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Opinion | From copycat to tech trailblazer, China now inspires the West
- With companies such as Ant, ByteDance, Huawei and Nio inspiring clones in the West, China is becoming an innovation epicentre
- Rather than keep Chinese companies out, the West, especially the US, should make clear the areas of collaboration or protection
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Back in 2014, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding pulled off the largest-ever initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Merely six years later, Alibaba’s online finance spin-off, Ant Group, was set to break records by raising at least US$34 billion in Hong Kong and Shanghai. While the Chinese regulators have called a last-minute halt to the IPO, Ant’s move to become a major player in the Chinese finance industry is clear.
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Chinese tech entrepreneurs are today increasingly taking the global spotlight. For a long time, Chinese companies, in particular tech companies, were dismissed by their Western counterparts as mere copycats.
But a legion of companies such as Ant, ByteDance, Huawei Technologies Co and electric-vehicle maker Nio have shown the world that the Chinese are also innovating – not just in products, but also in business models, concepts and philosophy.
The business model for the New York-listed Nio, for example, goes beyond simply product sales and includes building a “user community” – through digital connectivity, the company can interact with its user community, down to the individual. This intimacy allows Nio to leverage user data not only for product sales but also to monetise other services.
Moreover, despite repeated efforts by the Trump administration to thwart China’s 5G development, the country is extending its lead. China’s 5G users surpassed 88 million at the end of July – about 80 per cent of users worldwide – and Huawei continues to be the 5G trailblazer.
Western companies are beginning to copy what these Chinese companies are doing. To compete with ByteDance’s popular TikTok app, Facebook launched Instagram Reels, its own short-video feature. It is the second time that Facebook has tried to clone the Chinese social media app after its previous failed attempt, Lasso.
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