China is a large, homogenous, and modernized population like the US which is perfect for Amazon's scale strategy. It's a hard sell to say that a trillion-dollar company does not have the resources and talent to do what the people in the next building can.
Just because Amazon had money or has money doesn't mean it can't get disrupted. Otherwise, we'd all be buying from Sears and using AT&T for video calling.
If this is the company you're talking about, can you describe what you mean by "literally was ended"?
> It's a hard sell to say that a trillion-dollar company does not have the resources and talent to do what the people in the next building can.
By that notion no startup will ever win agains the titan. And Apple would not have been the largest market cap company today when they had M$, Blackberry and IBM in its era.
The truth is, even if the full Amazon experience in US were replicated today in China ( Where Amazon had a home ground advantage and had much longer time to refine their infrastructure and strategy ) it will still not be anywhere as good as what Alibaba/ Taobao / JD.com has to offer.
That is on the consumer side of course, in terms of AWS their offering ( knowledge and understanding ) are very much behind.
Amazon failed in execution and strategy in China. And they learned their lesson when they enter India.
Usually I would put a few words on Chinese Companies having the advantage of literally infinite burn rate to increase revenue while competing. These money comes from VC which is funded by the government anyway. But knowing Alibaba its major share holder is Yahoo and Softbank along with a few other outside investors I don't think that is anywhere near true.
Malls are out apps are in. Its almost scary how fast physical retail is dying.
I don't have a ton of experience with UI/UX on JD or TMall, but my experience with alibaba and aliexpress hasn't left me particularly impressed there. But I also have no problem with Amazon's interface and experience in general, which I know lots of people don't like.
Product offerings have never been an issue for me. The overwhelming majority of my online purchases come from Amazon, and the ones that haven't made recently have been pretty niche - handmade Japanese chef knives, limited run board games, manufacturer direct audio equipment...
I can get assembly for furniture, etc., as an add-on for a lot of purchases on amazon, which someone mentioned as a differentiator in another thread.
I can't talk to the merchants instantly, but I don't know that I really want or need to. I rarely have a question for them, and when I have, I generally don't want to get bogged down in a live chat or phone call or whatever, so the email system on Amazon works fine for me.
Correct.
Because that's what this comment thread is about.
Grandparent: >I'm curious is this because jd.com is far ahead of American Amazon or because Chinese Amazon is far behind American Amazon?
Parent: > I would say jd and taobao is far ahead of American Amazon
The question was whether or not JD and Taobao in China are better than Amazon is in America. Not whether or not Amazon in China is as good as JD and Taobao are in China.
Amazon isn't willing to invest the money and for most products on their site they still don't stock products locally. Half the time I find products on their site I have to wait 2/3+ weeks for it to be imported.
There is nothing stopping them having local stock but ... they don't.
Amazon's infrastructure roll out paid off in the United States because there was little competition. They rushed out infrastructure and cornered the online shopping and delivery market. Walmart and the other big stores had an entirely different business model and their warehouses and infrastructure took time to adjust and catch up, with Amazon still in the lead.
In China, the local competitors already have a significant head start on their infrastructure, and Amazon would be playing catch up in a relatively unfriendly market. It could take them forever to recoup the investment, if they ever did.
Unfortunately, they can't compete without that infrastructure in place, so what else can they do but leave?
China is the biggest eComm market in the world! If there was an opportunity for Amazon to penetrate (regulations being the biggest challenge), Amazon would have totally gone for it.
This is a company why, 5 yrs back, committed $5B to India when eComm there was/still is totally burgeoning.
I've mentioned it in another comment, too, but Amazon is not present in my Eastern European country (Romania), where Alibaba beats them by a large margin (even though they're also not officially launched here). I've just done a quick search and it seems Amazon is not winning it in Russia either, nor in Ukraine, to say nothing of India. As such, to say that they are winning "everywhere else in the world" is not really true, they're only winning in North America and some Western European countries (too lazy to search what really happens in South America or Africa).
