Sebastian Mallaby is a distinguished journalist and author and now a senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Mallaby has contributed to a variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, The Washington Post, and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor. A graduate of Oxford University, he is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the author of five books, including most recently, The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. In this lightly edited Q&A, Mallaby talks about the rise of venture capital in China, and its impact on the country's technology boom.
Sebastian Mallaby. Illustration by Lauren Crow
Q: Your book makes the argument that China’s digital economy owes its success in part to the introduction of American-style venture capital. At the beginning, what was the opportunity for these VC firms in China? What problems did they face and how did they fi