The HIDDEN Truth On Why China is Beating the USA

Guys, in 2026, you have to look at doing business in China because the business environment really just might be unbeatable. I just spent 48 hours in Shenzhen and I probably got more done than 48 days in another country. Let me tell you the seven reasons why and what you guys can learn from it. So, I just spent 2 days in China, right? Now, I'm back in Vietnam, but I just took a bunch of pitch meetings, China NCM meetings, peptalks, factory tours, samples. Oh my goodness, and I'm saying it's only possible because of the insane operational speed, [music] low latency, you know, very short distance between nodes, the pings are super quick there, and it's just designed that way, and [music] I think it's the most frictionless place on planet Earth to do business right now. I'm not saying everywhere in China is the same, you know, Shanghai has this more like "au revoir et à bientôt" of the East thing going on. Chengdu has more of this Gen Z subculture maxing thing going on. Beijing is, you know, ultra-historical, but I'm just saying >> [music] >> I think the rest of China is beginning to learn from Shenzhen in the sense of just like why isn't it done yet? And you got to figure out how you can make things just really fast for people to be operational. And point number one is this, guys. The work day never ends, you know? You can get out of the office at 7:00 p.m., but you're going to be responding to WeChat messages until 12:00 a.m., you know, until you sleep because that keeps the machinery pumping. That keeps the, you know, if you've got Think about businesses internally as like this complex watchwork, but it also has to communicate with other pieces of watchwork and gearboxes that are super complex. They can never just like stop for the day, right? Or else they don't have they lose the speed advantage, right? For example, in America, if you send a email like 5:45, they're already out of out of the office at 5:30, then they wake up at 9:30, they answer at 9:45, they have a question, you clarify at 11:00 a.m., and then by the time they get to it because they were in a meeting it's like 3:00 p.m. That's like 16 18 hours >> [music] >> on something that could have took 6 minutes on WeChat with just a simple y i. You know what I mean? It's just fast, you [music] know? And how long does this decision just sit there doing nothing, guys? Think about it. Like Listen, here's the major takeaway. I'm not saying everybody has to work 24/7. That's kind of how China is to be honest and it might have been that way for millennia. So it's like kind of difficult to say it, you know, especially that's a tough sell to Europeans for sure. But I mean you just can't turn a 6-minute decision into a 2-day process and at some point you got to ask yourself when does work-life balance just turn into like organizational slowness. You know, I'm serious. Point number two, guys. WeChat is basically a business operating system. So point number one, I'm talking about everybody's on WeChat till midnight, right? Even though they left the office at 7:00. And WeChat is like a all-in-one sort of business hub, right? You've got the mini programs, you can split bills, you can even sign a company invoice, pay a company invoice. It's pretty crazy, guys. Like the amount of things that they built into there and I think there's 1.3 billion users a month on WeChat. So it's really like the super super duper super app, you know? And I'm not saying it couldn't use a UI UX update, you know, it probably could. But it's just like so utilitarian and efficient. It's just getting the job done, you know? So why would they redesign it? Why bro you know, why break it if it's not broken, right? Or like why fix it if it's not broken. [music] But you know, I just think that you know, for a while America was considered way more efficient than Europe, right? But now China is putting America to shame in terms of how efficient it is. And I just think one thing that organizations can learn is that for every app or login or handoff you have, which is like >> [music] >> email to SMS to Slack to Notion to you know, all these different apps that we use. Uber, DocuSign, the DocuSign end up in the spam folder. The Did then you Who updated the calendar? Is the calendar [clears throat] synced with the Apple calendar and the G Cal? You know what I mean? [music] Like you just got to consolidate as much as you can. Point number three, guys. Everything you need in China or Shenzhen specifically, but really China in general, is just 5 minutes away. Guys, connected to the factories that I was at, you had fresh dumpling shops. I'm saying that that way people, if they want to get fresh dumplings, they don't have to leave the office too far more than just a you know a little quick 2 minutes away. I'm not saying it was the best dumpling shop in the world, but it was there, you know? And it [music] was designed to keep people flowing. Chinese people like fresh cooked food. You know what I mean? Like in terms of like they're probably not going to take the cold airplane express sandwich or the Cisco systems, you know, convection oven hamburger or whatever. >> [music] >> And I just think in America everybody wants to go to Chipotle for lunch or Cava or whatever and like I guess you could get it delivered if your company has that system set up depending, you know, like I [music] said, of course an exception to all of this is like the I-banking industry in New York City and Manhattan and Midtown. That's