&gt; the only downside of doing it in Beijing is that you’d have to tolerate the bad weather and air pollution<p>That is certainly a huge downside, but isn&#x27;t another one the fact that you seem to be stuck &quot;fast following,&quot; building everything on top of services which the author admits are &quot;clones&quot; of popular ones from outside China?<p>I suppose it depends what the author&#x27;s business is.  I didn&#x27;t catch that from the article.