Russia is a very protected hyper nationalistic market, in exactly the same way China is. Their culture is segregated off from much of Europe in terms of being 'westernized.' Instead of westernized, it's a quasi separate, rather differentiated Russian culture (all the way down to the music). It's why Russia has Mail.ru, VK and Yandex, instead of eg Google dominating on search.
Ukraine is a partial extension of what is dominate in Russia, so for example VK and Yandex are very popular in Ukraine as well. Most of Ukraine fluently speaks Russian, and they've been culturally and politically dominated by Russia for a long time. This is why there has been a push by some prominent nationalist politicians in Ukraine recently ("Army, language, faith") to emphasize their own culture and language, and de-emphasize Russian culture and language. If you go to Kharkiv - Ukraine's second largest city, near the border with Russia - the people there often can't speak their native Ukrainian (they can usually read it), everything is in Russian.
There are rumors Amazon will open officially soon, but they'll have a hard time if you ask me.
I’d say that’s hyperbole. Neither of them are present here and if I were to guess judging by my own experience, I’d say that Amazon is still more popular.
Do you have hard numbers?
Of course neither of them hold a candle to the local eMag, but that’s only natural.
Slightly OT, I’m also curious how come no analyst is mentioning FB marketplace as a competitor to Amazon.
It's interesting to see, how Amazon will fare in near future, due to recent change to e-commerce law by Indian govt.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/05/amazon-how-india-ecommerce-l...
Disagree. I live in northern europe and haven't used Amazon since moving here. Every single product is "doesn't ship to your location" etc., there are domestic and local competitors that are superior - to say nothing of the China based suppliers, and of course amazon has sub-par customer service even in the US - but there at least their infrastructure and product catalogue let them carry the day without breaking a sweat.
I'm sure that if you live in a market that is well served by Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de they offer a user experience that's at least broadly similar to that in the US, but e-commerce is an evolving beast. As far as I can tell amazon hasn't changed meaningfully in the last 5 or 6 years (and their website is famously, almost comically, static), only a matter of time before someone else starts beating them at their own game even in core markets.
Amazon isn't some kind of god. If someone else is cheaper, faster and already well established they can be beaten.
Amazon is practically non-existent in Australia.
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[0]: https://www.central.co.th/en/
[2]: https://shopee.co.th
FWIW, Amazon is also quite small in South Korea, which is the #1 country in ecommerce spend per capita.
There, the market is fragmented into many players big and small, and the delivery times are much shorter than in the US. For instance, if you order on Martet Curly before 11pm, you get fresh grosseries delivered the next day in the morning.
Amerikan exceptionalism! In my country, Amazon doesn't even exist. And we use several different ones. The song "We're all living in Amerika" doesn't apply anymore you know?
They were acquired by the largest super market chain (Albert Heijn), so now you can pick up packages at the super market throughout the day and in the evening. I think both of these advantages are difficult to match by amazon, and they were probably the reason that amazon chose not to enter the Dutch market.
Just because Amazon has 'won' in most places, does not mean they can not be beaten by a player who knows the local market and has better connections.
China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong ( Doesn't even have a presence ) Most of SEA, Australia, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland. all of these failed in one way or another or is in no way the majority online market leader.
One of the problem with online world is that most International news outlet are really US focused and they publish article saying the world when they meant Western World, US focus, EU secondary, and largely ignore Asia, Africa and South America.
I think most people underestimate how difficult it is to compete on local turf (even without political handicaps). In fact it may very well be that Alibaba and JD are in fact the better services and would be dominating in the west if not for the same home turf advantage.
China domestic shipping relies on very low paid workers working very long hours. On top of that, Amazon have already established their delivery infrastructure in a much more expensive environment. It would be tough for JD/Taobao to break in at this point.
There is absolutely zero point in trying to mollify the Chinese government.
"In traditional China this ritual was performed by commoners making requests to the local magistrate, by the emperor to the shrine of Confucius, or by foreign representatives appearing before the emperor to establish trade relations." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kowtow
Apparently this is a controversial revelation to some of you:
https://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2010/12/23/my-pet-peeve-rac...
