C2C: An Alternative Interpretation

Today during a meeting, our Boss shared an alternative meaning for C2C:

C2C = Copy to China

Pretty funny, right? But thinking about it, ever since the internet first entered China, the copying has never stopped. Take TX (Tencent) as an example—almost none of their products are actually original (which makes me highly skeptical of the value of their patents), yet they are incredibly dominant and making tons of money.

On the other hand, look at Google. They are supposed to be the ultimate innovative company, but because they struggle to adapt to the local market (水土不服), their revenue in China is still nowhere near proportional to the massive effort they put in.

So you can look at this from two perspectives. To put it nicely: Chinese developers have built highly localized internet products that perfectly suit the habits of domestic users. To put it bluntly: Chinese products skip the early stages of research and development entirely—they are pure Shanzhai (山寨 - knockoff) products.

But as history shows, the early stage of innovation is indeed imitation and copying. As for when we will finally enter a truly pioneering era? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…