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China’s Internet. You’ve Got It All Wrong.

By Dan Harris on Posted in China Business, Recommended Reading

Bill Bishop, a China Internet guru, recently did a post on his DigiCha blog, entitled, “China’s Internet: The Invisible Birdcage.” Not sure I like the title, but I am sure that I like the post itself as it does a great job explaining China’s Internet and how different it is from most Western countries.

Because my firm is in a tech center and because so many of our existing clients are in tech or tech related businesses, we get a fairly steady stream of people/companies who come to us ready to make their fortune on China’s Internet, without having even the slightest clue how different it is. This article is for them and I highly recommend it for anyone else interested in marketing or selling or whatever on China’s Internet. 

What do you think?

UPDATE: David Wolf at Silicon Hutong also very recently did an excellent post on China’s Internet. David’s post is entitled, “A China Internet Bubble? Maybe…How Much Do You Know?” and I highly recommend that also.  

  • Chris

    Great article… “the invisible birdcage” is also a reasonable description of the state of play. Internet access in China simply gets worse with each passing week. For those of us stuck behind the Great Firewall, accessing most mainstream overseas sites becoming slow, unreliable and full of random errors. The Firewall appears to be in overdrive recently as the paranoia levels increase. Accessing standard company global databases difficult… news access random… overall horrible.
    Local Chinese language access also getting worse, with frequent censorship, outages and chronic slowness even with big brand local sites.
    I suspect any technicoloured ‘revolution’ in China will be sparked by Chinese internet users becoming infuriated with nanny-State controls over and above any unity on actual social issues.

  • mike

    This is a great piece. Thanks for sharing it with us.

  • Baltech

    This is very important information. It is also useful for any client that use the internet and related to this field.

  • http://offbeatchina.com/ wordlock

    Local internet companies simply understand local consumers better, a simply comparison between Chinese clones and their western counterpats can easily show the difference http://offbeatchina.com/twitter-vs-chinas-no-1-microblogging-service-will-twitter-be-a-hit-even-if-wasnt-blocked-in-china/

  • Nazmi

    Thanks for the link. I am always surprised how little there is in English on China’s internet and I have chalked that up to how few people really understand it. Bishop understands it and I thank you for the link.