super like streamlined too because they they want people to work at their desk and eat the slop bowl at the desk, right? To to keep working working on the deals. But I'm saying that basically in China they got this like Meituan, you know, delivery pod system or just a pod system that works so everybody can just, you know, order whatever they need. Really, if it's like a USB card reader or whatever it just gets dropped in these little pods and then you can go pick it up at your work with the pods and it's just like pretty sick, you know? And you got Huaqiangbei. Huaqiangbei basically is almost like a sci-fi tech depot out of a out of Star Wars come to life where like they could even make the iPhone 18 before Apple does. That's how quick they iterate, you know what I mean? Cuz the suppliers and the packaging, somebody needs somebody some model 3D printed, you can just go there, you know, in person. [music] So I really liked it because it was kind of like a mixture of in person and digital and a bunch of dudes zooming around on e-scooters. I don't know. So basically what I'm saying is what you can learn from this is that productivity is not just how hard you work, it's about how much of your day disappears getting food, commuting, running errands, getting stuck in traffic, or getting to the right person to do this thing, you know, the proximity clustering, and then how efficiency how efficient are those like other clusters that are hopefully within close proximity to you. >> [music] >> Point number four, guys. Transportation has very little mental friction. So, there's Didi Chuxing. Didi Chuxing is Uber of China, and I'm telling you it's pretty cheap like relative to it, you know, Shenzhen being a super expensive-looking tech city, you know, especially in Nanshan and Shekou and stuff like that. But, basically, what I'm saying is the Didi Chuxings are really nice. Like, they're going to be really quiet. They're going to have really nice seats. Nobody's going to have a weird smell. Nobody's going to have a random sweater hanging off the passenger seat. If it says 44 minutes, chances are it's going to be 41 to 45 minutes. 10% standard deviation. You know why? Because Didi Chuxing has so many cars giving big data at the same time. They essentially know how long each stoplight is going to take, and they give you a stoplight countdown that is actually very, very accurate because they're tri- triangulating a lot of big data. So, in LA, if you take an Uber, guys, it's either going to be like it says 35 minutes ETA, it could end up being 35 minutes, but it could also end up being 55 minutes. You know why? Because they don't have the big data triangulation like Didi Chuxing does. So, basically, what I'm saying is that all the cars are constantly teaching the system what the roads are doing, you know? And they're not going to blast music. They're not going to be doing their own thing. They're not going to like try to talk to you. They'll only talk to you as much as you want to talk to them. I choose to talk to the Didi Chuxing drivers a lot cuz I actually want to practice my Mandarin and my Cantonese. [music] That's another cool thing. That's like a little personal thing aside about Shenzhen. There's a lot of people who speak Mandarin, but actually a decent amount speak Cantonese, too. And my Cantonese is not that good, but their Cantonese is not that good either. So, it's almost a it's a it's times it's Chinese class for me every time I step in the DD cha. But, what can you learn from this, guys? Predictability is almost as important as speed in business, right? So, if something takes 45 minutes every time it's supposed to take 45 minutes, you can plan around it. And now you can build plans. You know, it's all about scheduling and consistency, right? Point number five, [music] guys. This is a a hard to see cultural one. This is another reason why I doing business in China is insane right now. And this is really interesting because it points to the difference between Asian cultures. Is that people are less scared of being cringe or imperfect before they iterate. So, for example, guys, [music] you know, they're they're not that concerned with being cool either. You know, and by the way, I'm not saying there's not hypebeasts in China. Everybody knows the four dyes at NYU that look like a Sense homepage with like $8,000 outfits. But, I'm saying that that's a pretty small portion of the population. For the most part, people in China are not concerned in their mind with these following questions that Americans think a lot about. Is this cool? Is this cringe? What does this say about me? What tribe am I in? What racial sub archetype am I supposed to be within whatever race I am perceived to be, you know what I mean in the larger scope of things. What are people arguing about today? What if what's trending on Twitter? Did somebody make fun of this already? Which side of well, like this to this am I on on this thing? Basically, I'm saying how can you compete with people who just don't run any of those programs on their hard drive or on their processor, you know? Like, [music] there were so many dudes in Shenzhen that got money, but they do not care about looking cool. It reminds me of Silicon Valley before Silicon Valley got real flashy and everybody's wearing like Amiri now. You know, Zuckerberg, I'm looking at you. You know, it's people are just trying to get things done and iterate and then fix the thing from the V1 to the V2 to the V3 to the V4 and just keep