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Chinese companies always have the Chinese market where they can grow until they're important enough that people want to be compatible with them.


It doesn't actually work that way. If it did, Baidu would have half the global market for search. Instead, they've stagnated after maxing out in China and Google has continued to expand globally.

Ctrip (20 years old) doesn't have a consequential business outside of China, where Booking and others are dominant. Ctrip's business is firewalled inside of China.

Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram dominate globally, while eg WeChat has stagnated outside of China. WeChat's growth started to flatline about three years ago. Within another year they'll go entirely flat on growth (stalled at just over a billion monthly active users, most of which are in China and a few other countries).

Spotify and Apple own the global streaming music business. China's competitors are heavily domestic.

Netflix, Amazon and Disney (+Hulu) will own the global streaming movies & TV business.

Almost nobody outside of China listens to or can understand Chinese music, movies or TV shows. Outside of China it's a small market for their media content. This is a fundamental that can't be overcome, the world is not going to learn Mandarin.

On video gaming, China can never compete because there's a vast amount of content the Chinese Government will simply never allow. They barely allow their own video game giants like Tencent to function properly within China, it's a nightmare. The gaming segment will continue to be dominated by the US, Europe and Japan. As in the other cases, China's gaming companies are hamstrung by their system. The best they can do is buy foreign assets and try to operate them outside of China.

When it comes to social, China can never compete due to their extreme speech, cultural & political controls. There can be no global Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Imgur, et al. China's regressive approach is so extreme they've banned joke apps - that one ban probably wipes out a third of the social media landscape in terms of usage. You never have to worry about a Chinese company competing with you if you're eg Imgur or Twitter.

There is some potential for shopping & goods trade, however even mighty Alibaba has struggled in their quest for expanding outside of the domestic Chinese market.


All those made in China apps have a hard time penetrating non Chineese markets. But they could if they want to, like TikTok which is popular in India too.




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