Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and The Chinese Dream

Columbia Global Reports

by Clay Shirky

Almost unknown to the rest of the globe, Xiaomi has become the world's third-largest mobile phone manufacturer. Its high-end phones are tailored to Chinese and emerging markets, where it outsells even Samsung. Since the 1990s China has been climbing up the ladder of quality, from doing knockoffs to designing its own high-end goods.

Xiaomi — its name literally means "little rice" — is landing squarely in this shift in China's economy. But the remarkable rise of Xiaomi from startup to colossus is more than a business story, because mobile phones are special. The common desiderata of the global population, mobile phones offer the kind of freedom and connectedness that autocratic countries are terrified of. China's fortune and future clearly lie with "opening up" to the global market, requiring it to allow local entrepreneurs to experiment.

Clay Shirky, one of the most influential and original thinkers on how technological innovation affects social change around the world, now turns his attention to the most populous country of them all. The case of Xiaomi exemplifies the balancing act that China has to perfect to navigate between cheap copies and innovation, between the demands of local and global markets, and between freedom and control.

Genres: China, Nonfiction, Business, Technology, Politics, Audiobook, Economics

134 pages, Paperback

First published October 13, 2015

About the author

Mr. Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterizes the Web. Current clients include Nokia, GBN, the Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation, and the BBC.

In addition to his consulting work, Mr. Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology -- how our networks shape culture and vice-versa. His current course, Social Weather, examines the cues we use to understand group dynamics in online spaces and the possible ways of improving user interaction by redesigning our social software to better reflect the emergent properties of groups.

Mr. Shirky has written extensively about the internet since 1996. Over the years, he has had regular columns in Business 2.0, FEED, OpenP2P.com and ACM Net_Worker, and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, Wired, Release 1.0, Computerworld, and IEEE Computer. He has been interviewed by Slashdot, Red Herring, Media Life, and the Economist's Ebusiness Forum. He has written about biotechnology in his "After Darwin" column in FEED magazine, and serves as a technical reviewer for O'Reilly's bioinformatics series. He helps program the "Biological Models of Computation" track for O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conferences.

Mr. Shirky frequently speaks on emerging technologies at a variety of forums and organizations, including PC Forum, the Internet Society, the Department of Defense, the BBC, the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Highlands Forum, the Economist Group, Storewidth, the World Technology Network, and several O'Reilly conferences on Peer-to-Peer, Open Source, and Emerging Technology.

Prior to his appointment at NYU, Mr. Shirky was a Partner at the investment firm The Accelerator Group in 1999-2001, an international investment group with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London. The Accelerator Group was focused on early stage firms, and Mr. Shirky's role was technological due diligence and product strategy.

Mr. Shirky was the original Professor of New Media in the Media Studies department at Hunter College, where he created the department's first undergraduate and graduate offerings in new media, and helped design the current MFA in Integrated Media Arts program.

Prior to his appointment at Hunter, he was the Chief Technology Officer of the NYC-based Web media and design firm Site Specific, where he created the company's media tracking database and server log analysis software. Site Specific was later acquired by CKS Group, where he was promoted to VP Technology, Eastern Region.

Before there was a Web, he was Vice-President of the New York chapter of the EFF, and wrote technology guides for Ziff-Davis, including a guide to email-accessible internet resources, and a guide to the culture of the internet. He appeared as an expert witness on internet culture in Shea vs. Reno, a case cited in the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act in 1996.

Mr. Shirky graduated from Yale College with a degree in art, and prior to falling in love with the internet, he worked as a theater director and designer in New York. His company, Hard Place Theater, staged "non-fiction theater", theatrical collages of found documents.

Mr. Shirky's writings are archived at shirky.com, and he currently runs the N.E.C. mailing list for his writings on networks, economics, and culture.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi and the Chinese Dream, by Clay Shirky, is a book about the rapid rise of Chinese phone and OS manufacturer Xiaomi, and an overarching examination of Chinese censorship and information technology policies. This book is an interesting perspective on the issue, blending corporate economics with Chinese political power and the conflicting and overlapping interests of both. China is the world's largest market, and there are more smartphone users in China than the combined total population of the US and Western Europe (with 90% market saturation for smartphones in China, this is over a billion people). China's market is almost becoming another world in the global marketplace. Just having a target market of 5% of the Chinese population is equivalent to the market of France. This means big money is available in China - and big money is to be made in information technology. China is rapidly catching up to western nations in terms of information infrastructure, but it faces unique challenges due to its more authoritarian governmental system.

