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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

This is why I don't get why companies--tech giants in particular--kowtow to China in the hopes of getting access to the Chinese market. It will never happen. At least, it won't be open access. You'll have to play by Chinese rules (ie integration with the Great Firewall, storing data in China, probably integration with social credit and so on). Worse, there might be (basically forced) "IP transfer". Even after all that, the government will make sure that you don't dominate any market. There'll be a Chinese version for that.

There is absolutely zero point in trying to mollify the Chinese government.

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Perhaps you didn’t read the article. This has nothing to with government interference. Local players in China are very strong with likes of Alibaba doing massive shopping festivals that easily rivals Thanksgiving. Two day delivery is China is considered slow and nothing to be proud about. On the top of this, it looks there were control issues where leaders at Amazon.cn weren’t empowered to make decisions. I actually would rather ask reverse question: why Alibaba etc aren’t bigger in US or Europe given their far more aggressive take on offering huge catelog at lower prices with ultrafast delivery.

"Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The entire Chinese economy has to do with government interference. The scales are absolutely tipped in favor of Chinese companies.

I wouldn't think that is a bad thing per se. Countries who can consume and produce within themselves are going to succeed more than those who primarily import / export. If I were the Chines government I'd want to keep Amazon out as well.

>Countries who can consume and produce within themselves are going to succeed more than those who primarily import / export

Citation heavily needed for that claim.

Take the natural experiment of the Korean peninsula. Who would prefer to live in the (relatively) free-trading, cosmopolitan hellhole of South Korea when they could live in the utopian autarky of North Korea?

He wasn't arguing for autarky, but having an industrial base.

> Countries who can consume and produce within themselves are going to succeed more than those who primarily import / export.

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.

Sadly. You can shout to try to win the arguments here. But it don't matter.

Nobody is shouting or being required to shout. What is lacking is simply evidence on how Amazon was actually "suppressed" by the gov. Without concrete evidence the comments are just echoing blanket anti-chinese propaganda without acknowledging the possibility that some Chinese companies could be simply more agile, innovative and adoptive to this market.

One wonders who the dominant player will be in India, or Africa.

Given India's protectionist stance towards foreign companies, I'm going to guess not Amazon or Walmart.

Companies like Harley-Davidson, Ford, GM, McDonalds, Dominos are running fine in India because they have plenty of local competition and create local jobs.

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.

I was referring specifically to ecommerce players, in the context of the recent protectionist laws enacted by India in that area. And it is more than just protecting small business out of work since the laws specifically target foreign investment.

They are the only two players now (for all practical purpose)

Amazon is already the dominant player in India.

I personally would defer judgement on why Amazon is leaving; Alibaba tends to be the most competitive of the Chinese internet companies, and has a corporate culture very similar to Amazon (frugal, but with 996).

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).

I would assume they meant Alibaba Group which is Taobao, Tmall, Alibaba.com, AliExpress, Alipay, Aliyun. Ele.me, Youku etc.

Taobao is pretty amazing. But slightly hard to explain. It is like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Wish and more in one.

Ya, but we never used TMall or Taobao either. There are lots of other better options for consumers in China.

> But Alibaba isn’t really Amazon’s main competitor (in China)

You mean JD. You could just say "JD" instead of the vague statement.

I said JD in the next sentence, the one run by milk tea sister’s husband of dubious repute.

> why Alibaba etc aren’t bigger in US or Europe given their far more aggressive take on offering huge catelog at lower prices with ultrafast delivery.

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.

I once knew the guy who was a de facto operations chief for Ali Express from 2010 to 2015. He was saying that he pretty much had to fight with higher ups for them not to purposefully sabotage low end wholesale buyers and vendors.

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.

As a Bulgarian, that's very surprising to read!

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.

> What is the average delivery in days when shopping from Alibaba?

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.

Thanks a lot.

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.

> why Alibaba etc aren’t bigger in US or Europe given their far more aggressive take on offering huge catelog at lower prices with ultrafast delivery.