fixing and updating. And you know, Japan is really interesting. I want to talk about Japan because Japan doesn't really think about being cool or whatever or like maybe these like divisive identitarian issues like America does, but they do think they do worry a lot about face to the point where it's almost like crushing in a different way because failure cannot be tolerated in their ranks at all. Like I don't think Japanese really believe in like failing forward that much. Um you know what I mean? They want to make things are perfect before they iterate, which is amazing for perfecting the combustion engine or certain gadgets that they have, but to break in a new technological field, you just can't think like that. And that's why Japan's software is like super far behind right now. And even though Sony can make the sensors for the iPhone, the you know, the Sony cell phones Xperia themselves have really bad software. They're really not good. And so because Japanese are almost like super scared of being chabuduo. Now, chabuduo [music] was not considered a good thing in China for a while, right? Because it meant just like ship something it was seven out of 10, [music] right? And I could say like if you're building an airplane, you do not want the airplane wing the door or whatever to be chabuduo, right? Obviously, we've seen what happened, right? The Boeing situation, whatever. You know what I mean? They were outsourcing certain things that was kind of chabuduo and it was a terrible outcome, you know? But I'm saying that what I'm saying is like sometimes in startups or content or e-commerce or AI, you know what I mean? Like there's just it could be you could be the 2026 more effective version of chabuduo where basically it's like, "Yo, we'll make it perfect eventually, but this is good enough to ship it." You know what I mean? And I think China is just extremely comfortable with that, you know? Version one exists, cool. What did people hate about it? That doesn't mean they hate us. Or even if they do hate us, we can fix it for V2. You know what I mean? And AI makes that mentality even more powerful because the you you the speed of iteration is not only cheaper, but it's actually the the the product cycles are even shorter now. So, what can you learn from this, guys? Obviously, don't be low quality forever. Everybody knows the means and the stereotypes China makes low quality stuff, etc. etc. Some people still believe in it in 2026 even though it's becoming it's not true anymore and it's becoming even way further from the truth every day. But, I'm just saying that I can understand where people get had that like uh that thought from back in the day, right? But, don't say low quality forever. But, stop treating version one like it's also going into a museum and it needs to be perfect 10 out of 10 because that's sort of like how Japanese are thinking right now in 2026 and it's really holding them back in a lot of ways and that's why they missed out on the EV boom and etc. like that. So, in the AI world, guys, I'm just not convinced that perfectionism wins anymore. Like, it's going to be everything. It's going to be a mixture of software and hardware. It's not going to be one of the other ones anymore. Point number six, guys. Public safety reduces another type of friction. Now, this is one that's like pretty obvious, but it just depends on what baseline you accept, right? So, basically, people don't really know that productivity is linked to public safety, right? Because, obviously, if you can just like walk around late and just take the subway, not worry about getting robbed, basically, that's a lot of mental energy and like cortisol spikes that you're saving and then you can bank and put into other things like pushing your life forward, you know, or pushing your business forward. And I just think that, you know, in America right now, you know, like in big cities for sure, of course, or even the deodorant is locked up. You got to ping somebody at the store. They got to reluctantly come over, stop what they're doing, and open it up. Then you got to get the deodorant just to buy the deodorant. It's like, man, it's just too much friction. It's not good right now. Stores closing earlier, it's too much friction. You know, I was just talking about proximity clustering speeding things up. [music] If you're downtown San Francisco and all the stores are boarded up in 2026, you've just lost all your proximity clustering, which is why all the people from SF downtown moved to Manhattan. [music] Like literally, that's a thing. Everybody knows that everybody from SF moved to Manhattan because they lost their You know what I mean? If you're going to pay 4,000, 5,000 a month for an apartment, you at least might get want all the things that you like within like a 3-minute walking radius, you know? That's what you pay for, right? So basically, I'm not saying that everybody needs to like you know, run their system like somewhere else, but I'm just saying that predictable all public space that is safe it does contribute to business and iteration speed, too. Like that all plays into all things. Point number seven, guys. This is the last thing I noticed just recently on this trip because I know that I talked about Shenzhen before, but I'm talking about on this trip. I noticed that they love systems, SOPs, which is standard operating procedures, and technical language. So here's the thing, guys. When you just talk with the younger generation at a lot of Chinese companies they might