[noodles23]

As someone with a startup that operates in both India and China, I completely agree that India will be the next big thing.

Both are messed up in their own ways. The difference is that in India, things are generally getting better. There are exceptions but the trend is moving towards a better internet ecosystem.

China on the other hand is a case of how to F* things up. They modernized their tech backbone so quicky hundreds of millions of people have access to fast (20 mbps+) internet. From there the government has made it virtually impossible to have a global tech focussed startup in China.

Just an example- npm repos are by default blocked in China. Apparently the automatic version control ended up with a number sequence that corresponds in some bamboozled way with a black date that's censored. Government had a hissy fit and therefore NPM is blocked. You have to reconfigure to use Chinese locally hosted repos which is a security risk (Read: IOS malware in Chinese versions of software)

We also got stung with a government request for data on users. Since the law in China changes with every government official you meet, some of the shit they ask for is beyond rediculous. To be fair, it's also happened in India, but the frequency is decreasing.

[vjoshi]

Cheers for the insight. How does the request for data on users differ between China and India? Am curious.

[noodles23]

There really isn't that much difference in the substance of the requests which was not what I expected.

It's more the frequency and how the requests are delivered that is different