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本帖最后由 满仓 于 2011-8-12 12:32 编辑
【中文标题】有中国特色的互联网
【原文标题】Chinese internet companies An internet with Chinese characteristics
【登载媒体】经济学家
【原文链接】http://www.economist.com/node/21524821
中国的在线交易增长速度超过了线下交易的增长。一些本地化的品味、需求和政府赋予互联网一些显著的特性。
当黄兵在2005年从大学毕业时，他对自己许下诺言，要在三年内挣到第一个100万元（155000美元）。实际上，他花了稍长一点时间实现这个目标。但是没关系，因为如果他的网络化妆品店能够维持目前增长趋势，他很快就要见到第一个10亿元了。他预计在几年内，年收入就会达到这个数字。
黄先生的公司国际联合化妆品是淘宝商城这个巨大的在线购物中心里数千家商铺中的一个，他发现了中国内地女性对品牌化妆品和使用化妆品的方法的需求。他说：“很多农村女性没有机会接触到高质量的产品。”他带着一些人在杭州郊外的公司总部里参观，这里位于上海市的西南方，两个小时的车程。在几层楼的建筑物中，一个接一个的办公桌旁坐着无数的“美容顾问”，都在忙着回复顾客的咨询。
中国的互联网也像联合化妆品公司一样向前发展，而且是呈跳跃式的飞速增长，越来越多的人在手机、家中、办公室和巨大的网吧中登录互联网。中国互联网信息中心预测，中国的网络人口已经是世界之最，但在今年还将增加6％，达到4.85亿。即使如此，还有三分之二的人没有接触网络。
这个国家的互联网不但规模逐渐庞大，而且似乎越来越具有中国特色。波士顿咨询集团的Paul Zwillenberg说：“互联网的可爱之处在于它可以轻松地迎合当地环境。”中国互联网就是一个绝佳的例子，它并没有创造出一个千篇一律的环境，而是被塑造出具有当地的特色。
消费者、公司、经济和政府
四个因素的作用形成了中国特色的互联网：中国消费者的需求、中国企业的态度、中国现实经济的发展和政府的角色。首先来看消费者。中国的互联网用户比西方人在20年前首次接触互联网时要年轻，他们相对贫穷（但都在迅速致富），渴望寻找娱乐因素。外国互联网公司努力在中国复制他们的成功经验。（当然，这其中有成功投资的案例，也有一些冲突，比如中国互联网巨头阿里巴巴与美国雅虎之间的争吵。）而中国公司大都在照搬西方的模式，他们通过设计更加机智的策略而大获成功。
拿腾讯这个市值排名第二位的互联网公司来举例。它以效仿ICQ的聊天软件起家，但很快就超越了前者，因为它为中国的年轻人群体提供了一个廉价又有趣的沟通方式。腾讯的聊天软件有6.74亿注册用户，其它大部分产品也是免费的。这家公司主要赢利模式是出售虚拟商品（网络游戏中的阿凡达装束、武器），用户需要用现金购买游戏币，然后才可以选购商品。
与此类似，阿里巴巴旗下的淘宝最早是为了与拍卖网站易趣的中国服务竞争。它靠免收交易手续费的政策迅速取代了对手的位置，但是它最大的成就是克服了中国网络购物最大的障碍：缺乏信任。阿里巴巴的在线支付系统——支付宝如果按交易额来看，是世界上最大的支付系统。它有一个第三方委托功能，在货物顺利送达之前代为保管资金（大部分交易是在派送时收取现金）。淘宝目前有3.7亿注册用户，它占据了中国在线交易量的四分之三，占据了中国物流货量的二分之一。
凡客是后起之秀，但已经计划上市了，它同时满足了消费者对选购商品迅速到手的需求，和对提升品牌关注度的需求（或者说，对盗版商品的厌恶）。它的服装、鞋子设计精美，且廉价，只可以在网络上订购。在几个沿海大城市里，他们可以保证当天送货——现在大部分电子商务网站都提供这样的服务。
最近的新发明是新浪微博，推出这个产品的是另外一家顶尖互联网公司新浪。它常常被当作是“中国版推特”，但它允许用户做评论、上传图片，甚至视频。新浪还邀请了数千位名人来使用这个服务。
中国的互联网从业人士也与众不同。其中有很多兼职从业人员，学生成群结队地在淘宝上开店，很多大学宿舍都兼作仓库，等待客户的订单。专职人士的经验或许比不上西方同仁，但是他们用加倍的努力来弥补差距。前谷歌中国总裁李开复说：“他们不想错过任何发展的机会，因此他们拼命地工作，完全放弃了个人生活。”他目前在北京新成立的创新工厂任职。
一家风险投资公司启明投资的Hans Tung说，这种追求成功的动力可以解释，为什么中国互联网从业人员通常比西方人要更加务实，而且不大计较利用其他人的发明。他们在技术方面关注得相对少一些。谷歌在矽谷的总部办公室里，连洗手间的门上都贴着数学题，你的大脑永远不会停止运转。而在占据中国75％搜索市场份额的百度北京总部，似乎没有多少工程师。百度的老板李彦宏说：“我们更加关注能满足用户需求的产品。”他在所谓“框计算”的概念上下了大赌注，它把百度搜索引擎变成一个对应所有应用程序和服务的窗口。
