Forbes blog: China is the real originator

Gady Epstein, former director of Forbes' Beijing office, recently published a blog saying that the phenomenon of Shanzhai is not uncommon in China. In fact, "China is the true originator of the shanzhai."

The following is the meaning of Bowen:

Facebook Places provided by Facebook is reminiscent of Foursquare. When Facebook walks in front of the Foursquare stage, don't forget to copy and imitate the Internet's original “clan”: China.

China has a history of replication success that it is proud of. In the next few years, we will see Chinese companies cloning Foursqaure, Gowalla and Groupon and making a fortune from it. The only problem with this is that it will be a small start-up company, or a company like Facebook.

Baidu CEO Robin Li relied on the establishment of Chinese-style Google to become a billionaire, and its company's market capitalization now reached nearly US$30 billion; Ma’s QQ chat tool designed to emulate ICQ also made him a billionaire, and this year Tencent Holdings is about to set a profit of US$1 billion. In addition, China has its own eBay and Amazon - Taobao and Dangdang. There are also many clone brothers of Facebook and Youtube.

Against this backdrop, emerging companies have entered the Chinese market not only because they are not ashamed of the shanzhai. Instead, they have taken the world by themselves. Once they become the best cottage companies, they will win the competition or sell at the best price to earn a windfall.

Today, the focus of competition in China's Shanzhai market is Foursquare-like or Groupon-like, or two-in-one. In fact, many Chinese companies already provide users with services similar to those of the above two companies. According to Startups Watch, an entrepreneurial watchdog report, China now has dozens of Foursquare replica companies and hundreds of group buying websites.

I just just count the number of imitators I can list: China Groupon includes group purchase network, handle network, 24 coupon network and cool group network; Chinese version of Foursquare includes street side network and 16Fun network.

With the rise of the wireless network market in China, we will soon see the emergence of wireless services Shanzhai Company.

However, most cottage companies face the threat of survival from large platforms. For example, China Mobile, which has hundreds of millions of users and a large amount of local infrastructure, Tencent, a social network predator, etc., how many of these large platforms can match?

In summary, whether it is Foursqure or Groupon, the winner of China's Shanzhai competition may not be one of the small entrepreneurial companies, but rather a large company with huge market forces that can squeeze small companies out of the market.