Reminds me of those ridiculous facsimile Apple Stores which opened up all over China a year or so ago. Even the employees assumed they were working for Apple.
@dcawrey ..I agree with you ...Chinese are making imitation of almost everything on self-styled base. Protection of copyrights its almost chimera for most businesses who want to retain their identity. Even then ...the huge Chinese population and their mammoth share in world ecomony has lured so many business tycoons to try their luck in China. I think ...Chinese have understood that they could no longer live in isolation. They are making efforts to open up their markets for international investors. That's why we are seeing more and more western companies opening up their outlets in Chinese mainland. Seclusion would stifle Chinese economic growth. Chinese economy is something which has made the whole Chinese nation proud about its superiority across the world.
This is a great piece on the challenges of doing business within China, but one element that has been left out is intellectual property.
Companies doing business in China face having their ideas or products completely ripped off. And the legal recourse for trying to punish imitators is difficult, if not impossible to pursure. China has a ton of benefits for businesses to expand into, but also some serious risks that can cause a ton of problems in a long term sense.
Just as Apple has made a remarkable headway by selling two million pieces which facilitate the Chinese language...
In the same way the great Coca cola company has more or less adopted the same strategy..They have created a Chinese trademark which means 'tasty soft drink' or 'tasty and happy' and this trademark is highly contributing towards the rapid success of coca cola in the Chinese market and making it one of the top US companies in China.
I'm not sure whether US lawmakers do punish US companies for their compliance with foreign laws. ... Okay, there are laws in place to prohibit the sale of certain technologies to enemy states, and embargoes, and things like that. And there's the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act, that prohibits you from bribing foreign officials.
I can't think of too many other examples, though, where following the law of one country would violate the laws of another. I guess privacy is the major one -- in the EU, in particular, laws about collecting certain information are very strict. So, say, you've got one country that prohibits you from collecting, say, ethnic data on your employees. And another country requires you to collect ethnic data on employees as part of anti-discrimination alws. You could have a potential conflict there.
Records retention could be another issue -- one country might require the retention of certain transaction records for a certain number of years, and another country might prohibit it.
When it comes to legal authorities getting their hands on corporate data, it's a lot easier to do it when the data is in your country. All you need then is a court order, or whatever it is the local laws require, and you can get your records.
If legal authorities want to get to records overseas, they have to get cooperation from the foreign authoriteis. We've seen plenty of cases where that cooperation is slow or difficult to come by -- in intellectual property infringement cases, in tax avoidance cases, Wikileaks. For more clear-cut criminal activity, like murder, countries tend to be much more cooperative with one another.
A few years ago, Yahoo got a lot of bad publicity for giving up information about dissidents to the Chinese government, and this resulted in lawsuits from human rights activitists.
When I had an office in China, I made sure that all corporate records were kept outside of the country, typically on servers in the U.S. because I never wanted to be put in that position.
"As for quietly, how much do you know about Mr. Bezos versus Mr. Gates or Mr. Jobs?"
Very little I will say. But that will change shortly as Amazon gradually establishes itself as the leading e-retailer. Whether the Mr. Bezons will ever the reach the heights of Gates or jobs remains to be seen.
"After all, for some companies, issues of politics and free speech are much less central than they are for an information company like Google. And you can't expect every company to support the politics of every country where they do business.
I'm based in the U.S., for example, and I certainly don't support everything that our politicians do. If I had to leave a country whenever I disagreed with the politics there, I'd be based on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, selling my stuff to passing seagulls."
That's so true Maria.
So if I may ask, on what basis does the U.S. law punishes U.S. companies operating in places like China for involving or promoting issues that are contrary to human rights and democracy? Will law makers take into consideration whether the company is an information company or not?
By the way, just heard that the spending power of seagulls have quadruple in the last decade!!!!
Paul, you used laudable, I just said I was amazed. And, Amazon's history is littered with examples of where they saw a need and then figured out how to solve it.
As for quietly, how much do you know about Mr. Bezos versus Mr. Gates or Mr. Jobs?
Why is Amazon's relatively success in China a laudable feat? Who really would think that Amazon will not succeed in China? I think the nature of Amaozn's business makes it easier for them to succeed even in the most politically repressive enviroments like China.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Recently, the Obama administration has been of two minds where privacy rights are concerned. On one hand, you have an administration that vowed to veto CISPA and mandated open data for government websites. On the other hand, you have an increasingly out-of-control Department of Justice on a fishing expedition at AP and demanding legislation to let the FBI wiretap private, encrypted communications and levy fines if a company fails to comply.
The apartment and house sharing service, Airbnb, now requires members to verify their identities by demonstrating a presence on the web, and by either scanning a government ID or entering detailed personal details. Other enterprises should take a close look at Airbnb's verification policies.
Facebook advertising is a lightning rod. It seems neither brands nor consumers are 100 percent happy about the social media site's policies, placement, or procedures. But the real controversy about Facebook ads and promotions is over whether they work.
By now, you've most likely heard about the 3D-printed gun that Texas-based Defense Distributed demonstrated last week. But we haven't heard the last about the censorship war that began soon afterward.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