美国人Richard Robinson在北京投资过几个项目，他说，求胜的迫切心态加上充足的风险资金，让中国的互联网变成一个“凶残的角斗场”。几乎每天都会出现新的对手。中国有80个社交网站、200个视频网站、2000个优惠券购物网站。一些令人质疑的商业行为，比如广告收入的回扣，更加剧了竞争的残酷性。
在竞争中脱颖而出的公司创立者通常更愿意享受巨大的财富，而不愿意像成功的矽谷公司那样继续开创连锁产业。还有一些人建立了巨大的网络帝国，这也是中国最大的互联网公司之间比西方公司会有更加正面的冲突的原因之一。阿里巴巴、百度和腾讯都是互联网服务的联合体，他们的产品类型都很相似。
填补空缺
中国相对欠发展的实体经济也起到了一定的作用。在西方，互联网公司通常会对实体产业形成干扰。而在中国，互联网公司是在填补实体产业的空隙。北京一家电讯咨询公司BDA的Duncan Clark说：“由于线下商业欠发展，中国的互联网公司形成了一股强有力的支柱力量。”
除沿海大城市之外，零售业在其它地区的发展相对滞后，然而网络已经普及到了这个国家的大部分地区。一条基本的网络线每月的花费不到100元人民币。波士顿咨询集团（BCG）的David Michael说，因此网络购物呈“跳跃式发展”。BCG预测，中国电子商务的市场份额到2015年会增长4倍，达到3050亿美元，成为世界最大的电子商务市场。
市场的规模让新的商业模式有发展的机会。尽管淘宝和其姐妹网站淘宝商城——仅供专业卖家使用——在某些方面与易趣和亚马逊类似，但它的管理层有更加宏伟的目标。就像淘宝的高管Richard Wong所说，他们计划建立一个“电子商务的操作系统”。淘宝不出售商品，而是提供让其他人方便交易的平台：支付系统、即时通讯软件，甚至物流。阿里巴巴在1月份说，它将投资300亿元人民币建立新的仓储中心。
中国的影视产业的主要参与者是笨重的国有巨头和一些零散的私人机构，这为互联网开启了另一个机会：类似优酷这样的视频网站。它的内容（甚至发音）虽然与YouTube相似，但是网站老板古永锵更愿意把它与美国的电视节目和电影网站Hulu和Netflix相提并论。古先生说，中国人刚刚接触数字视频，用户只发掘了优酷整体内容的四分之一。其余的内容是由电视台或者优酷等机构制作的专业内容。
优酷的案例还揭示了中国互联网的第四大特点：政府的角色。一位长期观察中国的人士Bill Bishop说，2007年之前，政策还相对宽松，自主创业掌控了互联网产业。然而随着互联网的经济和社会效益日益壮大，政治干涉也逐步加强。2010年6月，政府发布了规范相关产业的白皮书。5月，政府宣布成立中央机构监管互联网。
所谓规范，主要包括许可制度和自我审查，优酷就需要若干许可证件。监控的标准相当模糊，互联网公司一不小心就会犯错误。一家互联网公司的高管说：“你必须要搞清楚哪些是敏感话题。”优酷设计了一套精密的监控系统：数十位编辑浏览新的网站内容，将其分类。还建立了一个视频数据库，用来发布好的内容、封锁可能惹来麻烦的视频片段。
尽管遵守这些规定的代价昂贵，但几乎没有人抱怨，甚至私下里也没有。这个规定让那些国内外的市场后来者更加举步维艰。创新工厂的李先生说：“人们已经把政府当作一个既成事实”，他需要更多考虑对谷歌的监控问题。
一些大型互联网公司在实施新产品之前会征求政府的意见，甚至在开发阶段就邀请政府加入。在设计微博的过程中，新浪显然与政策制定者有密接基础。这项服务可以快速地取消用户登录权限，还能即时封锁特定的信息。5月份，当内蒙古发生抗议事件时，人们无法在网络上搜索这个省份的名字。与此同时，政府也看到了微型博客和社交网络的好处。他们允许人民发泄怨气，在类似省会城市爆发腐败丑闻等事件时，能给予及时的警告。2月份，Bishop先生在他的博客DigiCha中写道：“北京有兴趣让中国的互联网健康地向商业化发展。”
中国的互联网会永远地中国特色下去吗？随着这个国家的产业和经济逐渐成熟，网民平均年龄和收入水平的提高，它与西方之间的差异会逐渐消减。其它特点或许会永远保留下来，比如阿里巴巴、百度和腾讯三巨头对市场的主导地位。
政府的影响力似乎会让“三座大山”的地位更加稳固，他们非常擅于与政府机构打交道，雄厚的资金也可以应对政策方面的额外支出。唯一可能的变化是他们会更加牢固地掌控整个市场。他们不愿意收购新兴产业，而更愿意在自己的庞大帝国中开发新的服务项目。西方公司当然也在努力开发，但他们同时喜欢收购。如果中国的新兴产业面临破产，资金链断裂通常是最主要的原因。新浪在微博产品上的成功，被认为是小型公司是否能与三巨头正面交锋的试验品。
在国外，中国的互联网公司并未接受什么考验。腾讯或许是最大胆的一个，它拥有一个俄罗斯网站Mail.Ru的股份。百度计划用其它十几种语言提供它的服务，李先生说：“我们即将把服务扩展到其它很多国家的市场。”
