Isaac Mao, a Chinese entrepreneur, said he is a big supporter of “sharism”, the philosophy of sharing information, ideas and content without worrying about having ideas “stolen”. He said that the point of “sharism” is to have your ideas and worked re-mixed and mashed up.
To him, “China is becoming a real creative society.”He said that grassroots people are more creative due to what he calls the professional amateur (Pro-Am) revolution in which people like bloggers were empowered by digital tools (cameras, off-the-shelf software). People are well-connected via the Internet via social networks and this fosters collaboration. The Internet makes it faster to create and share and provides large online audiences. He cited Seehaha, Tudou and Yupoo as Chinese Internet successes.
Isaac said that certain factors are preventing China from becoming even more creative, including the fact that access to hundreds of Web sites is blocked, there is government censorship and there are hundreds of Chinese companies producing copy-cat Web sites and services from the U.S. (He said that there are 200 YouTube knock-offs in China and others mimic sites such as Google Maps.)
