[seemuch]

The discussion in this thread shows how blind people are about China's development. They are pointing fingers to the Chinese government partly because they simply cannot imagine how much better the China competitors are. The US do have some advantages in the IT industry, but that advantage is getting slimmer and slimmer. In fact, in so many ways, people in China are enjoying much better services from the internet companies than people in the US. But people in the US simply cannot see it, and cannot believe it. For ordinary people, I don't blame them. But most of people on HN are from this industry, and they are the same! This just makes me speechless.

[manigandham]

The China competitors are better because they are actively helped by the government while foreign companies are not, and in this case actively suppressed.

Competition only works when the market is fair. Perhaps Amazon could not make as good of an offering but their marketshare was 15% 10 years ago and China is a large, homogenous, and modernized population like the US which is perfect for Amazon's scale strategy. It's a hard sell to say that a trillion-dollar company does not have the resources and talent to do what the people in the next building can.

[ksec]

It was not suppressed.

> It's a hard sell to say that a trillion-dollar company does not have the resources and talent to do what the people in the next building can.

By that notion no startup will ever win agains the titan. And Apple would not have been the largest market cap company today when they had M$, Blackberry and IBM in its era.

The truth is, even if the full Amazon experience in US were replicated today in China ( Where Amazon had a home ground advantage and had much longer time to refine their infrastructure and strategy ) it will still not be anywhere as good as what Alibaba/ Taobao / JD.com has to offer.

That is on the consumer side of course, in terms of AWS their offering ( knowledge and understanding ) are very much behind.

Amazon failed in execution and strategy in China. And they learned their lesson when they enter India.

Usually I would put a few words on Chinese Companies having the advantage of literally infinite burn rate to increase revenue while competing. These money comes from VC which is funded by the government anyway. But knowing Alibaba its major share holder is Yahoo and Softbank along with a few other outside investors I don't think that is anywhere near true.

[mguerville]

Western companies, US and others alike, are helped by their governments too. Telcos are granted monopolies yet they deliver horrendous infrastructure for instance.

[ETHisso2017]

Can you pinpoint what happened 10 years ago that resulted in Amazon losing share?

Just because Amazon had money or has money doesn't mean it can't get disrupted. Otherwise, we'd all be buying from Sears and using AT&T for video calling.

[SZJX]

Could you go into more details on how exactly Amazon was "suppressed" in China while the competitors were helped? If not you're talking out of thin air.

[tsukurimashou]

As opposed to US companies that are certainly not helped in any way by the US government

[manigandham]

Sure, but definitely not to that extent, competitors are certainly not suppressed in the same way, and it's irrelevant to the discussion of why Amazon left China.

[lexs]

Bombadier literally was ended by the US government

[manigandham]

Do you mean Bombardier? The aviation company with $16B in revenue and 65k employees? Looks like there was a tariff imposed on one of their models due to a complaint by Boeing but was overturned 4 months later in Jan 2018.

If this is the company you're talking about, can you describe what you mean by "literally was ended"?

[lexs]

Without the Airbus deal for the C-Series Bombardier was basically in bankruptcy exactly because of those tariffs. It felt like quite a targeted attempt to, as you put it, suppress competitors.

[ericfrenkiel]

Well said!

[Cookingboy]

Seriously, Alibaba's e-commerce side operates at a scale that makes Amazon's entire North America (if not global) operation look like a 7/11 store hosted on Geocities.

Last year on Single Day alone, Alibaba handled over $30B in orders with 24 hours, and more impressively those are spread over 1,000,000,000 separate deliveries orders. It means it handled the ordering and payment processing of 11,574 orders per second, and then fulfilled and delivered those ONE BILLION orders within the next 48 hours.

Can you even imagine being an Alibaba warehouse worker during that couple days?

[jmknoll]

Definitely impressive, but certainly not delivered within 48 hours. I’m based in Shanghai and use Taobao/Tmall on a near-daily basis. There was a noticeable slowdown in order for at least a week or two on either side of the holiday. For regular items, if you order it right before the holiday, you may not get it for a couple of weeks in some cases.

Doesn’t take anything away from what Alibaba is doing. It’s a huge spike over their normal business operations. I would be surprised if it didn’t cause a disruption of some sort.

