Copycat culture drags down once-vibrant Chinese Internet

• Source: Global Times
• [21:04 March 14 2010]
• Comments

By Liu Ge

Ten years after the Internet bubble burst in its birthplace, Americans are reflecting on the phenomenon. Investors have been reminded not to follow the wind blindly.

Chinese Internet companies and insiders should perhaps rethink their performance too, for the Chinese Internet industry has lost itself in blind imitation and lack of innovation.

A decade ago, I was working as a business reporter. When I chased Chinese Internet pioneers like Wang Zhidong (founder of sina.com), Charles Zhang (CEO of sohu.com) and Ding Lei (CEO of netease.com), holding my microphone, I was full of admiration of this industry and those insiders, as they had been opening a new window to China.

In the bestseller Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives, John Naisbitt wrote 20 years ago "In the runway to the future, developing countries and developed countries are at the same starting point."

Through the Internet, we watched this was happening.

We learned terms such as venture capital, stock options and IPO. The Internet sector was the only front on which China could keep abreast with the world's best performers at that time.

But today, similar comments would only be regarded as a black joke. The gap started widening in 2003. Pay-for-information services and Internet games, while saving the industry from heavy losses, have put heavy shackles over it that has been difficult to get rid off.

The Internet sector, while making handsome profits, has been diverted from the original spirit of openness, equality, cooperation and sharing.

Dedication to technology and user service has been replaced with the pursuit of quick business return. It shadowed the once glorified image of the Internet.

While parents are blaming the Internet for dragging their children into a deep hole of addiction, the Internet itself, however, is developing fast and has finally embraced its Web 2.0 phase.

People with great ambition seem to have seen a good opportunity to pick up their dignity by promoting an advanced Internet culture.

But they didn't realize that what was waiting for them was the copycat culture, which is popular within Internet circles. The Chinese Internet society has become an imitator at every step. Copycat websites are virtually identical to the sites they steal from.

The similarity shows their indifference toward intellectual property, nor do they have any respect for the so-called business ethics.

When big websites get into fights with each other, when one copycat website is suing another one, when a mainstream website is full of frivolous content, the Internet world in China is a mess.

Apart from a few mainstream websites that are getting stronger and stronger, Chinese Internet has no original contribution to the world internet in recent years.