Or since that example apparently goes over some of your heads, it’s like how some of you only use “bruh” and “yo” and “what’s good” around me, your black coworker and no one else.
Your Mexican example would be using (I assume?) the Spanish of whatever word would work just as well in English, and I've personally used and seen people use words like "bruh" and "yo" with lots of different people. In fact, where I'm from "bruh" is a very typical "white" thing to say.
Saying “kowtow”, “bruh”, “what’s good”. Not a problem.
Someone who never says “bruh” or “what’s good” suddenly talking like they’re extras in a Migos music video to their black coworker is not cool.
Saying kowtow, but only in reference to Asians and always using “appease” in other contexts, is not cool.
Yeah I know HN is mostly white guys who squirm at the idea of race and think “I don’t see color” is an ok thing to say, but if you’re not going to at least try and take someone's arguments for full value, even if you don’t agree, don’t even respond, it’s insulting otherwise.
This kind of useless deflection is insulting to basic intelligence.
In fact, it's been so universal I never even made the connection or wondered about the etymology. Finding out that it's a loan word from Cantonese is something I learned due to this thread.
One whiff of the billions in potential revenue and the marketeers go into a rutting frenzy. It's only when they're doing the inevitable follow-up walk of shame that they realize what they've done.
Other brands too. You don’t see the government changing the laws so Li-Ning can beat Nike.
And of course these local players are in no way supported or promoted by the government, right?
But Alibaba isn’t really Amazon’s main competitor, they are much more B2B than B2C, it’s only when you throw in TMall or Taobao that comparisons become more apt. When I was living in Beijing, my wife and I never used Alibaba, it was always JD.com or some other consumer oriented site, and even Amazon sometimes (though mostly because the Microsoft China trade Union kept giving us gift cards as a kickback).
You mean JD. You could just say "JD" instead of the vague statement.
Taobao is pretty amazing. But slightly hard to explain. It is like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Wish and more in one.
Amazon in China was getting big in second tier cities underserved by big ecommerce brands.
Serving second tier cities make a lot of sense today when competition in tier 1 cities requires more ad spending than in America or Europe
Alibaba is pretty big here in Romania. One could say that that happens because Amazon isn't officially present on the market, which is true, but neither Alibaba is officially launched, people use it because the stuff on their website is really, really cheap and the cost vs what-you-get ratio is pretty reasonable. I also wonder how come Alibaba isn't bigger in some Western European markets.
What is the average delivery in days when shopping from Alibaba? Do you get huge delivery fees akin to Amazon and eBay?
I'm pretty unhappy with Amazon and eBay for shopping in Bulgaria and I'm considering alternatives.
It's not for the same-day delivery crowd, that's for sure, afaik it's from a few days to a week or two. But, like I said, the price is sometimes so low that for a lot of people it's worth it.
> Do you get huge delivery fees akin to Amazon and eBay?
Not as far as I know. There used to be a loophole (or maybe the customs people were too lazy to enforce the law) where you didn't pay VAT for purchases that were not that high but that has changed lately, which added approximately 20% to the costs. Even so, because the prices are comparatively speaking so low it doesn't make that much of a difference.
Of course, I wouldn't advise trying to purchase any branded things or luxury stuff from Alibaba but you can find pretty nice things in there at impossible to beat prices if you don't care that much about the label.
I wouldn't go for almost any online store if I look up luxury items anyway. ;)
But when you want to get 4 cables of this kind, 2 cables of that other kind, 3 LED arrays, and 2 books -- which total $35 -- it feels pretty awful to actually have to pay about $65 due to delivery fees and whatnot.
So I am thinking that for all those smaller purchases I'll just go for Alibaba.
(BTW I also noticed our customs caught up on lower-cost items' VAT and it's not pleasant.)
Appreciate the feedback.
According to him, his higher ups hated the idea of Ali Express turning into "Cheap Chinese Goods Site®." Just as all Chinese "old boss" types, they had that unhealthy obsession with chasing "high profile" image in everything.
They were fuming about them not being able to enter American market, and that no proper Western brand wanted to play with them.