[HeavenFox]

While it is an impressive technological feat indeed, note that Alibaba doesn’t handle their own logistics. It’s more like eBay where the sellers are supposed to fulfill their own orders.

[teknologist]

Would not go as far as to say "delivered" in 48 hours. Shipping can be relatively slow during those promotional days and the app even shows delay warnings on the cart screen / checkout.

[PakG1]

Received my Singles Day purchases next day from jd.com though. Don't think the volume affected them. Can't say for Alibaba.

[Cookingboy]

>Shipping can be quite slow

True, but remember "slow" means something quite different in China where same/next day delivery is very often expected in top tier big cities. So 3-5 days delivery is definitely considered slow, and during these crazy period you may see the glacier speed of one week delivery time :)

[thetechlead]

Not just in e-commerce, the convenience living in China has far passed America, such as in mobile payment, food delivery, bike sharing, WeChat with its tremendously useful ecosystem, the subway system, high-speed rails, etc.

Having lived in both China and America, I have to say the living standard in Chinese cities has passed America's in many ways and, more importantly, the speed of China building new facilities is at least 10x of the US. Many American believe there's a competition between two countries, but IMO the competition is already won. Chinese no longer see the US as a competitor in many areas - you rarely hear Chinese Internet companies learning something new from their American counterparts today, or people envying America for their way of living. It's the opposite I found worrisome, that America is losing confidence and becomes more insecure day by day.

[stone-monkey]

Food delivery and bike sharing work well in China because of the scale of the cities and lower cost of living. When you have millions of people densely packed together, dumping a ton of bikes everywhere may be feasible. Even then, there's known issues, like how currently the biggest bike vendors are struggling for profitability. Food delivery is occasionally cheaper than buying at the store, due to VC style subsidies and lower cost of human labor. Delivery logistics are incredibly cool to me though. Real time location tracking for food/package deliveries is impressive. It'd be amazing to see something similar in the US.

[thetechlead]

Advanced logistics technology is a part of the New Retail happening in China that revolutionizes the customer experience in shopping and living daily life, though integrating online, offline services and logistics. It's more than just delivering your food or automated convenience stores. There are quite a few companies utilizing AI and big data to drive New Retail to the next level. Recommend some articles on this topic：

https://www.bain.com/insights/embracing-chinas-new-retail/ https://www.alizila.com/new-retail/

[profalseidol]

One should try to find out why the cost of labor is lower than in the US.

[teknologist]

Those delivery guys in China are under incredible pressure.

[ericfrenkiel]

Per capita GDP and gross GDP easily refute your apologia.

Pro tip: at least try to submit something unrelated to China every now and then, otherwise people may rightly or wrongly call you a troll.

[thetechlead]

GDP per capita can be misleading and doesn't translate well into the quality of life, certainly not how convenient and safe you feel living there. Anyone who lived in China for a while would agree.

I see no problem submitting China-related news since I live in the country and Chinese technology is my focus, and HN folks deserve to know more about the development of Chinese technologies. I should submit more often. The fact that people are 'shocked' to hear Chinese company winning western counterparts as shown in the comments under various China posts in HN proves my point.

[landryraccoon]

I'm curious what you think this confidence buys the west. Like, is it actually beneficial to be overconfident? Let's say you're right and he's wrong. The consequence of overestimating China is slight. So, we were a little worried when we didn't have to be.

On the other hand, the consequences for a nation or a business of underestimating China could be catastrophic. It could mean finding your business or nation suddenly cut off by a competitor you didn't plan for. It seems to me that rational self interest alone should bias the west towards overestimating rather than underestimating China.

It almost feels like an anxious insecurity, as if admitting that China might catch up might make it so, when sticking our heads in the sand about the possible threat is way more likely to ensure we are overtaken.

[omilu]

“Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted” -PG

[landryraccoon]

That's talking about a startup. Europe and the United States aren't startups.

[SZJX]

That's a quite peculiar definition of "troll". Why can't somebody have a particular focus on a certain type of news/discussion? Your comments read much more like trolling.

[luckydata]

Or maybe we just don't agree.

[Tsubasachan]

Yeah I visited a retail expert panel and they were talking about how in the 80s and 90s we looked at the US for trends and now China is the inspiration.

Malls are out apps are in. Its almost scary how fast physical retail is dying.