留下來還是走出去 中國科技企業左右爲難

HONG KONG — For teenagers who like to sing along with Ariana Grande and Flo Rida, is a must-have. The app that lets users lip-sync and dance in their own music videos boasts 100 million users and partners with pop stars like Ms. Grande and Meghan Trainor.

香港——對喜歡跟着阿里安娜•格蘭德(Ariana Grande)和弗洛•裏達(Flo Rida)哼唱的青少年來說，媽媽咪呀()必不可少。讓用戶能夠在自己的音樂視頻中假唱和跳舞的這款應用坐擁一億用戶，並與格蘭德和梅根•特萊諾(Meghan Trainor)等流行明星達成了合作。

It’s not easy to tell is Chinese — and that’s deliberate. To find success in America, its parent company has ignored China, its home market and a country with 700 million internet users.

人們很難看出媽媽咪呀是中國的一款應用——這是故意的。爲了在美國取得成功，其母公司忽略了中國這個有七億網民的國內市場。

The reason is simple, says Alex Zhu, co-founder of Shanghai-based : China’s internet is fundamentally different from the one used in much of the rest of the world.

總部設在上海的媽媽咪呀的聯合創始人朱駿表示，原因很簡單：中國的互聯網在本質上不同於其他大部分地區使用的互聯網。

“It’s still very difficult to get into China,” said Mr. Zhu, who studied civil engineering at Zhejiang University in the eastern city of Hangzhou. “It’s a closed environment, and you have to be quite different to compete in that market.”

“依然很難進入中國，”曾在華東城市杭州的浙江大學學習土木工程的朱駿說。“它是一個封閉環境，你得相當特別，才能在這個市場中競爭。”

Two decades after Beijing began walling off its homegrown internet from the rest of the planet, the digital world has split between China and everybody else. That has prevented American technology companies like Facebook and Uber, which recently agreed to sell its China operations, from independently being able to tap the Chinese market.

自從二十年前，北京開始在國內和國外的互聯網之間建立隔離。如今中國的數字世界和其他地區是分開的。這導致Facebook和最近同意出售其中國業務的優步(Uber)等美國科技公司無法獨立在中國市場運作。

For China’s web companies, the divide may have even more significant implications.

對中國的互聯網公司來說，這種分隔的影響可能更大。

It has penned in the country’s biggest and most innovative internet companies. Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent have grown to be some of the world’s largest internet companies, but they rely almost entirely on domestic businesses. Their ventures abroad have been mostly desultory, and prognostications that they will challenge American giants internationally have not materialized.

它束縛了中國最大、最有創新精神的互聯網公司。阿里巴巴、百度和騰訊已經位列全球最大的互聯網公司，但它們幾乎完全依靠國內業務，在國外的冒險嘗試大多沒什麼章法。它們將在國際上挑戰美國巨頭的預言尚未成真。

For Chinese web start-ups like , the internet split has also forced them to choose — either create something that caters to China’s digital population or focus on the rest of the globe.

對像媽媽咪呀這樣的中國網絡創業公司來說，互聯網的分裂也迫使它們做出選擇——要麼創造出滿足中國網絡用戶需求的產品，要麼把重點放在世界其他地區上。

In many ways, the split is like 19th century railroads in the United States, when rails of different sizes hindered a train’s ability to go from one place to another.

在很多方面，這種分裂都像19世紀的美國鐵路。那時，不同尺寸的鐵軌限制了火車從一個地方去另一個地方的能力。

“The barrier to entering the U.S. or China market is becoming higher and higher,” said Kai-fu Lee, a venture investor from Taiwan and former head of Google China.

“進入美國或中國市場的門檻變得越來越高，”臺灣風險投資人、前谷歌中國總裁李開復說。

The difficulties that China’s internet companies face in expanding their success abroad are epitomized by WeChat, the messaging app owned by Tencent. In China, WeChat combines e-commerce and real-world services in ways that have Western companies playing catch-up. It has about 700 million users, most of whom are Chinese or use it to connect with people in China.

騰訊旗下的即時通訊應用微信，便體現了中國互聯網公司擴展國外市場時面臨的困難。在中國，微信將電子商務和現實世界的服務相結合，相關方式正在被西方公司效仿。微信有大約七億用戶，大部分是中國人或用它與身在中國的人聯繫。

In 2012, armed with a cash stockpile of several hundred million dollars, the world soccer star Lionel Messi as a spokesman and local ads like Bollywood-inspired commercials in India, Tencent began a push that executives said would be its best chance of breaking out of China. The effort flopped.

