Gateway through the Chinese firewall
Observations from Beijing: will Russian IT companies be useful in China?
At the end of April, I went to Beijing with a delegation from the Skolkovo Innovation Center to the Russian-Chinese forum “Great opportunities for small and medium business”. I was wondering what kind of cooperation between our countries could be and whether we would be able to derive any particular benefit from good political relations. Is there anything more possible between our countries than the export of oil and gas from our side and equipment and machinery from China? And whether our company can find customers and partners in China.
')
The forum was held at the level of deputy prime ministers, and from our side was Arkady Dvorkovich. The official part was impressed by the degree of officialdom. We were gathered at a government residence two hours before the forum opened. Everyone was given a badge on which the number was written. The Chinese were hard to deal with European names, so we were counted by numbers. Then the vice-premiers entered our hall - ours and the Chinese - and only about ten people from both sides. We applauded them, everyone gave a speech, after which they all quickly retired.
I had to communicate a lot with the Chinese and managed to observe the details of their life, which show the local mentality well. Acquaintance with authentic China began almost immediately upon arrival in Beijing, when it turned out that I did not have enough space in the hotel. Governors, vice-governors and managers of Gazprom and Rosneft, who were part of the delegation, lived at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Beijing. Delegates from Skolkovo settled in the Wenjin hotel next to the local analogue of Skolkovo, Tuspark Technoprac. But a week before the trip, it turned out that there was not enough room for everyone in this hotel and a hotel room was intended for me, where the night cost $ 50 and no one even spoke English.
“In all matters, the difficult is the beginning” (Chinese proverb)
The view of the hotel was rather shabby. On the floor are carpets as in Soviet boarding houses, which are more than a dozen years old. The room was small, and the window in it was blocked by a billboard bolted from the street with rusty bolts. However, I liked the hotel, which could not be said about colleagues from the Skolkovo delegation, who were settled in a five-star hotel. My room had air conditioning, a shower, and a cooler with hot and cold water. Here it was possible to brew noodles of the type “Doshirak”, which was sold at the hotel for five yuan and was incidentally after a late arrival at the airport. Also in the room was a desktop computer and free Wi-Fi. And the colleagues did not have hot water, there was no Wi-Fi either, and in order to have a snack, they had to go to a restaurant, where the cost of each dish started from 100 yuan. As a result, some colleagues from Skolkovo moved to my hotel.
It was very instructive: to live in the same conditions as ordinary Chinese, not related to international business. The Chinese live in the same hotels where I lived, eat Doshirak and drink tea. Of course, there is a big bundle in society. Beijing is generally similar to Moscow in 2007: there are a lot of trendy shops, Bentley and Tesla on the streets. At the same time, a Tuspark employee complained to us that it was expensive to rent housing in Beijing and periodically they had to borrow from their parents ’pension. Well, it is clear that the bulk of the peasant population lives quite poorly. However, China is not India, where universal poverty and units of the rich. In China, socialism, and the average Chinese lives, perhaps with limited comfort, but certainly does not starve.
“Good shoots are in a foreign field, beautiful women are foreign women” (Chinese proverb)
China exports so much all over the world that the country has nowhere to put the money it receives. China has huge foreign exchange reserves, and the Chinese would like to increase imports so that the well-being of people within the country grows. At the state level, there is a program to build a “society of average prosperity,” and this requires more products for the domestic market. The Chinese are primarily looking at Russia as a supplier of food (one of the officials mentioned at the forum that this year because of a change in the dollar exchange rate, the Chinese bought all the ice cream in the Far East). But the forum talked about the fact that in Russia, for example, there are good programmers and IT products, as well as materials and components. It is not very clear what exactly was meant, but in words there they consider the development of relations with Russia an important topic.
What happens in practice? There were many companies from the Far East that used to import building materials from China, and now, when the yuan is not given 4 rubles, but 8, food is exported there. There were Rosneft and Gazprom, although I did not understand why they were there if the forum was for small business. Of those IT companies that already work in China, ABBYY and Prognoz were in place — they have offices in the country with Chinese employees. There were also a few start-ups - residents of Skolkovo, which are not yet connected with the Chinese market, but are eyeing it, just like us.
"Bird Jingwey falls asleep sea" (Chinese saying)
In theory, we can sell CDN services to local companies outside of China. An employee of Tuspark, the one who complained about expensive housing in Beijing, introduced us to her young man, who turned out to be an employee of Duomi Music, a local social network with the ability to upload music - a mixture of Mamba.ru and Zaycev.net. We also talked to representatives of a major Chinese online cinema, which wants to enter the world market, including Russia. So we met at least two companies that would definitely need a CDN. And our service even works well in China: I tested it - I went to the sites of several of our clients, the videos and images were loaded pretty quickly.
