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by ozymandias12 1186 days ago
Allow me to elaborate a bit more: by implementing the firewall, China not only isolated itself, it enabled the western internet to concentrate western investment on Silicon Valley firms, that with no big Chinese companies around, established today’s western world internet monopolies. Or in plain English, by closing itself, China literally helped US companies dominate the www.

China on the other hand, not only had their domestic market entirely for their own domestic giants, creating their own expertise and talent pool, they also didn’t even had to think on what to do, as they could just copy US apps “with Chinese characteristics”, making A LOT of money too.

There was a lot of talk about technology transfer, but you right, the narrative 100% changed from helping the CCP to “China bad”, but how bad they really are when they allowed America to make a true empire on the www without the Chinese companies as competitors?

How America is reacting to its very first Chinese competitor says a lot about America true sportsmanship on the market, it’s very childish and lame if you ask me.

2 comments

You're making the opposite argument of the comment you're replying to, though. China can't simultaneously have isolated itself (as you say) and it be the fault of Western companies choosing not participate in China (as the person you're replying to) says.

It sounds like you both agree China made a market that was specifically hostile to American companies, including intentionally banning some, though. Which is kind of the point most people are making when they talk about market reciprocity.

I’m having trouble finding useful info about size of china online sector vs USA in terms of GDP. But it definitely isn’t US dominating. Some sites say china is close 2nd to USA, but when I look at numbers china is 3x USA (7.1T Chinese digital economy vs apparently 2.1T in USA).