Few people know, but until Alibaba bought Lazada. Russian market was making Alibaba more profit than all other foreign markets combined, despite them spending zero on marketing there, while American market was eating tenths of megabucks of advertising spendings, and not making a dime.
Because jd.com will never get the same 3 million delivery guys working 80 hours a week at around USD $1,000/month.
Walmart, Amazon are seeing resistance because they could potentially put thousand of small business owners out of work.
Boeing, Intel, Corning are doing great business in India because there are no local alternatives. I've even seen automotive lifts for auto repair shops with Made in USA in red-white-blue decals at local repair shops.
Companies like Visa and Mastercard will see protectionist moves by the government as India goes digital 'cause there is no reason for a foreign duopoly to corner the huge market in India.
Citation heavily needed for that claim.
What? This runs counter to basically all of human history and the rise of open/free trade. People should produce what they are best at and trade accordingly, which optimizes workflow for all market participants. Central planning of economies works exceptionally inefficiently and leads to imbalanced products available. Just ask the USSR and the availability of food.
Why are local players very strong?
* Regulatory capture
* Government promotion of internal services
* IP theft from western countries
How about, all of the above?
Simply stating something likely done by Alibaba, but not necessarily true not only adds nothing to the conversation, but detracts from the journey to the truth. If we accept his statement as is, then you may as well accept anything anti-China simply based on the fact that it is anti-China. But doing so of course would be openly declaring yourself as an agenda-based biased actor.
So, I'll sing praises to China when they do something praiseworthy, but by god I'm not trusting a statistic or a press brief coming out of that place, and no-one else with half a brain should either.
For example, when China announces they have landed on the far side of the moon, how exactly does their totalitarian governance impact the accuracy of this press brief? Is it not more beneficial for your own sake to pass on judgment (or at least defer on your judgment) based on the particular event over what their goverment is like?
Regarding China's moon landing, their being a totalitarian government with a propagandistic focus matters a great deal. A lot of bad science has been foisted upon the world by similar regimes - look up Lamarckian inheritance in the USSR for instance if you haven't heard of it.
In this case though, we've got pictures, we know the rocket launched, etc, etc.
But more seriously, does China not engage in mass censorship and re-education camps?
Do angry townsfolk not flash mob foreigners and beat them up?
Last June was there not an expose on how massively Chinese provinces are misrepresenting the reality of their situations?
Did their president not ban Winnie the Pooh?
I've not said anything that hasn't been in the news.
Judging them based on that, based on those consistent and continued offenses informs that bias rather strongly.
Edit:
Here, lets put it this way. I don't trust the Chinese government, or anything tied to the Chinese government, because they've consistently lived down to my expectations. Read what they say, find out what actually happened, and eventually the default assumption HAS to change from "Trust but Verify" to just "Verify".
> Local players in China are very strong with likes of Alibaba
Funding a local competitor is not interference?
Chinese Government Has A Huge "Stake" In Alibaba
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysomaney/2015/10/18/chinese-g...
Within Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou, I'm sure that's true. Can Alibaba get a package delivered to Tibet in two days? Really this is just expressing the fact that effectively all of China's industrialized economy is concentrated in three urban centers.
And while they might not be industrial centers, there are tens of millions of middle-class Chinese in places like Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing who presumably order stuff online sometimes.
One of the best things about capitalism is that nobody is safe.
It's sort of hard to wrap your head around these concepts as a westerner, because we start form two different places of thinking; in China, the government is your way of life, as long as it doesn't interfere with your daily life. The constructs of intellectual property, property rights, etc aren't present
Amazon still runs AWS in China with a Chinese partner. This is just Amazon.cn being unable to compete with local alternatives like Taobao.
What you're saying isn't wrong but I don't think it's particularly relevant to this situation.
Obviously, this is a gross over-simplification of the situation, but it feels weird that FAANG-size tech companies seem to all be making the same mistakes by embedding their services into a packed marketplace and being arrogent enough to expect to beat pre-existing competition. Outsiders may claim (and rightfully so) that China has a bias towards Chinese companies, but this bias doesn't seem to be the reson why the likes of Amazon and Google fail in China.