At least five local CDN operators work in the Chinese market, of which we have studied two of them: ChinaCache and ChinaNetCenter. An employee of Duomi (we already consider this company a potential client) advised to offer them one of their technologies and discuss a possible partnership. After all, we have a number of services related to the video: transcoding, screenshots cutting and so on.
"One day below zero temperature will not create three feet of ice" (Chinese proverb)
A couple of years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping voiced the concept of a “new Silk Road” - a single area of ​​economic cooperation that will connect China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe. In 2015, after the introduction of sanctions against Russia and the spread of Russian foreign policy towards China, economic cooperation with it is especially important, especially since the Chinese are going to eliminate imbalances in their economy - to increase domestic consumption and imports. But it seemed to me that, in fact, the Chinese are still too self-sufficient and not a lot of attention is paid to the outside world.
Everything changes when the Chinese need to sell something. When I bought tea in a regular supermarket, six salesmen came running to me, one of whom talked to me in English, and the rest discussed something among themselves.
It is difficult to negotiate with the Chinese, if only because in English they speak worse in China than in Russia. In the hotel where I settled, I had to use the local online translator Baidu (Google and some other American sites are blocked there). I couldn’t agree with the Beijing taxi driver even after he understood what was wanted of him. I could not convince him to change the route that was announced when calling a taxi, and he brought me to the hotel to his colleagues, who had already left for the opening of the forum, and then - after them, to the government residence.
It seemed to me that the only thing that Chinese businessmen are interested in for certain is the Russian media content. First of all, we are talking about Soviet films, on which the older generation of Chinese grew up (by the way, Stalingrad, similar in ideology to them, overtook Hollywood rivals in the Chinese box office - Wolverine 2 and Monsters on Vacations). In addition, I heard that some Russian entrepreneurs are thinking of investing in the production of video content in China. I think it would benefit the local content industry. Even if I don’t understand Chinese, the local TV shows that I saw on TV are somewhat primitive.
“Nobody comes back from traveling the way it was before” (Chinese proverb)
The trip obviously did not give quick victories, but it brought contacts that need to be worked out and an understanding of the potential of the local market. The thought of trying to develop a business in China is ripening in me. At the beginning of the summer, our International Business Development Director was given the task to think about it, and we already even connected several Chinese clients to the test. The Chinese make decisions quickly when they see a good proposal.
At the end of April, I went to Beijing with a delegation from the Skolkovo Innovation Center to the Russian-Chinese forum “Great opportunities for small and medium business”. I was wondering what kind of cooperation between our countries could be and whether we would be able to derive any particular benefit from good political relations. Is there anything more possible between our countries than the export of oil and gas from our side and equipment and machinery from China? And whether our company can find customers and partners in China.
')
The forum was held at the level of deputy prime ministers, and from our side was Arkady Dvorkovich. The official part was impressed by the degree of officialdom. We were gathered at a government residence two hours before the forum opened. Everyone was given a badge on which the number was written. The Chinese were hard to deal with European names, so we were counted by numbers. Then the vice-premiers entered our hall - ours and the Chinese - and only about ten people from both sides. We applauded them, everyone gave a speech, after which they all quickly retired.
I had to communicate a lot with the Chinese and managed to observe the details of their life, which show the local mentality well. Acquaintance with authentic China began almost immediately upon arrival in Beijing, when it turned out that I did not have enough space in the hotel. Governors, vice-governors and managers of Gazprom and Rosneft, who were part of the delegation, lived at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Beijing. Delegates from Skolkovo settled in the Wenjin hotel next to the local analogue of Skolkovo, Tuspark Technoprac. But a week before the trip, it turned out that there was not enough room for everyone in this hotel and a hotel room was intended for me, where the night cost $ 50 and no one even spoke English.
“In all matters, the difficult is the beginning” (Chinese proverb)
The view of the hotel was rather shabby. On the floor are carpets as in Soviet boarding houses, which are more than a dozen years old. The room was small, and the window in it was blocked by a billboard bolted from the street with rusty bolts. However, I liked the hotel, which could not be said about colleagues from the Skolkovo delegation, who were settled in a five-star hotel. My room had air conditioning, a shower, and a cooler with hot and cold water. Here it was possible to brew noodles of the type “Doshirak”, which was sold at the hotel for five yuan and was incidentally after a late arrival at the airport. Also in the room was a desktop computer and free Wi-Fi. And the colleagues did not have hot water, there was no Wi-Fi either, and in order to have a snack, they had to go to a restaurant, where the cost of each dish started from 100 yuan. As a result, some colleagues from Skolkovo moved to my hotel.
