Chinese startups won against their US competitors despite their government, and not because of it, Hans Tung, Managing Partner of GGC Capital said yesterday at the India Internet Day conference organised by TiE Delhi. Tung was being interviewed by Dev Khare, MD at Lightspeed Venture Partners, who asked him about a common perception in India: "that in the Chinese digital economy, the winners there were Chinese companies because of the great firewall of China, and the government had an active intervention policy to help Chinese companies win. There are several initiatives in India around, trying to level the playing field, or tilt in in favour of Indian companies etc. Was it the case in China that the government helped all these companies win, or was there something else?" In response, Tung said that, oddly enough, the government doesn't want Chinese startups to work. "They want their own companies, that they have stake in, to work. But the Chinese companies beat the state owned enterprises. The same problems that the state owned and US companies have to solve, are the same problem that the Chinese companies have to solve. They just solved faster, because they moved faster." He added that the American companies were coming in to China for the very first time back then, and they didn't realise that China was so different from Europe and elsewhere, and they would have to move at a faster speed to deal with Chinese competitors. As an example of the versatility of Chinese…