If there is one thing authoritarian states fear in the modern world, it is mass mobilization. The world of the internet thrives off of this mobilization. Think about the use of social media platforms and communications apps during the Arab Spring to organize mass movements. China therefore, has taken the step to crack down hard on the dissemination of information. It seeks to control access to information by blocking access to certain sites - dubbed the Great Firewall of China. It also blocks numerous VPN's to ensure information is not hidden. Current Chinese President Xi Jinping has been a fervent supporter of this control, but it is not a new function. This was also policy under Deng Xiaoping and his successors. The Chinese state promotes free markets, and offers many freedoms to its citizens as individuals, but it does not tolerate political freedoms.

So what does this have to do with Xiaomi? Xiaomi is an interesting case study in Chinese corporate structures under the repressive information technologies common currently in China. The company offers a mobile phone that is highly sought after in China's marketplace. It also features its own operating system (OS), which is characterized by weekly software updates targeting bug fixing and offering improvements, a rabid and popular user driven QA process, and flashy marketing that targets Chinese consumers. Xiaomi was founded in 2010, and in just 7 years has become the 5th largest mobile phone company in the world. It did so by targeting its home market, something slightly unusual for a Chinese tech company, which often manufacture goods and services on contract to western markets (think Foxcomm/Apple). It's phones offer features, apps and services that are highly sought after in China, and make the phone an attractive choice for purchase. The phones are also markedly cheaper than the average Samsung or Apple product on the Chinese market.

Xiaomi faces unique challenges in how it operates as a company. Global expansion is difficult due to the Chinese states overt control over its information technology infrastructure. Recent launches into India were met with skepticism by Indian consumers, and outright hostility by Indian politicians after it was found out that messages sent on a Xiaomi phone were often collected by Xiaomi servers in China - and therefore searchable by Chinese authorities. The suspicion of Chinese surveillance - while almost certainly a fact, is slightly overblown (as many countries adopt similar tactics to information collection by security services) but still a concern, especially from regional rivals like India. Xiaomi also has to contend with a government that both incubates it, but could also strangle it. Xiaomi has been successful precisely because China keeps such tight control over its information infrastructure. This allows a sort of infant-industry phenomena, where Chinese companies have little foreign competition when building and experimenting with information technologies like software, network hardware, and mobile phones. A Chinese built system is easier to control, not apt to foreign surveillance, and required to follow policy. Even so, China has thrown tech companies under the bus before. China has crackdown on companies like Baidu - targeting bloggers in lightening raids while also using negative online rhetoric to tarnish politicians about to be purged or arrested.

Shirkey has written an interesting analysis of both Xiaomi and China's information technology policies and censorship model. The book takes a critical look at the way these two worlds collide, and what it means for Chinese society - and the global marketplace, as a whole. This was an excellently written book, and certainly worth a look for those interested in the subject matter.

[Mustakim · Rating 4 out of 5]

যদি বিশ্বের সবচে' বড় কয়েকটি স্মার্টফোন উৎপাদনকারী প্রতিষ্ঠানের নাম জিজ্ঞেস করা হয় তাহলে অ্যাপল, স্যামসাং আর শাওমির নাম সবার শীর্ষে অবস্থান করবে। গতকালকেই কিছু নিউজ চোখে পড়লো ‘অ্যাপলের স্থান(২য়) দখলে নিয়েছে শাওমি’ শিরোনামে।

Xiaomi চীনা শব্দ যার বাংলা আক্ষরিক অর্থ দাঁড়ায় Xiao - ছোট, Mi - চাল, ভাত বা এককথায় ছোট চাল, শাওমির চাইনিজ মূল অর্থ ‘বাজরা’। শাওমি ২০১০ সালে প্রতিষ্ঠিত হয়ে মাত্র ১০ বছরের মাথায় পৃথিবীর দ্বিতীয় স্মার্টফোন উৎপাদনকারী প্রতিষ্ঠান হওয়ার সাফল্য অর্জন করে। এত অল্প সময়ে শাওমির এরকম চোখধাঁধানো সাফল্যের রহস্য কি?

