Xiong: Chinese entrepreneurs should broaden horizons

Chinese companies may need to be more innovative and international to access bigger markets in the future, said Xiong Xiaoge, chairman and founding partner of IDG Capital, in a keynote at the 2017 Demo China Autumn Summit on Sept 7.

Demo China is a conference conducted by cyzone.cn for entrepreneurs showcasing their projects to potential investors.

China is in its best time for entrepreneurship thanks to the nation's policy support and the huge market the country has—three times the population of the United States, according to Xiong.

According to the data from IDG, Alipay, launched in 2003, has 450 million users. For comparison, Paypal, launched in 1999, has 200 million users.

As Xiong pointed out, US companies like Amazon or PayPal won their success not just by relying on their domestic customers, but from people around the world.

"Even companies like Alibaba, WeChat or Alipay can reach a huge market for now, they mainly depend on the domestic users. As investors, we will consider those projects that are more international," he said.

Xiong thinks entrepreneurs in China are lucky — they can create quite a miracle just by appealing to the big domestic market. "If we can work on some changes to its overseas market and extension, the companies will grow bigger," he said.

He also emphasized originality in entrepreneurship.

"China has a superb strength in production. If it can go with some good original technology and designs, we will definitely have great companies and products on our own," Xiong said.

ZTE Corporation and Huawei Technologies, two Chinese companies, are the top two companies with the most published applications, according to a patents league table released by the World Intellectual Property Organization this year.

WIPO also says the number of patent applications from China increased by 45 percent, which may become the country with the most patents aside from Japan and the US in the next two years.