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Comment by george3383 | Hacker News Reader

There are no big cultural differences between European countries that I'm aware of.

I'm talking about the fact that the cultural difference between the US and Europe is smaller, so US services can be easily consumed by Europeans with just language localization.

The same is not true for China. It is easy for US firms to serve Europeans by localizing language, ergo European firms face global competition from US firms with a lower barrier.

It is more difficult for US firms to serve the Chinese market, even if you have perfect language localization. The cultural differences are larger than US<->Europe. Even before the Chinese government got protectionist, US firms had trouble competing in China.

We've seen lots of tech companies launched from the UK, Germany, and Scandinavia, but less so from other regions. Perhaps it would be better to ask what is it about say, Italy, or France's internal markets that makes tech harder to find investment for locally.

> Even before the Chinese government got protectionist, US firms had trouble competing in China.

lol.

Might be better to actually post a rebuttal.

Chinese government before being protectionist it was communist and closed: there never was a period without protectionism in China. Chinese economy has always been fully regulated, especially in the 90s. In other words, there is not much sense in your post, and it signals you don't know what you are talking about…

Either-or fallacy. The regulations before proscribed levels of ownership, joint venture requirements, and contraband goods but direct Chinese interference to limit outside interference and benefit local competition have grown a lot worse under Xi compared with Hu and Jiang. Prior to that, China had no choice but to accept FDI join ventures, so for example, that’s why you see lots of Chinese manufactured Fords, Buick’s, Audis, and Volvos driving around. Once they have mastered building quality cars, then they’ll impose quotas and other rules to try and encourage buying local companies over joint ventures.

There was a time when Western companies were flying under the radar during the first half of Hu’s term allowing JV market share to expand significantly.

China’s economy hasn’t been communist since Mao.

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