Because jd.com will never get the same 3 million delivery guys working 80 hours a week at around USD $1,000/month.

>This has nothing to with government interference. Local players in China are very strong

Why are local players very strong?

* Regulatory capture

* Government promotion of internal services

* IP theft from western countries

How about, all of the above?

Without providing sources or proof you’re just regurgitating highly anti-Chinese propaganda.

Since China is also known for all-levels number fudging and revisionism, and state policy and culture has a tendency toward brigading that'd make tumblr blush, the "anti-china propaganda" tends to be a tad more credible, no?

Is that how the process works now? Go with whoever tends to be be a "tad more credible." Everyone has agendas, and you'll go nowhere comparing the relative strength of everyone's agendas.

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.

Not anything, but well, China's a corrupt totalitarian state that believes in information control and revisionism... and then there's also the element of performative solidarity in response to state actions (re: doping scandals, trade sanctions, Taiwan, etc).

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.

Looking at the world like that is like plugging your ears and yelling "I can't hear you" whenever something goes against your preconceived narrative.

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?

It isn't as if I'm ignoring what they put out. We're not in total jingoistic denial of reality territory here :)

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.

This and some of your other comments are some of the most ridiculous ones I've read out there. If somebody posted such a general blanket comment driven by ideology against the American gov without backing it up with any actual evidence or facts, they'd be butchered here. Get a grip.

My two whole comments on the subject are truly beyond the pale...

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.

They may do all of those things... but honestly you wouldn't be the one to know or to be authoritative on such facts based on your attitude and painfully obvious bias.

They do do all these things though, they do them very publicly.

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".

Can you explain how each point is in play in the current case?

> This has nothing to with government interference

> 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...

Timing is surprising. Amazon's Chinese business has just managed to set up everything right and find its niche.

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 already gaining marketshare in Europe. The Chinese company supports local payment systems, their customer service is surprisingly good, they are actually hungry for business and most importantly CHEAP. Amazon got a bit arrogant and complacent. Probably because of their god status in the US.

One of the best things about capitalism is that nobody is safe.

My inlaws got antsie when a delivery took 4 hours to show up. Home delivery is very fast in China.

4 hours is a bit extreme unless you are getting it delivered from the store in your apartment complex (which happens...a lot).

What kind of thing were they ordering and what was the distance traveled by the package, if you don't mind my asking ?

> Two day delivery is China is considered slow and nothing to be proud about.

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.

Are you counting Shenzhen as part of Guangzhou? Surely it’s a center of the Chinese industrial economy.

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.

I'm sure lots of people order stuff online, even in Tibet. I was asking for support for "two day shipping is no great shakes" upthread, which frankly I don't believe given the size of the country and the nature of its transportation grid.

You have no idea how developed China's internal shipping is.

>This has nothing to with government interference. Local players in China are very strong with likes of Alibaba

And of course these local players are in no way supported or promoted by the government, right?

Could be... But then again, I find it hard to believe that if Alibaba ever starts overtaking Amazon in the US, the government will just stand and watch.

There is nothing to do with government. As someone shopping online almost everyday in China, I can tell you taobao.com, jd.com are far more better than amazon.com on every aspect. In JD.com if you place your order before 10 am most of the time you get delivery same day or the next day. In taobao you have way more stuff than in Amazon, you can find a live person to answer your question instantly. Amazon is like something from 5 years ago or even older. You have to send a email for customer service, it's unacceptable, the web design, the functionality are so dated compare to it's competitor. So no one use it here.

Arrogant American people won't believe you. You are lying, Amazon is the best. US is No.1

They failed because they were not able to adapt to the Chinese market/have any competitive advantage against alibaba or JD which is the point the article is trying to make. None of what you mentioned is alluded in the article.

My contention is that wouldn't matter. If they did adapt to the Chinese market and seriously started to eat market share from the likes of Alibaba I GUARANTEE you the rules would change to Amazon's disadvantage.