海外扩张并非易事，作为一个中国人，本土的文化优势无可匹敌，但在国外就变成了劣势。尽管如此，中国的互联网也将在全球产生影响力，实际上，它的影响力已经出现了。腾讯靠虚拟物品和虚拟货币赢利，矽谷中的公司也在遵循这样的模式；推特在仔细观察新浪微博的一举一动；一些欧洲电子商务网站据说对凡客模式非常感兴趣。我们期望西方可以吸纳更多的中国互联网特色。
原文：
Online business in China is growing even faster than the offline sort. Local tastes and needs, as well as the state, are endowing it with distinctive features
WHEN Huang Bing graduated from university in 2005, he promised himself he would make his first 1m yuan (about $155,000) within three years. It took him a bit longer, but no matter: if his business, a collection of online cosmetics stores, maintains its current trajectory, he will soon count his first billion. In a few years he expects annual revenues to reach 10 billion yuan.
Mr Huang’s company, United Cosmetics International, is only one of thousands on Taobao Mall, a huge online shopping centre. He spotted a demand from women in China’s hinterland for branded cosmetics—and advice on how to use them. “A lot of women in rural areas don’t have access to quality products,” he explains, guiding visitors through the firm’s headquarters in the outskirts of Hangzhou, two hours’ drive south-west of Shanghai. On several floors, at desk after desk, “beauty consultants” busily type answers for customers.
As goes United Cosmetics, so goes the Chinese internet. It is growing by leaps and bounds (see chart 1), as ever more people log on from phones, homes or offices, or in huge internet cafés (pictured). The China Internet Network Information Centre reckons that the online population, already the world’s biggest, has risen by 6% to 485m this year. And almost two-thirds of people are not yet online.
Just as striking, as the country’s internet grows larger it also grows more distinctly Chinese. “The beauty of the internet is that it easily adapts to local conditions,” says Paul Zwillenberg of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The Chinese internet is the best example of the argument that, far from creating uniformity, the global network is shaped by local forces.
