Interesting article but I feel it&#x27;s light on actual hard data comparisons.<p>One fact is wrong though.<p>&gt;  Startups can achieve massive scale quickly, because the domestic market is 1.3 billion people, which is four times the U.S. or European population.<p>I don&#x27;t know what definition of Europe (Western maybe?) gives you 300 million people. Demographically Wikipedia says Europe had 70 million people in 210 so presumably it&#x27;s over 3&#x2F;4 billion now.<p>I feel like people don&#x27;t appreciate that Eastern Europe &#x2F; Russia is Europe too for a lot of definitions of Europe. The E.U. includes a lot of Eastern European countries and Balkan states and Slavic states but not all. Ukraine and Russia _are_ European in many respects, be it ballet, opera, classical music, theatre, cinema, religion, architecture, you name it. Arguably modern Turkey is the least European _culturally_ because of the influence of Islam and Arab culture but geographically Istambul is closer to Rome than London is and when the Western Roman Empire fell the seat of power shifted to Constantinople and continued on for another, I don&#x27;t know, more than _500_ years anyway.<p>Wikipedia say Europe had 300 million people in <i>1916</i>, midway during the First World War (sorry world!), exactly one century ago.<p>side note: I have to chuckle to myself when some point out that air pollution in China will be a limiting factor. It didn&#x27;t stop the industrial revolution in the UK or US so why should it stop China? And it wasn&#x27;t _that_ long ago that air pollution was a real problem for London and LA, for instance. Judging by history air pollution will be a thing of the past within one generation (25&#x2F;30 years) in China. You can quote me on that.