It was very instructive: to live in the same conditions as ordinary Chinese, not related to international business. The Chinese live in the same hotels where I lived, eat Doshirak and drink tea. Of course, there is a big bundle in society. Beijing is generally similar to Moscow in 2007: there are a lot of trendy shops, Bentley and Tesla on the streets. At the same time, a Tuspark employee complained to us that it was expensive to rent housing in Beijing and periodically they had to borrow from their parents ’pension. Well, it is clear that the bulk of the peasant population lives quite poorly. However, China is not India, where universal poverty and units of the rich. In China, socialism, and the average Chinese lives, perhaps with limited comfort, but certainly does not starve.
“Good shoots are in a foreign field, beautiful women are foreign women” (Chinese proverb)
China exports so much all over the world that the country has nowhere to put the money it receives. China has huge foreign exchange reserves, and the Chinese would like to increase imports so that the well-being of people within the country grows. At the state level, there is a program to build a “society of average prosperity,” and this requires more products for the domestic market. The Chinese are primarily looking at Russia as a supplier of food (one of the officials mentioned at the forum that this year because of a change in the dollar exchange rate, the Chinese bought all the ice cream in the Far East). But the forum talked about the fact that in Russia, for example, there are good programmers and IT products, as well as materials and components. It is not very clear what exactly was meant, but in words there they consider the development of relations with Russia an important topic.
What happens in practice? There were many companies from the Far East that used to import building materials from China, and now, when the yuan is not given 4 rubles, but 8, food is exported there. There were Rosneft and Gazprom, although I did not understand why they were there if the forum was for small business. Of those IT companies that already work in China, ABBYY and Prognoz were in place — they have offices in the country with Chinese employees. There were also a few start-ups - residents of Skolkovo, which are not yet connected with the Chinese market, but are eyeing it, just like us.
"Bird Jingwey falls asleep sea" (Chinese saying)
In theory, we can sell CDN services to local companies outside of China. An employee of Tuspark, the one who complained about expensive housing in Beijing, introduced us to her young man, who turned out to be an employee of Duomi Music, a local social network with the ability to upload music - a mixture of Mamba.ru and Zaycev.net. We also talked to representatives of a major Chinese online cinema, which wants to enter the world market, including Russia. So we met at least two companies that would definitely need a CDN. And our service even works well in China: I tested it - I went to the sites of several of our clients, the videos and images were loaded pretty quickly.
At least five local CDN operators work in the Chinese market, of which we have studied two of them: ChinaCache and ChinaNetCenter. An employee of Duomi (we already consider this company a potential client) advised to offer them one of their technologies and discuss a possible partnership. After all, we have a number of services related to the video: transcoding, screenshots cutting and so on.
"One day below zero temperature will not create three feet of ice" (Chinese proverb)
A couple of years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping voiced the concept of a “new Silk Road” - a single area of ​​economic cooperation that will connect China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe. In 2015, after the introduction of sanctions against Russia and the spread of Russian foreign policy towards China, economic cooperation with it is especially important, especially since the Chinese are going to eliminate imbalances in their economy - to increase domestic consumption and imports. But it seemed to me that, in fact, the Chinese are still too self-sufficient and not a lot of attention is paid to the outside world.
Everything changes when the Chinese need to sell something. When I bought tea in a regular supermarket, six salesmen came running to me, one of whom talked to me in English, and the rest discussed something among themselves.
It is difficult to negotiate with the Chinese, if only because in English they speak worse in China than in Russia. In the hotel where I settled, I had to use the local online translator Baidu (Google and some other American sites are blocked there). I couldn’t agree with the Beijing taxi driver even after he understood what was wanted of him. I could not convince him to change the route that was announced when calling a taxi, and he brought me to the hotel to his colleagues, who had already left for the opening of the forum, and then - after them, to the government residence.
It seemed to me that the only thing that Chinese businessmen are interested in for certain is the Russian media content. First of all, we are talking about Soviet films, on which the older generation of Chinese grew up (by the way, Stalingrad, similar in ideology to them, overtook Hollywood rivals in the Chinese box office - Wolverine 2 and Monsters on Vacations). In addition, I heard that some Russian entrepreneurs are thinking of investing in the production of video content in China. I think it would benefit the local content industry. Even if I don’t understand Chinese, the local TV shows that I saw on TV are somewhat primitive.
“Nobody comes back from traveling the way it was before” (Chinese proverb)
The trip obviously did not give quick victories, but it brought contacts that need to be worked out and an understanding of the potential of the local market. The thought of trying to develop a business in China is ripening in me. At the beginning of the summer, our International Business Development Director was given the task to think about it, and we already even connected several Chinese clients to the test. The Chinese make decisions quickly when they see a good proposal.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/261157/
All Articles