And could you explain how exactly the Chinese gov made things difficult for Amazon?
Seriously this whole thread is just amazing, tragic and downright sad.
Fast shipping and selection comes down to infrastructure. China is spread out, this means each FC must carry more stock on average, and you need more FCs per person to reduce shipping time.
Markets like Japan and small EU countries are juicy targets for this reason (which is why you see so much investment there).
And then there's 'regulatory challenges'
Each FC requires large amount land, development, and employees. These types of projects require a high level of cooperation of the government to be worth the investment.
This doesn't pair well with a government that is notoriously unwelcoming to foreign business.
Also it does look like Amazon in general is putting more resources into it's higher margin businesses (eg AWS and Echo) than e-commerce.
They know the Chinese will steal every bit of IP/Technology they can, and then once they've extracted all the juice they'll create market conditions that make it impossible for the foreign company to remain successful.
China has been running this program on everyone since they started with the Communist/Open market concept. It's just amazing that companies still haven't caught on. The lure of big money blinds the greedy.
Learn to read the article next time.
got into it with him on another post
Not that different than Microsoft sunset their gaming business in Japan
Microsoft did not leave Japan, they are in fact expanding Xbox Asia and have added an Asian team to the Global Gaming Partnership and Development (GDDP) division: https://www.google.com/search?q=xbox+asia+expanding
So sometimes, (like in this case, it looks like), it may just really be the case of a business not being able to adopt to the different expectations of Chinese consumers.
I was just reading the other day about why U.S. car makers struggle in Japan and that for example domestic car makers there offer the ability to customize the car to an extent U.S. companies can't compete with.
It's likely that Amazon faced enough competition naturally, given its low market share.
Culture is varied and in many ways everything. Competition is also biased and fierce. At least that's my understanding of things (as a white guy born and remaining in the SW USA).
I do find it funny that Amazon is pivoting to "high quality cross-border sales" considering that into the U.S. seems to be low quality, high markup sales (including high levels of counterfeits) with no end in sight.
Those counterexamples are just companies operating in China, of which there are many. There's no problem unless they try to become major players which will never happen. Ikea is the biggest and has recently come under pressure for simply suggesting that Taiwan is a separate country through packaging. This is tightly controlled market, you don't just wander in and do whatever you want.
I don't know about this. Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC, Boeing, Apple and many others are ahead of their Chinese peers in China. It sounds like you're just using a blanket statement from reading various online articles without even how it's out there.
Companies are allowed to operate and grow, but they are tightly controlled. Apple has strong competition and has already trimmed prices and revenue targets. China just purchased 300 planes from Airbus instead of Boeing. McDonalds sold off 80% of its China operations to a Chinese stated-owned company years ago because it had trouble adapting its menu. KFC in China is owned by Yum China and headquartered in Shanghai.
The world is not some free-market paradise. Territorial rules are everywhere. You'll encounter them just to do business in local counties within a state like New York. China's government has incredible power and control and has far more impact than you might think.
How is that the government's fault?
>China just purchased 300 planes from Airbus instead of Boeing.
Airbus is European
>McDonalds sold off 80% of its China operations to a Chinese stated-owned company years ago because it had trouble adapting its menu.
Again why is McDs inability to serve the Chinese palate the fault of the government? Consumer tastes in food are far more determined by culture than government.
The rest of your statement is a non sequitur and strawman.
The parent poster claimed McDonalds was a successful example, however it only successful because it is now led by Chinese-state-owned agency so the real-estate (which is 99% of the value) is not foreign owned. Same with KFC.
What is non-sequitur? That governments exist and have different rules for their businesses and citizens?
2. > Boeing or Airbus get a significant lead over each other in their controlling market
Isn't that the smart thing to do? Government ALWAYS chooses multiple vendors, DARPA wants to use AWS as its sole cloud computing provider and it gets SUED.
What you seem to want to point out is, China has a very unique business environment and domestic market, where Western companies, if not going through intensive localization and adaptation, can't directly deploy its otherwise global operations in China easily. Yes, China needs to open more of its market, and under the current trade war, it needs to do that fast. However, that still won't mean that American companies should assumed be the winner, unless they have a competing edge, the locals just can't offer.
