Chinese companies continue to expand around the world as domestic Chinese technology relentlessly improves. How should the world and business respond? Read excerpts from the discussion below.
RIESCHEL: When you see the government hand behind everything in China, that hand is usually frantically trying to catch up to what the people are already doing. The greatest strength of China is the fact that they have a technocratic leadership that does a lot of experiments.
HOOPER: The thing that struck me on my first trip to China was that the stereotype of it being an economy that copies and manufactures was incorrect. The way they innovate around business models is very dynamic.
LORENZO: Seven years ago, Western companies wanted us to do work in China because they saw the market. Now Chinese companies want to work in the West, particularly around innovation. The government has moved quickly, but getting the talent in China for innovative thinking is difficult.
XIAO: The speed of innovation comes from uncertainty. Entrepreneurs are under tremendous pressure to do things quickly. This encourages them to stay close to end users and to create revenue quickly.
HOOPER: We've had a very positive relationship with the Chinese government. They’re investing substantially in broadband wireless infrastructure and leveraging technology for healthcare and education.
RIESCHEL: China has more bloggers than almost the rest of the world combined. People take a cell phone picture of any injustice and send it to their friend. We've seen chemical factories shut down and corrupt government officials uncovered. Is this the beginning of the fall of the Chinese government?
XIAO: Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo [Twitter-like Chinese social media sites] have around 350 million users. About 80% of them are less than 30 years old. The number one topic that they talk about on the Weibos is social justice and government accountability. Believe it or not, government responds to it a lot more quickly now. It’s changing the way the Chinese have a dialogue with the government. If the government works with it, it’s not going to overthrow the government.
Participants