2012年，憑藉幾億美元的現金儲備，由世界足球明星利昂內爾•梅西(Lionel Messi)擔當的代言人，以及本地化的廣告——比如在印度投放受寶萊塢啓發的廣告——騰訊開始推廣微信。其高管稱那將是微信走出中國的最好機會。但最後，該行動以失敗告終。

Critics pointed to Tencent’s lack of distinctive marketing, a record of censorship and surveillance in China and its late arrival to foreign markets. Yet the biggest problem was that outside of China, WeChat was just not the same. Within China, WeChat can be used to do almost everything, like pay bills, hail a taxi, book a doctor’s appointment, share photos and chat. Yet its ability to do that is dependent on other Chinese internet services that are limited outside the country.

批評人士認爲原因是騰訊缺乏有特色的營銷，有在中國進行審查和監視的前科，以及進軍外國市場較晚。但最大的問題是，國外的微信和中國國內的根本不一樣。在國內，微信幾乎可以用來做任何事，如付賬、打車、預約掛號、分享照片和聊天。但它的這種能力有賴於中國其他互聯網服務，而在國外，這些服務有限。

That leaves WeChat outside China as an app that people mostly use to chat and share photos — not that different from WhatsApp and Messenger, which are both owned by Facebook. Baidu and Alibaba have apps that similarly offer a range of capabilities, yet are less useful outside China.

這使得微信在中國之外主要被用戶拿來聊天和分享圖片——與同屬Facebook旗下的WhatsApp和Messenger並沒有多少區別。百度和阿里巴巴均推出了提供多種功能的類似應用，但在中國之外用處不大。

The same problem hurts start-ups in China. Those companies start out accustomed to using Chinese internet sites and apps to market and enhance their business. But going abroad means a different world of services to master, such as a solid understanding of Facebook and Google’s platforms and ads, not Baidu’s and Tencent’s.

同樣的問題也傷害了中國的初創企業。這些公司起步時習慣於採用中國的互聯網站點和應用來推銷並鞏固自身的業務。然而，走出國門意味着要掌握一整套截然不同的服務，比如深刻理解Facebook和谷歌的平臺與廣告，而非百度和騰訊。

By contrast, chose the opposite approach and linked itself to the most popular social networks in the United States. If someone records an impressively coordinated dance or flawlessly lip-synced song, the person can put it up not just on the app, but also add it to Instagram, send it on WhatsApp or post it to Facebook. That has helped grow naturally to Europe, South America and Southeast Asia, Mr. Zhu said.

相比之下，媽媽咪呀選擇了相反的道路，將自身與美國市場上最熱門的社交網絡聯接起來。如果用戶錄下了極爲協調的舞步或無懈可擊的對口型演唱，就能不僅傳到這款應用上，還能添加到Instagram中，傳到WhatsApp裏或在Facebook上貼出。朱駿表示，這幫助媽媽咪呀在歐洲、南美和東南亞市場上取得了自然增長。

“The thing about this young generation in the U.S. is, they’re creative,” said Mr. Zhu. “They’ll say, ‘Please follow me on Instagram or Snapchat.’ If your app can attract some people in an age group and make them super excited to share, you will probably grow.”

“美國年輕一代的特點是，他們很有創造力，”朱駿稱。“他們會說，‘歡迎在Instagram或Snapchat上關注我。’如果你的應用能吸引一個年齡段中的一些人，讓他們特別高興去分享，你就很可能取得增長。”

For Cheetah Mobile, a maker of smartphone utility apps based in Beijing whose users are mostly outside China, the solution was finding a steppingstone to the rest of the world. In early 2014, it opened an office in Taiwan, where use of Google and Facebook dominates. That helped it gain employees who intimately understood Facebook, YouTube and other major Western platforms that could be used for advertising.

出品智能手機實用類應用的獵豹移動(Cheetah Mobile)的總部位於北京，而用戶大多在國外。這家公司的辦法是找一塊通往世界其他地方的跳板。在2014年初，獵豹移動在臺灣開設了辦公室。在臺灣市場上，谷歌與Facebook佔據了主導地位。此舉幫助獵豹移動得到了深諳Facebook和Youtube等可以用於廣告營銷的各大西方平臺的員工。

“Taiwan served as a bridge for us across the Pacific to the United States,” said Charles Fan, Cheetah’s chief technology officer.

“臺灣是一座幫助我們跨越太平洋抵達美國的橋樑，”獵豹移動的首席技術官範承工(Charles Fan)說。

Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu have all opened American offices, but they have mostly turned to investments and acquisitions to gain footholds overseas. Over the last two years, Alibaba has invested in emerging markets, including two online commerce companies, Paytm and Snapdeal, in India. It also spent $1 billion to acquire Lazada, an e-commerce site popular in Southeast Asia.

