Book Report: Beta China

I follow many feeds; I used to follow the tech news site PandoDaily. I ignored most of it; modern tech reporting has problems and PandoDaily illustrated plenty of those. But for a while, there was something interesting: a reporter named Hamish McKenzie wrote about the Chinese tech industry. While he was writing articles, he was also writing a book with his experiences; it has snippets from interviews, some compare-and-contrast, some insights which might turn out to be right or wrong. It was a quick read, and cheap besides, a snapshot of China's tech scene.

An Adam Segal quote on how corrupt local officials, going where the money is, hamper China's tech:

American C.E.O.s love to quote China’s rising investment in R. & D., but they never follow with Chinese reporting that suggests sixty per cent of state R&D funds are lost to corruption. High-profile plagiarism and academic malfeasance cases continue to surface

It was also a bit scary to read about the Chinese view that Google+'s UI is a rip-off of Sina Weibo. So maybe there's not much point in innovating if you think some big American company can copy your design. (And even if that didn't happen… if everyone around you is telling you it happened, it sure makes you reluctant to put a lot of time into wild new ideas.)