not get like cultural references, you know? They may or may not. You know what I mean? Like I know they watch a lot of Friends over there and How I Met Your Mother, but I'm just [music] saying that literally, they know technical language. They speak business-ese, and if you speak business-ese, you guys can do business, right? Because like listen, they might not know the word rizz, but they know the word pain point. They know conversion rate. ROI funnel. SOP, deliverables, you know? So it's like I might not know what they're watching on Bilibili. They might not know what I'm thinking is funny with like whatever Twitch streamer. They probably have no idea who Deen and like Adrien Broner are or whatever or like, you know, shout out to Rampage Jackson. I like that stuff, too, but yeah, you just don't need to know what to do business is what I'm saying, you know? Um you know, there's just a bunch of economic friction that is removed, and everybody knows the hot words because that's the important thing, right? If we both understand math, logic, deadlines, margins, deliverables that's all we need to do. And I'm just saying that a good SOP, standard operating procedure that everybody's locked in on, can really overcome a lot of language barriers. Um and I think that Americans sometimes we're thinking of you know, business. I mean, especially the older crowd, they're thinking business is still like done on a cultural level, understanding the same movies and the same pop cultural tropes and stuff like that. That's actually not true. It's about business-ese, man. You speak guapanese, they speak guapanese. So go to go get some guap, which is money, by the way. Um [music] so ultimately, guys, what is it, guys? Out of the seven things that I just listed, is it WeChat? Is it transportation? Is it density? Is it [music] public safety? Is it supplier ecosystem? Is it faster decision-making? Is it people just answering their damn messages in a productive way to move the deal along, like move the needle along, not just like copy that, we're reviewing, like actually replying with a real answer, or like whatever changes you need made, yes or no, you Basically, it's all of those things combined, you know? And that's why in Shenzhen, you can get more done in 48 hours than you can in 48 days in a lot of other places, guys. Like, you know, Bangkok is funny, cuz Bangkok is like the opposite of Shenzhen. Everybody flies to Bangkok for fun. I don't know if anybody ever said like they're going to do a hardware startup with some semiconductors in Bangkok or whatever, right? Like, but you know what they do is they do clustering for other things, you know? You got Prom Pong next to Thong Lo, and Thong Lo has got rooftop bars and restaurants and all this nightlife clustering, you know what I mean? So it's almost like that's why Bangkok is built for hospitality and Shenzhen is built for business, you know? And they're building the clustering and the lowering the latency and the pings and making it so frictionless to do that in each place. And that's why those places are known for those things, right? So basically, it's about a thousand tiny pieces of friction disappearing and this is a top-down decision. You know what I mean? And basically, what I'm [music] saying is Europe has lifestyle, guys. Japan has precision for the things that it makes. America has innovation and individuality. And I'm just saying that Shenzhen has mastered one very important question, why isn't it done yet? And if it isn't done yet, I can get it done [music] for you. And Hey, guys. That's what I'm just saying. That's what's just important in the world right now. I'm not saying that everybody else doesn't play an important part in the global ecosystem of commerce and just like the way things flow. Ultimately, you know what I mean? Like everybody has their different role, right? But I'm just saying Shenzhen's role or China's [music] role as the executor and the iterator is just becoming more and more important. That's what I think. So that's why if you want to do business >> [music] >> or you like doing international commerce, you got to check out China in 2026. It's moving light speed, Shenzhen speed. Anyway, guys, let me know what you guys think. Do you think I'm overrating it, that I'm underrating it, >> [music] >> or is there a way that, you know, if you're from a slower place, that it could be, you know, faster or is it just like maybe that's just your value system, you know? Maybe you're watching [music] this from Europe and you're just like, "Well, that's not how we live, you know? We live in a more different pace and we more enjoy our lives and you know, that's not who we are." Yeah, I get that. That could be true, too, you know? Like I'm pretty sure Chinese people say that for a lot of like entertainment soft color, you know, soft power projects like you like you know what I mean? Like this is not what we do. We don't do that, you know? So anyway, guys, let me know what you think. Am I glazing or am I just keeping it realistic? >> [music] >> Let me know. That's what's just what I thought off the top of my head. Seven reasons why doing business in China in 2026 is is unbeatable cuz I just came back from it and I'm going back again soon. So, stay tuned to the Global Next Show because you know, me and Crystal and the rest of the team out there are going to be exploring so many cool things. Um yeah, and just showing how the whole world is interconnected. All right, guys. Until next time, I'm out. Peace.