China - closed for business?

If you don’t know Shak, a brief introduction - he’s one of the ecommerce pioneers of the internet with a killer reputation for making killings online.

He’s currently in China, investigating business opportunities - and unless he’s playing bluff, has declared that the internet is closed for business in China.

Of course, he’s dealing with generalisations for Western companies and business regulations.

However, among those generalisations he adds sheer market ignorance of those Western investors, heaving in huge sums of money into an economy they haven’t even begun to try and understand.

having spent a total of around 5 months in 2005 in China looking at a number of opportunities for myself and others along with having met 100s of people in this industry in China has led me to make this decision based on the fact that IN MY OPINION the opportunities currently in China simply aren’t there right now.

What I see around me is a lot of “Smoke and Mirrors” activity taking place, and I think sooner or later somebody is going to get their fingers burnt, and frankly speaking, I’d rather watch from the sidelines than be putting the fire out.