Consumers, firms, economy and state
Those forces can be divided into four: the demands of Chinese consumers; the attitudes of Chinese entrepreneurs; China’s offline economic development; and the role of the state. Start with consumers. China’s internet users are younger than the Westerners who first logged on about 20 years ago. They are hungry for entertainment and mostly poor (but fast becoming richer). Foreign internet companies have struggled to replicate their success in China (though they have done quite well as investors, a current quarrel between Alibaba Group, one of China’s internet giants, and America’s Yahoo! notwithstanding). Chinese firms, most of which began by copying Western models, prospered when they devised clever adaptations.
Take Tencent, China’s second-biggest internet firm by market capitalisation. It started as a clone of ICQ, a chat service, but quickly outgrew the original by offering China’s youthful masses a cheap way to communicate and have fun. Tencent’s chat service, which boasts 674m user accounts, and most of its other offerings are free. The firm makes most of its money by selling virtual goods (a dress for an avatar, a weapon in an online game) for play money that users buy with real cash.
Similarly, Taobao, which is owned by Alibaba, was launched to compete with the Chinese service of eBay, an auction site. It quickly overtook its rival by not charging transaction fees. But its main achievement has been to overcome perhaps the biggest barrier to online shopping in China: lack of trust. Alibaba’s online payment system, Alipay, the world’s largest by value of transactions, has an escrow function that withholds payment until goods have been received (most deals are still cash on delivery). Taobao today boasts 370m registered users. It accounts for three out of four online sales in China and reportedly one out of two packages posted.
Vancl, a start-up that intends to go public soon, is satisfying both consumers’ desire for instant gratification and their growing brand-consciousness (or dislike of pirated goods). Its well designed but cheap clothes and shoes can only be ordered on its website. In the big coastal cities they are often delivered the same day—a service most big e-commerce sites now offer.
A recent addition to this innovative group is Sina Weibo. Run by Sina, another leading internet firm, it is often billed as the “Twitter of China”, but it allows users to attach comments, pictures and even videos to their messages. Sina has also recruited thousands of celebrities to use the service.
China’s internet entrepreneurs are different, too. There are lots of part-timers. Students have taken en masse to selling on Taobao: many university dormitories double as storerooms for goods awaiting orders. Full-time entrepreneurs may have less experience than their Western counterparts, but make up for that with sheer effort. “They do not want to miss their chance to make it big—which is why they work like crazy and practically abandon life,” explains Kai-Fu Lee, who used to run Google China but now heads Innovation Works, a start-up incubator in Beijing.
This drive to win explains why Chinese online entrepreneurs are often more pragmatic than Western ones and do not mind adapting something invented elsewhere, says Hans Tung of Qiming Ventures, a venture-capital firm. They tend to be less enamoured of technology. At Google in Silicon Valley, maths problems are pinned to some toilet doors, so that brains need never be idle. The headquarters in Beijing of Baidu, which has 75% of China’s search market, feels much less dominated by engineers. “We’re focusing more on products and satisfying our users’ needs,” says Robin Li, Baidu’s boss. He is making a big bet on what he calls “box computing”, which turns Baidu’s search box into a window to all kinds of applications and services.
The will to win and the abundance of venture capital make China’s internet a “ferociously gladiatorial environment”, says Richard Robinson, an American who has founded several start-ups in Beijing. Rivals spring up literally overnight. There are 80 social networks, 200 online-video services and 2,000 online-coupon sites. Questionable business practices, such as kickbacks for online advertisements, add to the competitive frenzy.
The founders of companies that come out ahead in this battle often prefer to enjoy their new wealth rather than become serial entrepreneurs, as successful Silicon Valley folk are wont to do. Others set out to build sprawling online empires, which is one reason why China’s biggest internet companies, more than their Western counterparts, fight each other directly and on several fronts. Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent are becoming internet conglomerates offering similar sets of services.
Filling the void
China’s relatively underdeveloped economy also plays a role. In the West online companies often disrupted existing industries. In China they are more likely to fill a void. “The internet will be a much more robust force in China because offline businesses are much less efficient,” argues Duncan Clark of BDA, a telecoms consultancy in Beijing.
