Pinduoduo made it big with rural users before wealthy Chinese urbanites had even heard of the app. Other companies and investors could follow in its footsteps. Credit: Pinduoduo
A little less than a year ago, when the reality of the pandemic had yet to hit California, I caught up with my friend, Ron Cao, on one of his regular trips to Silicon Valley. Ron is a seasoned venture capitalist who has spent two decades in China, invested in many of the biggest hits of the last decade — Meituan, ByteDance, etc. — and eventually opened up his own fund called Sky9 Capital. Our favorite topics whenever we get together are, of course, cross-border learnings and future opportunities. With China’s growth decelerating, I wanted to know, where was he going to invest? Was he, perhaps, going to try his luck in Southeast Asia like so many other managers we knew? Or how about India — wasn’t that one of the places touted as the next China? “No, Rui,” he replied earnestly, “the next China is China.”
What Ron is referring to is the exponential rise of what I like to call “developing China,” the vast inland area in the central and western parts of the country
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Did Eric Dai expose a Chinese scheme to steal critical military technology? Or did he steal millions of dollars from a Chinese company by exploiting geopolitical tensions? It's not entirely clear, but Dai's saga hits all the high notes of current U.S.-China tensions, including convoluted plots to illicitly acquire U.S. semiconductor technology and extraterritorial schemes to harass, intimidate and coerce the Chinese diaspora. What is clear is that, for Dai, who founded a successful Chinese investment firm but is now seeking asylum in the U.S., it feels like World War III.
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