I really don't see this is a much problem here. China/Japan/Korea, those Asian countries have dynamic domestic economy, and those companies are competitive in their homeland.
Amazon couldn't compete because it was not allowed to compete.
China allows foreign companies to compete and grow as long as they follow their rules and are in non-critical markets. Amazon was in a critical market and had domestic competition so it was pressured until it left.
Aviation is a critical market so Boeing and Airbus are being carefully controlled to stay soft in favor of the upcoming (state-run) Comac C919 jetliners getting US certified. China is already selling these jets in Asia and they will be the used by all 3 major (state-run) Chinese airlines once ready, eventually pushing out Boeing and Airbus completely.
They don't really care about some luxury goods brands but they are investing heavily in critical sectors like aviation. They have a long road ahead but Comac (state-owned manufacturer) is already selling commercial aircraft to other countries.
Boeing = no chinese competitor available
Apple = is feeling the pressure now
And yet the users in this thread have repeatedly said that there are major product differences between Amazon and its Chinese competitors, where the alternatives offer much better value propositions to their customers.
In addition, Amazon is having trouble in many countries other than China.
Because the Chinese counterparts are government propped.
Chinese nationals are the largest foreign group of investors in US commercial and residential real estate. They have plenty of access. The success and scale of the Belt and Road Initiative directly shows just how vast the control extends.
In China the government appears to clearly control the corporations (while there are some highly influential corporations that, through their economic power, have essentially become moves and shakers in the government) in America corporations control the government (while there are a lot of former politicians who end up sneaking off into highly paid do-nothing positions for their help during their tenure in elected office). These things are different, and America is absolutely a more free place, but it isn't an absolutely free place.
Amazon has past the point where vertical integration questions should be raised and a break up should be considered for the public interest - not pursuing it for them (or Walmart, or Google, or many other too-large-to-fail corporations) is another form of assistance the government offers them.
The US is not a free market and participates in private industry subsidization both with and against the public interest but, I agree, it's no where near China's levels - to keep it from getting to those levels we need to acknowledge how bad it has already gotten.
So the big dilemma is, do we let them? Or more precisely, do we as the outside world let Chinese stifle all the foreign companies in their own market while their own companies operate freely in those foreign countries? It smells really a lot of mercantilism, and the Chinese culture of copy-catting freely doesn't help. It seems like the Western countries in particular have become too soft for Chinese tactics, and are too afraid to act against China. This at least has been my perception.
Are we going to war? Isolationism? React in kind? Simply wait?
A market works well when it's not distorted.
This might be applicable for hardware sales, but for service companies (including ecommerce, search, ride hailing, all the big USA tech company niches) it's kind of a moot point. None of the big Chinese companies put any effort into working outside of China. In fact my biggest complaint is they don't do any internationalization at all, so if you don't read Chinese you basically can't use anything. To the extend that services even work outside of China they are mainly only used by Chinese people, see for example WeChat or Taobao or Baidu. So I'm not sure this line of action would have any effect.
If the parent instead meant blocking Americans from doing any business with China (as a manufacturer of smartphones, for example), that's likely to have much more downside to American companies and consumers than to China, so we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot.
But all these points are debatable, see all the back-and-forth about the tariffs/trade war. Some great economic write-ups on all sides.
Another problem I've noted is also the Chinese companies buying up Western companies and seemingly operating as Western, but actually being fully owned by the Chinese companies which might be even indirectly owned by the Chinese government. Volvo, Supercell, Nokia phones (HMD Global) comes to my mind. From what I learned Western companies can not similarly buy Chinese companies at least fully, and part-Chinese ownership is almost required for a company to become highly successful in China.
So my conclusion is that if foreign companies can't operate freely in China, why should Chinese companies be able to operate with much less restriction in those same countries. Especially if it yields a monetary benefit for the Chinese doing so. Doesn't seem smart. Would love to see some actual research on this.