লেখক মূলত বইয়ে শাওমির স্ট্রাটেজি আলোচনা করেছেন। আলোচনা যে খুব বিশদ এমন না, লেখক একটা সাধারণ ধারণা দেয়ার চেষ্টা করেছেন। আর যেহেতু শাওমি একটি চাইনিজ প্রতিষ্ঠান তাই শাওমির স্ট্রাটেজির পাশাপাশি চীনের সমাজ, রাজনীতি এবং ইতিহাস নিয়ে আলোচনাও এর সমান্তরালে স্থান পেয়েছে। যেহেতু চীন কমিউনিস্ট পার্টি দ্বারা শাসিত আর মহাপ্রাচীরের মতো ‘গ্রেট ফায়ারওয়াল’ দ্বারা পৃথিবী থেকে বিচ্ছিন্ন (কাগজে-কলমে কারণ ভিপিএন এর কল্যাণে গ্রেট ফায়ারওয়াল অনেকটাই ক্ষতিগ্রস্থ, এ ব্যাপারটা নিয়েও বইয়ে কিছু আলোচনা রয়েছে) তাই শাওমিকে শুধু চীনে সীমাবদ্ধ না রেখে বিশ্বে ছড়িয়ে দিতে বেশকিছু সমস্যার সম্মুখীন হতে হয়েছে, হচ্ছে এবং ভবিষ্যতেও হবে। শাওমির সামনের এই বাধাগুলো নিয়ে আলোচনাও বইয়ে স্থান পেয়েছে।

এই আধুনিক যুগে টেকনোলজি আমাদের সাথে খুব গভীরভাবে জড়িয়ে রয়েছে। তাই বর্তমান পৃথিবীকে বুঝতে হলে টেকনোলজিকেও বোঝা প্রয়োজন আর চীনকে বুঝতে হলে তো এই কথা আরো বেশি প্রযোজ্য। চীন ও তথ্যপ্রযুক্তি সম্পর্কে আগ্রহী ব্যক্তিরা শাওমি এবং চীন সম্পর্কে একটা সাধারণ ধারণা পেতে পড়ে দেখতে পারেন।

বই - Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream
লেখক - Clay Shirky
পৃষ্ঠাসংখ্যা - ১২৮
প্রকাশকাল - অক্টোবর ১৩, ২০১৫
রেটিং - ৪/৫


~ মোঃ মুস্তাকিম বি.
১৮ জুলাই, ২০২১

[Sipho · Rating 3 out of 5]

If asked who the three largest manufacturers of smartphones are, it would be fairly obvious that Apple and Samsung would be in the top 2. Unbeknownst to many, however, a Chinese upstart company by the name of Xiaomi (pronounced ‘show’ -as in shower- ‘me’) has stealthily become the third biggest smartphone merchant.

The book Little Rice, whose title derives from the English translation of “Xiaomi”, reports on the rise of a Beijing based software provider to the world’s most valuable startup (valued at over $45 billion in 2015). Shirky attempts to explain how Xiaomi conquered the Chinese market and also paints a panoramic picture of China’s political and economic landscape.

Xiaomi was started in 2010 by software engineer Lei Jun. Initially the firm specialized in customizable mobile phone software named MIUI. As opportunities opened up, Xiaomi, the external hardware manufacturer was born retaining MIUI as its core operating system.

The backdrop of Xiaomi’s success in focus in this book. From a mere perception point of view, China is the ‘assembler’of goods conceived elsewhere. There appears to be a lee vibrant design and innovation culture in a country where cheap labour and the culture of shanzhai ( a term meaning “mountain village” and referring to the piracy and imitation) are the order of the day.

Xiaomi provides an interesting case study as to whether Chinese companies have the capacity to profitably innovate. The author notes that Xiaomi did (and continue to do) several key things differently to its competition to obtain a competitive advantage. Firstly, the company invites user feedback through what Shirky describes as “lead user innovation.” Indeed the MIUI platform is built around suggestions and improvements by core followers of the brand. Second, Xiaomi offers a customizable experience. The tacit agreement between Xiaomi and its customers appears to be that once purchased, their phones can and ought to be modified to the customer’s tastes. Thirdly, Xiaomi has kept operating costs low by only selling its goods online and monetizing software upgrades.

After an overview of the beginning of Xiaomi, the book then turns to a treatise of China’s social and economic policies. These, in my view, make it very difficult for any business to operate successfully. Particularly a technology business. Especially a foreign technology business.

The author details internet censorship and extreme protectionism as being barriers to entry for most foreign competition. This is a double edged sword for companies with plans of global expansion, like Xiaomi. While these policies shield them domestically, it forces them to effectively have 2 separate product offerings: one for China and another for the rest of the world.