Nah, I doubt it. Just look at how successful Apple and Microsoft are in China.

Other brands too. You don’t see the government changing the laws so Li-Ning can beat Nike.

Apple and Microsoft both have products that don't have any Chinese equal. Competing with macOS or Windows is probably the hardest thing to do in the software world at the moment.

Or maybe pandaily was scared to say anything against China. Honestly, the fact that there was no talk about regulation in that article is a huge red flag. Why would China allow international companies to play in their turf when they eComm can generate 100s of billions of dollars of value for local companies (as it has)?

Well, then, I guess the author of the comment must disagree with the article.

> I don't get why companies... kowtow to China in the hopes of getting access to the Chinese market.

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.

The only reason China lets foreign companies operate in their country is to steal from them, while temporarily enjoying their capital injection. Pretty par for the course in communist countries. Except China does it with IP, technique, etc; while other countries might have let a US company build the entire oil infrastructure and then just take it over once it's complete.

While your criticism is valid, the article was trying to say that Amazon China was not responsive to local condition and competition. The slow response was the proximate cause of Amazon China's failure, but ultimately even if they were successfully competing they would have eventually ran into the problems you described.

Yeah paying to play on a playing field that will change the moment someone in power is supporting a competitor seems pretty absurd at face value.

"kowtow" -- nice word choice!

"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

I hate the way I've at least seen people use that word in the US. They almost exclusively use it in reference to China, and it's just awkward. Not racist, but just weirdly racial the way they use it and the tone is gross. Hard to put into words.

Apparently this is a controversial revelation to some of you:

https://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2010/12/23/my-pet-peeve-rac...

Why wouldn't you use in reference to China? It originates from the Cantonese language (probably because of the amount of Cantonese speakers in San Francisco back in the day) and in China.

Most people will know what it means if I say el <insert word>. But it's like if I only say el <insert word> when my Mexican friend is around. Just weird, and not necessary.

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.

I know that this is anecdotal and not necessarily representative of anything, but, I hear people use kowtow in all sorts of context, and certainly not limited to references to China or other Asian nations/ethnicities.

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.

All your examples are false equivalences. The word "kowtow" is a perfect description of a relatively complicated ritual that didn't already have an English word for it (you could maybe substitute "placate" or "show deference" but these can have other meanings in different contexts). Words from other languages like "karaoke", "restaurant" and "prima donna" have always been incorporated into English when no specific substitute works well enough (of course this isn't specific to English, but it is a very English habit).

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.

All your of your comment is intentionally stripping things of context in a pathetic attempt disarm a fair argument without addressing the actual substance of it.

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.

I don't have an issue with the base argument, I agree with it. I'm saying the examples are false equivalences because in the context of the original comment, they are. There's nothing in the original comment that indicates the use of the word "only in reference to Asians" because you have a sample size of 1 (again, I've personally heard it used in non-Asian contexts too). Making an assumption about the intent of someone's comment doesn't fit my definition of a "valuable argument" outside of more context, but as I said I agree with the general issue with individuals using certain words only in certain racial contexts.

Point out which part of my comment is saying I’m talking about a single comment and not a general trend in the US.

This kind of useless deflection is insulting to basic intelligence.

I'm not sure if you've picked up the main point of what I'm saying or are just performing some deflection of your own, but it stands nevertheless: you've got a reasonable argument that I get behind, just make your argument without using misleading examples.

Not sure why others seem to disagree, but kow-tow indeed conjures up fu manchu-esque images, a sort of comical or repugnant representation of groveling associated exclusively with Asian culture. Exactly as you say, it's not necessarily racist in intention of using the term as subservience, but racial nonetheless. Separately, the actual kau-tau seems to have meant something specific as a ritual of respect. Used here, its generalization to mean forced groveling or appeasement is strange, as it implies the person or entity doing it is a loser.

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