Who am I?
I’m Jordan Schneider, an independent researcher based in Beijing and host of ChinaEconTalk podcast.
Since moving to China three years ago on the Yenching Scholarship, I’ve had to adjust to more than the language. I also had to integrate myself in a technological ecosystem wholly foreign to me. The more I familiarized myself, the more I realized that I wasn’t just discovering Chinese copycats, but rather entirely new ecosystems that reshape industries and society in ways different from what Silicon Valley has created.
I think it’s important for more people to understand the dynamics around the Chinese tech companies whose global presence is only going to grow more and more impactful over time. In the coming years, firms like Bytedance will be reshaping the world as dramatically as Twitter and Facebook have.
Just as to understand the logic of American tech giants you need to be in Silicon Valley, so to do the same for the Chinese ones you need to speak Chinese and live on the mainland. I believe a more sophisticated understanding of China’s tech scene is important for global stability as countries continue to grapple with the impact technology has on the modern world. So with this newsletter and podcast, I’d like to help more of the world get informed with the coming global wave of Chinese tech firms.
I was a history major at Yale, worked in DC in political risk at the Eurasia Group, then at Princeton’s Innovations for Successful Societies, and most recently at Bridgewater Associates.
I also had a bad concussion a few years back and wrote about it here.