留下来还是走出去 中国科技企业左右为难

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——对喜欢跟着阿里安娜•格兰德(Ariana Grande)和弗洛•里达(Flo Rida)哼唱的青少年来说，妈妈咪呀()必不可少。让用户能够在自己的音乐视频中假唱和跳舞的这款应用坐拥一亿用户，并与格兰德和梅根•特莱诺(Meghan Trainor)等流行明星达成了合作。

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.

人们很难看出妈妈咪呀是中国的一款应用——这是故意的。为了在美国取得成功，其母公司忽略了中国这个有七亿网民的国内市场。

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.

总部设在上海的妈妈咪呀的联合创始人朱骏表示，原因很简单：中国的互联网在本质上不同于其他大部分地区使用的互联网。

“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.”

“依然很难进入中国，”曾在华东城市杭州的浙江大学学习土木工程的朱骏说。“它是一个封闭环境，你得相当特别，才能在这个市场中竞争。”

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.

自从二十年前，北京开始在国内和国外的互联网之间建立隔离。如今中国的数字世界和其他地区是分开的。这导致Facebook和最近同意出售其中国业务的优步(Uber)等美国科技公司无法独立在中国市场运作。

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

对中国的互联网公司来说，这种分隔的影响可能更大。

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.

它束缚了中国最大、最有创新精神的互联网公司。阿里巴巴、百度和腾讯已经位列全球最大的互联网公司，但它们几乎完全依靠国内业务，在国外的冒险尝试大多没什么章法。它们将在国际上挑战美国巨头的预言尚未成真。

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.

对像妈妈咪呀这样的中国网络创业公司来说，互联网的分裂也迫使它们做出选择——要么创造出满足中国网络用户需求的产品，要么把重点放在世界其他地区上。

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，这种分裂都像19世纪的美国铁路。那时，不同尺寸的铁轨限制了火车从一个地方去另一个地方的能力。

“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.

“进入美国或中国市场的门槛变得越来越高，”台湾风险投资人、前谷歌中国总裁李开复说。

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.

腾讯旗下的即时通讯应用微信，便体现了中国互联网公司扩展国外市场时面临的困难。在中国，微信将电子商务和现实世界的服务相结合，相关方式正在被西方公司效仿。微信有大约七亿用户，大部分是中国人或用它与身在中国的人联系。

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，凭借几亿美元的现金储备，由世界足球明星利昂内尔•梅西(Lionel Messi)担当的代言人，以及本地化的广告——比如在印度投放受宝莱坞启发的广告——腾讯开始推广微信。其高管称那将是微信走出中国的最好机会。但最后，该行动以失败告终。

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.

批评人士认为原因是腾讯缺乏有特色的营销，有在中国进行审查和监视的前科，以及进军外国市场较晚。但最大的问题是，国外的微信和中国国内的根本不一样。在国内，微信几乎可以用来做任何事，如付账、打车、预约挂号、分享照片和聊天。但它的这种能力有赖于中国其他互联网服务，而在国外，这些服务有限。

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.

这使得微信在中国之外主要被用户拿来聊天和分享图片——与同属Facebook旗下的WhatsApp和Messenger并没有多少区别。百度和阿里巴巴均推出了提供多种功能的类似应用，但在中国之外用处不大。

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.

同样的问题也伤害了中国的初创企业。这些公司起步时习惯于采用中国的互联网站点和应用来推销并巩固自身的业务。然而，走出国门意味着要掌握一整套截然不同的服务，比如深刻理解Facebook和谷歌的平台与广告，而非百度和腾讯。

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，妈妈咪呀选择了相反的道路，将自身与美国市场上最热门的社交网络联接起来。如果用户录下了极为协调的舞步或无懈可击的对口型演唱，就能不仅传到这款应用上，还能添加到Instagram中，传到WhatsApp里或在Facebook上贴出。朱骏表示，这帮助妈妈咪呀在欧洲、南美和东南亚市场上取得了自然增长。

“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.”

“美国年轻一代的特点是，他们很有创造力，”朱骏称。“他们会说，‘欢迎在Instagram或Snapchat上关注我。’如果你的应用能吸引一个年龄段中的一些人，让他们特别高兴去分享，你就很可能取得增长。”

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.

出品智能手机实用类应用的猎豹移动(Cheetah Mobile)的总部位于北京，而用户大多在国外。这家公司的办法是找一块通往世界其他地方的跳板。在2014年初，猎豹移动在台湾开设了办公室。在台湾市场上，谷歌与Facebook占据了主导地位。此举帮助猎豹移动得到了深谙Facebook和Youtube等可以用于广告营销的各大西方平台的员工。

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

“台湾是一座帮助我们跨越太平洋抵达美国的桥梁，”猎豹移动的首席技术官范承工(Charles Fan)说。

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.

腾讯、阿里巴巴和百度均在美国设有办公室，不过它们大多转向了通过投资与收购来在海外站稳脚跟。过去两年间，阿里巴巴一直在新兴市场投资，包括印度的两家在线商务企业Paytm和Snapdeal。它还掏出10亿美元收购了在东南亚颇受欢迎的电子商务网站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.

腾讯在西方市场上则更为进取。今年6月，它达成了公司最大的一笔海外交易，斥资86亿美元收购推出了热门移动游戏《部落冲突》(Clash of Clans)的芬兰公司Supercell。腾讯还在游戏公司动视暴雪(Activision Blizzard)中拥有股份，并买下了世界上用户最多的游戏之一：《英雄联盟》(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.

最能彰显腾讯海外雄心的，或许是一桩未能完成的交易。腾讯的一名高管透露，在2014年，微信的全球营销活动受挫之际，腾讯准备开启收购WhatsApp的谈判，不料Facebook杀了出来。因为讨论的是企业战略，这位高管不愿具名。

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.

腾讯与百度拒绝置评，阿里巴巴的一名女发言人则以集团总裁J•迈克尔•埃文斯(J. Michael Evans)近期的言论回应。他指出，收购是阿里巴巴吸引发展中市场的新客户的一种方式。他还称，阿里巴巴致力于吸引更多的外国企业通过他们的中国市场进行销售。

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.

李开复认为，中国企业要想获得在中国与海外建立统一平台的机会，或许需要新技术的飞越。他表示，中国企业可能在虚拟现实、人工智能和机器人等新兴领域展现竞争力。

“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.”

“我想可能让人意外的是，中国会很快赶上来，”他说。“一部分是因为中国的高校，另一部分是因为能跻身全球顶尖工程师之列的人成为了海归。”

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.

从很多方面来看，妈妈咪呀就是李开复描述的那种美中文化交流的产物。朱骏现年37岁，从中国大学毕业，不过随德国软件公司SAP于2010年搬到了美国。他这个音乐应用的点子来自一次铁路之旅。当时他从旧金山前往加州山景城，车厢里满是中学生。

“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.

“一半人在听音乐，另一半在用手机拍照加表情符号，然后四处发，”朱骏说。于是他得到了启发：将自拍和社交媒体的部分与音乐的部分结合起来，做成一款产品。到了2015年，朱骏搬到上海，与2013年妈妈咪呀诞生之时即搭档的共同创始人汇合。

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.

不过，妈妈咪呀不大可能成为联接太平洋两岸的社交网络。朱骏表示，对于这款应用瞄准的年龄段，在海外市场发展要好得多。

“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.”

“美国的青少年是黄金受众，”他说。“看看中国的情况，青少年文化并不存在——十几岁的孩子学业超级忙，要为考试学习，所以没时间和精力来玩社交媒体应用。”