Justin McCandless

Innovation seems to be a big buzzword around the topic of China lately, as foreign media report about the Chinese economy's rising need to be based on innovation with rising living standards and more pervasive development around the country. Internally the idea seems to be recognized as well, for example the Beijing government's advertising campaign seen around town that includes the word in its "Beijing Spirit": patriotism, innovation, inclusiveness, and virtue. I certainly know a lot less about what's next for the Chinese economy than the experts writing about it do, but spending a day in a Starbucks in Beijing's techy Wudaokou area gave me a random glimpse into the situation.

I plugged in my computer and hunkered down for a day of work on a side project, wearing an old Michigan sweatshirt and probably looking the part of a tech nerd at least a little more than usual. A few hours in I may have been losing focus and browsing Facebook a bit, and a guy sitting nearby struck up a conversation with me about the iOS app he was about to release. It was called Facebook Anywhere, and it would let you do almost anything the full Facebook iOS app would do, except that it was not affected by the great firewall. We had a brief chat about the app and the tech and iOS dev scene in Beijing (which I also work in), though to my disappointment he left before I could get him to tell me exactly how he got that app to work.

A few hours later I found someone else striking up a conversation with me, this time it was actually with a guy working for a Hong Kong based venture capital group. He was happy to tell me about a Yammer-like website for the Chinese market that he was investing in and had a pretty big vision for. Besides his one company, he seemed literally desperate to find other startups to work with, interestingly enough.

Awhile later I left the cafe, maybe a little behind schedule in my project with all the people starting conversations with me, but also a little surprised that I was able to randomly meet these two artifacts of Beijing's tech scene within hours of each other. I couldn't help but connect it to the "innovation" buzzword floating around the subject of China. How many other places could you expect to have a similar experience?

I'll be the first to note, however, that one of these potential sources of innovation was circumventing the government's own censorship, and the other was at least a partial copy of a foreign success. You wouldn't expect innovative developers to be coming from all sides when many of the resources that the rest of the world collaborate on often get blocked in China.

Maybe this foreshadows a burst of innovation soon to come out of China, or maybe it just shows the same old copies in a new market. I suppose no one knows what the future holds for China, but this day was an interesting tiny glimpse into what "innovation in China" means right now.