"If you bring the whole set of playbooks in from China here, it will not work, because that's gonna frustrate you, that's gonna frustrate your local employees and your local partners, and that's not gonna get anywhere. ... When you come to this country, do not try to change how things are done here. Try to change yourself." - Jianggan Li
"The engineering capabilities of the hardware, dexterous hands and so on, they have far outpaced software. ... So when you are innovating on hardware and the software is not catching up, that gap actually causes a lot of anxiety." - Jianggan Li
"People tend to look at the simplistic view: Chinese brands are coming, Chinese products are coming. But only when you are on the ground, when you talk to people in industries, when you see those facilities, you see the tremendous amount of competition amongst these players. For most industries, they're just competing against each other. You just happen to be brought into that war." - Jianggan Li
Jeremy Au and Jianggan Li returns for a China read: Europe's run on Chinese air conditioners, the humanoid robot games, Shein's discounted Hong Kong listing, and what breaks when Chinese firms go abroad. One thread runs through all four. China's advantage is not invention. Midea did not build a better aircon, it read Europe's building codes and engineered to them. Robot hardware raced ahead because engineers ground at it for a year while the software did not. Temu went from someone suggesting a Super Bowl ad to the ad being made in thirty days. The moat is iteration, and Chinese firms are mostly competing with each other, not with you. Also: why the robots still need a human holding a remote, why humanoids substitute for cheap labour instead of complementing it, and the advice one operator gives about expanding abroad, which is to stop trying to change how things are done there and change yourself instead.
00:00 Introduction
01:45 Europe's aircon panic, and the 12-hour drive
03:08 Designed to the regulation, not to be better
05:07 It's not China vs you. It's China vs China.
05:55 The World Humanoid Robot Games
06:52 Why the robots still need a human with a remote
08:20 Hardware outpaced software, and the data problem
11:19 Unitree's IPO, and a founder who wasn't smiling
11:53 Humanoid robots vs cheap human labour
15:02 Complement or substitute: where humanoids land first
16:43 Shein: $100B to $26B
19:25 Temu, de minimis, and the marketplace squeeze
20:43 The Super Bowl ad built in 30 days
23:12 Nobody writes the story of iterative engineering
25:41 Going global, and the driving seat problem
28:49 What to watch: the Xi-Trump meeting
Keywords: Cross-border E-commerce, Chinese Manufacturing Innovation, Humanoid Robotics AI, Global Supply Chain Strategy, Localizing Business Operations, Shein IPO, Temu Marketing Execution, Midea Air Conditioners, De Minimis Tax Regulations, Iterative Engineering, Tech Expansion