Shirky concludes with a history of the “Chinese Dream” enunciated by Xi Jinping, the country’s current president. Young people should “dare to dream, work assiduously to fulfill the dreams and contribute to the revitalization of the nation.” With economic growth slowing down, these idyllic words sound more like a distraction from an unrealized prosperity for a majority of the populace.
The conclusion of the book is ‘we wait and see’. No one can predict whether the direction technology is taking in China will be beneficial to either the Chinese people or the world.

I enjoyed reading this book. It was informative although statistic heavy. Most of these were interesting enough though. For example, the number of people using mobile phones in China is greater than the total population of the USA and Western Europe combined. Or that China used more building cement in the first 3 years of this decade than the USA used in the whole 20th Century.

That said, there was surprisingly scant mention of Xiaomi itself. At least not as much as I expected. However, as an overview of where China is economically, this is as good a read as any.

[Ankit Agrawal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clay Shirky's first hand account of Xiaomi's success story. He has access to the founder and the marketing director of the company and the entire narrative is constructed based upon interactions with them as well as the author's understanding of the country from his readings and his ongoing residential stint in Shanghai. Some parts of the book do give some insight on how Xiaomi managed to take China and Asia countries by storm. However, Shirky meanders and digresses too much in between to enter realms of history and politics as well as some pop-psychology. The claim that all of the forces he talks about have somehow shaped Xiaomi's success story seems too far-fetched. New developments have occurred since the book was written- such as ex-Googler and the company's international face Hugo Barra quitting abruptly and Xiaomi abandoning its largely online-only sales efforts to go the conventional brick and mortar retail in a big way in an effort to tap the hinterland in China and justify its inflated valuation.

[Yuqi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This easy, well-written little book is not only a business book about Xiaomi, but also it gives a very clear description of the background: the big environment of information age and the domesctic environment in China during the past several decades, where Xiaomi is born. I have not much background knowledge in the Internet industry, but this book makes it easy for me to understand the story behind the development of this Internet company. What I like especially about this book is that it gives everything a political perspective, whether it be economy, blockage of outside social media in China and the relationship between Internet company and the country. It's interesting and enlightening, especially for people who grew up in China and don't talk about politics. I would like to recommend this book to my friends and read more books from this author.

[Zak · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick, easy read touching on Xiaomi's strategy which is actually a derivative of Microsoft's strategy for desktop PC's. There is actually not much in-depth study of Xiaomi. Rather it reads more like a long op-ed on the exponential growth of smartphones (plus other things like social media) in China and the increasing difficulty faced by its ruling party in balancing outward growth vs domestic control. 3.5*

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a book that a certain generation would understand as being a crammer’s guide, a highly concentrated little book drilling down on a certain subject and providing just enough core, essential information about it (usually to help pass an exam). This book, the second in a new imprint from Columbia University Press, looks at a not-so-secret Chinese mobile phone company that has yet to shake the western world – yet it might be a case of “when” rather than “if” it does.

Cellphone nerds and astute business watchers already know of Xiaomi (meaning “Little Rice” in Mandarin, hence the book’s title) and opinion varies as to how innovative, daring and futuristic the company is. Certainly one thing is for certain, if it continues to expand and develop at such a pace as it has thus far, expect fireworks in the global marketplace! Already, the author notes, the company is the third largest vendor of smartphones in the world – only pesky Apple and Samsung are standing in its way. Is there a real danger that this company may eclipse one or more of its competitors? Who knows, but previously many people were adamant that Nokia would be top dog until, err, it wasn’t, and there is no sign of a recovery yet. It has a lot of ground to make up.

Well the book does what it sets out to do and it does it well. It is competitively priced, a quality session read and is something that can be significantly out-of-date in just a few months – such is the fast-moving nature of the market. Read it whilst it is hot!

The author nails the importance of the mobile telephone in just a few words and if you reflect on it, it is not hyperbole: “The mobile phone is a member of a small class of human inventions, a tool so essential it has become all but invisible, and life without it unimaginable.” Of course, food, drinking water and shelter are more important, yet once you get past the basic elements of human survival, the humble cellphone is capable of being a lot more than just a means of calling. It can deliver news, provide location services, act as a mobile wallet for distant money transfer and much more; so many things that we take for granted today could be unimaginable just decades ago. It is everywhere, the author notes, citing ethnographer Jan Chipchase as saying that there are only three universally personal items that someone will carry with them no matter where they live – the first two are money and keys; the third is the mobile phone, making it the first new invention added to that short list in three thousand years.