騰訊、阿里巴巴和百度均在美國設有辦公室，不過它們大多轉向了通過投資與收購來在海外站穩腳跟。過去兩年間，阿里巴巴一直在新興市場投資，包括印度的兩家在線商務企業Paytm和Snapdeal。它還掏出10億美元收購了在東南亞頗受歡迎的電子商務網站Lazada。

Tencent has been more aggressive in Western markets. In June, it made its largest overseas deal, paying $8.6 billion for Supercell, the Finnish company that created the popular mobile game Clash of Clans. Tencent also has a stake in the games company Activision Blizzard and bought one of the most played games in the world, League of Legends.

騰訊在西方市場上則更爲進取。今年6月，它達成了公司最大的一筆海外交易，斥資86億美元收購推出了熱門移動遊戲《部落衝突》(Clash of Clans)的芬蘭公司Supercell。騰訊還在遊戲公司動視暴雪(Activision Blizzard)中擁有股份，並買下了世界上用戶最多的遊戲之一：《英雄聯盟》(League of Legends)。

Perhaps the greatest indication of Tencent’s overseas ambitions was a deal that never happened. In 2014, with its global WeChat campaign faltering, it was preparing to start negotiations to bid for WhatsApp when Facebook swooped in, according to a senior Tencent executive who asked for anonymity in discussing corporate strategy.

最能彰顯騰訊海外雄心的，或許是一樁未能完成的交易。騰訊的一名高管透露，在2014年，微信的全球營銷活動受挫之際，騰訊準備開啓收購WhatsApp的談判，不料Facebook殺了出來。因爲討論的是企業戰略，這位高管不願具名。

Tencent and Baidu declined to comment. An Alibaba spokeswoman referred to recent remarks by Alibaba’s president, J. Michael Evans, in which he pointed to acquisitions as a way the company was attracting new consumers in developing markets. He also said Alibaba was focused on attracting more foreign businesses to sell on its markets in China.

騰訊與百度拒絕置評，阿里巴巴的一名女發言人則以集團總裁J•邁克爾•埃文斯(J. Michael Evans)近期的言論迴應。他指出，收購是阿里巴巴吸引發展中市場的新客戶的一種方式。他還稱，阿里巴巴致力於吸引更多的外國企業通過他們的中國市場進行銷售。

Mr. Lee said it might take a new technological jump for Chinese companies to get a chance at building a platform inside China and internationally. He said Chinese companies could prove competitive in emerging sectors like virtual reality, artificial intelligence and robotics.

李開復認爲，中國企業要想獲得在中國與海外建立統一平臺的機會，或許需要新技術的飛越。他表示，中國企業可能在虛擬現實、人工智能和機器人等新興領域展現競爭力。

“I think what might be surprising is, China will catch up rapidly,” he said. “Partly because of Chinese universities, partly because of returnees to China who form a portion of the top engineers in the world.”

“我想可能讓人意外的是，中國會很快趕上來，”他說。“一部分是因爲中國的高校，另一部分是因爲能躋身全球頂尖工程師之列的人成爲了海歸。”

is in many ways a product of the cultural exchange between the United States and China that Mr. Lee described. Mr. Zhu, 37, graduated from a Chinese university, but moved to the United States with the German software company SAP in 2010. He had the idea for the music app while riding the train from San Francisco to Mountain View, Calif., in a car full of high school students.

從很多方面來看，媽媽咪呀就是李開復描述的那種美中文化交流的產物。朱駿現年37歲，從中國大學畢業，不過隨德國軟件公司SAP於2010年搬到了美國。他這個音樂應用的點子來自一次鐵路之旅。當時他從舊金山前往加州山景城，車廂裏滿是中學生。

“Half were listening to music and the other half were using their phone to take photos and add emojis, and they were passing them around,” Mr. Zhu said. Then it hit him: combine the selfie and social media part with the music part and turn it into one product. In 2015, Mr. Zhu moved to Shanghai, where his co-founder has been based since ’s 2013 inception.

“一半人在聽音樂，另一半在用手機拍照加表情符號，然後四處發，”朱駿說。於是他得到了啓發：將自拍和社交媒體的部分與音樂的部分結合起來，做成一款產品。到了2015年，朱駿搬到上海，與2013年媽媽咪呀誕生之時即搭檔的共同創始人匯合。

Yet is unlikely to be the social network to link both sides of the Pacific. For the demographic the app is focusing on, it’s far better to be outside its home market, Mr. Zhu said.

不過，媽媽咪呀不大可能成爲聯接太平洋兩岸的社交網絡。朱駿表示，對於這款應用瞄準的年齡段，在海外市場發展要好得多。

“Teenagers in the U.S. are a golden audience,” he said. “If you look at China, the teenage culture doesn’t exist — the teens are super busy in school studying for tests, so they don’t have the time and luxury to play social media apps.”

“美國的青少年是黃金受衆，”他說。“看看中國的情況，青少年文化並不存在——十幾歲的孩子學業超級忙，要爲考試學習，所以沒時間和精力來玩社交媒體應用。”