On a related note, I find it frustrating how so much residential property in San Francisco is owned by Chinese investors/real estate moguls. I have no idea what the fallout would be to limiting the ability of international entities to own so much property here, but I imagine it would help with the sky-high rents. It's not a line of reasoning I've ever seen a good write-up on, so I would be curious to understand it better.
(Almost) everyone agrees that protectionist policies are directly harmful to America's economy. I wonder if people might be more willing to accept them as tools to encourage change in other countries behaviour if they were sold better, though, or sold by someone else.
The problem with that, is that it's a vicious circle. Innovation is the foundation for future innovations. It builds on itself. It lays the groundwork and foundation for what comes next. By leapfrogging and cheating its way to the top (or near the top) they are sacrificing that crucial infrastructure for future discoveries and innovations.
China has to copy & steal IPs because it simply doesn't have the culture to compete. They're one of the least innovative countries on Earth, year after year. And the only way to change that is by allowing its citizens to think creatively, outside the box -- to be able to challenge authority. But China doesn't want that; they want conforming little worker bees who follow the party line.
Funny thing, that's exactly what people used to say about Japan, and then about South Korea. (And the typical work environments in both countries do not exactly encourage creativity or challenging the status quo, either. So I'm not sure what difference that might make.)
"Since 2012, the country has retracted more scientific papers because of faked peer reviews than all other countries and territories put together,..."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-...
Global Innovation Index: https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/gii-2018-report China is 17
Let's say this, the counterparts of Facebook and Twitter has already fallen or on its way to fall out of favor in China because people found more interesting ways to waste their time and find useless information. Soon, you will find Facebook and Twitter doing the same, and in that order.
Sites and apps surviving the Chinese market are the real winners, and those who cannot will fail in other countries too. That is the power of a large enough testbed.
A simple example is how Facebook and co. have recently expressed they're looking at WeChat as an example to learn from. There are many more.
The goals are: 1) removing trade/current-account imbalance (which has improved on its own due to the massive spike in Chinese tourism [2]), 2) allowing more Western companies enter China without forced technology transfer or other "unfair" practices, 3) reducing the rampant intellectual property violations in China.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...
[2] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/03/14/c...
But the idea that China ever intended to continue to allow western companies to dominate their economy, once they were developed enough to do something about it, is naive. No nation, that can avoid that, allows it.
This goes beyond so much more than this particular article. The ‘western’ world is building a global civilization, and it seems like anyone is invited if you play by the rules. All of the China doves over the last 3 decades probably thought China would open up in that way and join the ‘developed’ world.
I mean, fuck, Samsung is a huge compnent of the US economy, isn’t it?
No, fuck China, and protectionism in general. They had (still have?) an invitation into the global civilization. It’s based on rules, that you have to follow. Of course there are criminals (hsbc, Libor, etc...) but overall it’s based on rules.
This ‘realpolitik’ that has taken over, where ‘yeah of course nations act in their own best interest’ is not the complete picture, because at some point, a nation’s self interest is in cooperation.
The slogan "America First" doesn't sound so globalistic. And playing by rules is definitely not before America, which is first.
Apple doesn't. The American company.
The whole precondition and reason of all those other countries being allowed to join this so-called "global civilization" and play by the so-called "rules" is because America remains the undisputed No.1 in this set of rules. America pretty much controls every aspect of the social fabric of its allies and they can't live without their big brother and protector.
If you actually talk to some Japanese and Germans, or even French, you'd find out how much apathy and even antipathy towards this American hegemony they harbor. Particularly those who don't stand to benefit a lot from this situation. I recall particularly vividly a survey where the perceptions of Germans towards America are substantially worse than the perceptions the other way round.
For CCP, the national independence and sovereignty is always the top priority, not least due to the humiliations and pain suffered in the hands of the former colonial power.
Naturally, the consequence of the rise of of an independent China is that the American hegemony is under threat. And this is the reason why America has been so keen to act against China. This is understandable, as power transitions/struggles between two great powers have rarely occurred peacefully throughout the history.