Where are most of the mobile telephones made nowadays? Bzzt, China! Chinese companies are transitioning from being mere manufacturers to designers and naturally large potential targets are in their sights. Xiaomi has a head start and you can be sure they are not the only company chasing the dream of success. Through this book you learn how the company seeks to pump-up its customers to super-loyal users, providing feedback and quality market research in their wake. A wise company is not only responsive to its customers needs but it actively seeks out their opinions, both positive and negative. Maybe some established players could benefit from a little humility before it is too late?

Is the company finding its feet or overheating? Is there an internal clash or two whilst its identity is discovered, polished and formed? One design is lauded as being distinctive and forward thinking, the next is said to be a derivative (or a blatant copy of rivals’ designs). What will the next product be? Can any clues be inferred from the next stake in the ground? The book doesn’t say, yet it implies that the company is not sitting still.

This is not a hagiography or varnished PR book. It is a credible, interesting concise look at a fascinating company that is making waves. Even if you have no specific interest in mobile telephony but care for a good read, this could be something great to consume in an evening. It can also be an ideal travel companion as it is a powerful read without the overhead. Pared to the bone and ready for action, in other words.

Little Rice, written by Clay Shirky and published by Columbia Global Reports. ISBN 9780990976325. YYYYY.

Autamme.com

[Amr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clay Shirky's easy style of writing takes you on a trip through the busy corridors of a tech mall in Shenzhen to discover how China became the economic powerhouse it is today, and how its citizens are still struggling through poverty and climbing to the middle class.
Xiaomi, the young maker of a successful line of Chinese-designed and Chinese-made smartphones, is the focal point, but is only the beginning of a much larger story, a story about China's economic rise, its struggle to achieve economic freedom while maintaining political control, a story about the changing relation between hardware and software and which is the main seller of products today, a story about the new reality of selling products online and directly to customers, and a story about the maker movement and its effect in a country where they actually make everything.
This might seem like a lot of stories for a book with only 130 pages, but Shirky gets to the point directly and dives deep enough into any of those topics to offer the background needed to understand how all those stories are connected to each other. I really enjoyed how the book is seem to be written for the Internet-age, where there's so much other stuff to read. The book doesn't repeat itself, just gets to the point, illustrates it completely and thoroughly and moves on.
The book certainly opened my appetite for more books and material on China's modern history, economic rise, and the possibilities for its near future.
Highly Recommended

[Aman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is really more of an extended essay. A somewhat bipolar essay. One part focuses on Xiaomi: its rise, the conditions that made it so, the challenges it faces as it expands,the broader trends it represents etc. The other part is about internet in China and how the Party deals with it. The book is at its best dealing with Xiaomi, crisply so. While there are some interesting insights into how the Party selectively censors the internet, nothing especially new. I did appreciate Shirky avoiding the quagmire that is predicting the future dominance or disintegration of China, something of an hobby amongst authors dealing with anything Chinese today.

[Kent Winward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clay Shirky's "Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and The Chinese Dream" was an interesting little diversion into the burgeoning and problematic Chinese market and tech-market in particular. Shirky wrote the book "Here Comes Everyone" about crowd sourcing, but this book felt like it had a split personality in examining Xiaomi, a Chinese smart phone manufacturer and Chinese policies and struggles to build a middle class. Overall, not a cohesive and focused book.

[Chris Beiser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breezy, but lacking depth. The small errors (Google bought a startup from ex-Danger employees, not Danger itself, which was bought by MIcrosoft) aren’t problems, but the omissions (Xiaomi as an ecosystem play for the connected home, Xiaomi as a product-driven company) make it clear that Shirky is not entirely sure why Xiaomi has been successful, and make him overly skeptical of the stability of Xiaomi’s market position. Bits on the Chinese Dream were generally solid.

[Logout · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting approach. News coverage on Xiaomi usually focused on the business side. In Little Rice, Prof. Shirky linked Xiaomi's growth with the mixed development environment in China.

But other than that, the book failed to bring anything new to people that follows both the smartphone market in and economics/politics conflicts in China (Age of Ambitions is a much better work on the second part).