Except in big cities near the coast, conventional retailing is fragmented and underdeveloped. Yet much of the country has been covered by fast internet pipes. A basic broadband connection costs less than 100 yuan a month. The result will be a “huge leapfrog effect”, says David Michael of BCG. The consulting firm recently predicted that the annual value of China’s e-commerce market would quadruple by 2015, to $305 billion. It may then be the world’s largest (see chart 2).
The size of the market makes it possible to try new business models. Although Taobao and its sister site Taobao Mall, where only professional sellers are allowed, somewhat resemble eBay and Amazon, their executives have a grander ambition. They want to build an “operating system for e-commerce”, as Richard Wong, a Taobao executive, puts it. Taobao sells no goods, but supplies the services that make it easier for others to trade: payment, instant messaging and even logistics. In January Alibaba said it would invest up to 30 billion yuan in new warehouses.
The media industry, with its lumbering state giants and fragmented private sector, has created another opening: for online-video sites, such as Youku. It looks (and sounds) much like YouTube, but Victor Koo, its boss, likens it to Hulu and Netflix, American sites that deliver television programmes and films over the web. Since most Chinese are just discovering digital video, says Mr Koo, users generate only about a quarter of Youku’s content. The rest is made professionally, for instance by television stations or Youku itself.
Youku also illustrates the fourth feature of China’s internet: the role of the state. Until 2007 regulation was rather lax, allowing start-ups to dominate the industry, notes Bill Bishop, a longtime China-watcher. Yet as the internet’s economic and social importance has grown, so has political intervention. In June 2010 the government published a white paper outlining its regulatory plans. In May it said it had created a central agency to oversee the internet.
Regulation mostly involves licensing and self-censorship. Youku needs several licences. The rules on censorship are vague, and firms err on the side of caution. “You have to know what is sensitive,” says an executive at a big internet firm. Youku has developed a sophisticated monitoring system: dozens of editors watch new material and classify it, building a video database that can be used to find good content, but also to block undesirable clips.
Even though complying with such rules can be costly, hardly anyone complains, even in private. Regulation also makes life harder for would-be competitors, foreign or Chinese. “People take the government as a given,” says Mr Lee of Innovation Works. He adds that he had to think more about censorship at Google.
Some big internet firms even seek the government’s input before launching a service, in effect involving it in product development. When designing Weibo, Sina apparently worked closely with regulators. The service is capable of quickly stopping certain users from logging on and blocking posts containing certain terms. When protests broke out in Inner Mongolia in May, the name of the province could no longer be searched for. At the same time the state sees benefits in microblogging and social networks. They allow citizens to vent their grievances and give prompt warning if, say, corruption in a provincial city is getting out of hand. “Beijing has a political interest in keeping China’s internet commercially healthy,” Mr Bishop wrote in his blog, DigiCha, in February.
Will China’s internet continue to have distinctively Chinese characteristics? Some differences from the West’s will fade as the industry and China’s economy mature and the country’s internet population grows older and richer. Other features will probably persist, for example the dominance of three digital conglomerates, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent.
The influence of the state is likely to reinforce these “three mountains”. They are well versed in dealing with state agencies and they can spread the costs of regulation over a broad revenue base. If anything, the three will probably become even more dominant. Rather than buying promising start-ups, they tend to build their own version of a popular new service. Western firms build too, but also buy. If Chinese start-ups are likely to be crushed, finance will be hard to come by. Sina, boosted by the success of its microblogging service, is considered a test case for whether smaller firms can catch up with the big three at all.
Abroad, China’s internet firms are largely untested. Tencent is the most daring: it owns a stake in Mail.Ru, a Russian portal, for instance. Baidu is planning to offer its services in a dozen other languages. “We are going to expand into many other markets,” Mr Li said recently.
Expanding abroad will not be easy. Being Chinese, a cultural advantage at home, may be a disadvantage elsewhere. Still, China’s internet will have global influence. In some ways it already has. Tencent has made money from virtual goods and currencies; Silicon Valley is following. Twitter has been looking at what Sina Weibo does. Some European e-commerce sites are said to be interested in Vancl’s model. Expect more of China’s online characteristics to be adopted in the West. |
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发表于 2011-8-12 12:31
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变色卡
抢沙发
千斤顶
显身卡
楼主
发表于 2011-8-12 15:36
