2. Chinese products and services don’t understand the concept of a “soul”

Xu said that most Chinese products and services lack what he calls “soul”, elaborating with the example of Steve Jobs being more artist and designer than engineer, who believed that Apple’s products needed a personality strong enough to evoke emotions.

One of the reasons, Xu explained, that China would not see an indigenous Steve Jobs for the next 20 years or so was because the people lacked the dependence on intuition. This, according to Xu, is one of the reasons behind the prevalence of so much cloning in China.

Most Chinese startups are not founded by designers or artists, but by engineers who don’t think of new ideas or designs. Sure, cloning is good for the Chinese industry for now as it fills up the market and speeds up the process of manufacture, but it in reality doesn’t help anyone—in fact, it only kills the spirit of creativity—which brings us to the next factor…