[Tim Kadlec · Rating 3 out of 5]

I typically really enjoy Shirky's writing, but this one was a little subpar. While the topic itself is fascinating, it felt like Shirky kind of threw this one together a little too quickly—the connections between the main topic and his tangents were tenuous. There are a few interesting tidbits scattered throughout, but overall the discussion felt a bit shallow.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clear and relatively easy to read. I picked it up because I have a Xiaomi phone that I bought in China. The book is a mix of analysis of the company and of Chinese technology as a whole.

[Diah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clay Shirky wrote about how Xiaomi as a relatively new brand of phone could help shape the geopolitical and economy of China. It is not an easy road for Xiaomi, who was born and bred in China; the country we all presume as 'where the cheap things come from', to rise above some gigantic and well-known cellphone brands in the industry.

However, Shirky noted, that Xiaomi is well-loved by the fans and rely a lot on said fans to do the marketing and test-drive as well. Buyers who buy Xiaomi might as well fell to the principal of 'good enough' and 'might be better in the future', something Xiaomi thrives to do with its MIUI.

In China, where you still need to buy VPN (my friend said it costs quite a fortune to buy every month) to access some, if not all, world sites you might frequent outside China; telecommunication business have to juggle between giving its consumers freedom with obeying the state mandate of intranet. And with Xiaomi's passion to widen its market to the world, the question would be how to internationalize the software that is mainly targeted to people inside of China. This might not be a big problem for some Mi fans across the world who are techno-savy; but for people like me, who is a casual brand-hoping buyer, having to tinker with a phone at first would be a hassle, and might hinder Xiaomi's next step.

This book is an interesting read to gain an insight about China and its unstoppable development. Being quite close in geographical and economical aspects with China, I feel that this book helped me understand better of what I already learned in grad school.

[Dan McMillan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This might be a small book, like 125 pages, but it is dense with text. I feel like it’s a textbook on an economic and business history of China after WWII to the present. The focus is on Xiaomi which is a smartphone company and very influential. The author does an excellent job at describing how the company was built with heavy Chinese influence to fit that market, but also realize it can try and operate outside its borders. The information about the VPNs I thought was pretty intuitive towards the end with wanting for China to be a world player and having to allow enough access worldwide to do so. The manufacturing and other parts of the Chinese economy was interesting. I read it in 2024 to 2025 so a bit behind many developments but still thought it was very informative.

[Soaring Leaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book feels like a series of essays that are slightly disjointed, but relevant to each other. It does not go in depth on Xiaomi or the CCP, but in some ways that is a good thing as it allows broader strokes to illustrate the links between the government and supposed private companies.
It was published years ago so some stuff is no longer accurate. Still, it provides some amusing anecdotes and factoids, as well as being a short read.
The author also kept a fairly objective perspective, without dipping into a heavy bias one way or another.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a quick easy read. Shows the innovation of China and how many have become rich. They were able to reproduce things quickly and change designs quickly so customers could have a customized product.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a random pick from my local library. Pretty well written about the rise of Xiaomi and it's place in China's socio-economic development. I may have actually played a role in it's rise when I installed the MIUI custom rom way back in '12. Just saying hahaha

[Delanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, short read. I dont normally read non fiction so most of mu problems with it were because of me and not the book. One of the few exceptions being he didn't cite sources in text or even with foot notes

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good background information on the rise of Xiaomi within the context of the modern Chinese manufacturing market. Draws some conclusions about both consumers and manufacturers in both China and abroad that I think are a tad simplistic and broad.

[Todd Cheng · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting delve into cell phone supply chain and the growth of China as a real global competitive partner.

I guess we expected another nations rise into a complex field to take as long as took the US. They took good notes.

[Chandra Nene · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good book about the social phenomenon called ‘Mobile Phone’ I would urge anyone with an interest in the current ‘Internet Culture’ should read it. The Author Clay Shirky writes very well about the issues concerning this culture and it’s social effects.

[Silvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very easy to follow and informative, but very repetitive and redundant. Would have loved deeper dives into the Chinese dream and how it shows itself in rural v. urban China, but the book is pretty much only about XiaoMi itself

[Marcelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Albeit short, great book for understanding chinese manufacturing and internet industries today.

[Dani Ollé · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting short essay about Xiaomi's rise

[Udaya]

Ok

[Jingwei Shi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book only provides a brief introduction to Xiaomi and lacks many key elements.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice take on a technology Chinese company.
Pretty interesting strategy decision overview.

[Yashank Sakhardande · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have 0-3 work experience, this book is a good read.