But at least you should recognize this reality instead of trumpeting the "global civilization", "democracy" propaganda nonsense. If the US actually cared the least bit about civilization and democracy, would it have sent agents to topple so many democratically elected regimes around the world, just to install their own dictator puppets and let the people suffer in eternal poverty? Would it have fought so many senseless wars and killed so many civilians?
The aim of the US is to keep its hegemony and try to keep all the other nations in their "allocated" positions. It doesn't give a damn about whether the actual population of those nations improve their living conditions or anything like that.
Similarly, the so-called "doves" are not really concerned about China's growth, but rather have expected China to occupy a preallocated place, where it would perform the roles that benefit the West, but not threaten their dominance in key industries and sectors at all. "How nice it would have been for China to remain a cheap manufacturing hub instead of trying to become a technological superpower." Too bad. China is not willing to play the ball and harbors greater ambitions than that, which it has every right to do.
This is just how politics works. But at least see it and acknowledge it. If you can't even do that, you're not seeing through even the most simplistic mainstream propaganda, and that's tragic.
South Korea, like Germany, has a military alliance with the US, and the US has military bases in South Korea. Again, there is also no real danger of South Korea dominating the US economy on the scale that the US could (if allowed) dominate the Chinese one.
Lastly, there are rules in the "global" economy, but those rules have mostly worked to the benefit of the countries that made them (see results in Latin America and Africa for what happens if you follow IMF and World Bank advice on opening up your economy). South Korea, Japan, and other "Asian tigers" mostly did NOT follow IMF/World Bank advice, and that's why it worked for them. China is basically doing the same thing Japan, South Korea, etc. did a couple decades ago.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't care, or even respond, but we shouldn't be surprised, or expect something different in the future.
Do you have any evidence that this is what happened in this situation??
> And yes the article is bullshit because this same government won't allow any negative press about their actions either.
Again. Could be true, but how am I supposed to know that your interpretation is correct?
Totalitarian control has an effect on competition. Those cannot be independent.
I would argue the latter is the usual competitive advantages local companies have.
What is he saying?
Amazon is using proven multi-decade logistics companies for delivery, so it's pretty certain their internal cost structures are rational.
How much are the JD trucks and delivery guys being paid? How above board is JD's finances? What are they getting from the governments? Perhaps it's just another WebVAN.
These things are never quite clear in China, transparency and public audits are not present.
They pay market rate, and that's nothing unreal when most Chinese live in densely built up apartment blocks (a big difference from USA)
Shanghai minimum wage is 2500 RMB/mo. So in order to make minimum wage, this guy would need to make 500 orders in 30 days, or 16 deliveries per day. In an 8 hour day, could he pick up and make 16 deliveries? Sure, but it's tight, and obviously at some point, they have to pay the delivery guys more.
And they have, but in order for O2O players to pay more to the delivery people, they've ended up charging more to the restaurants, and so the restaurants have then ended up raising the prices on the menus displayed.
So this indicates that the current O2O system in China wasn't stable. Despite massive revenues, the heavy competition, discounts, and artificially low introductory fees, and ease of switching, doesn't give me confidence their current structure will work.
And 饿了吗‘s logistics seem pretty chaotic to me and no different than Postmates or Doordash in the US. I rarely saw delivery bikes loaded down with multiple orders, because 15-30 minute delivery windows pretty much dictate a point-to-point delivery, rather than a hub and spokes model.
In Russia, we had same day delivery even in very first eCommerce site back in nineties, and even e-groceries. That was just much a much smaller market, and the fact that 90% of country's economy was in Moscow back then was helping.
China today is not much different with 5 megacities making 90% of eCommerce trade volume.
Are stationed in China?
Edit: My mandarin is elementary school level, but there's a similar quote in the source article that sounds like "therefore they call it 2 day delivery"
So it's win-win for China -- there's another (American firm) sucker born every minute looking to "enter the huge Chinese market", and the Chinese gov is taking full advantage of that (ultimately) hopeless dream.
On one hand it sucks that China is abusing its position in the global market, but on the other hand I am really not shedding any tears for greedy corporate America getting screwed for once.