Lauren DeLisa Coleman (@ultra_lauren) interviewed Marc A. Ross and others in this article exploring the state of Chinese tech and global business competition:

"The Chinese central government picks winner and losers. Once this is happening, the government will do whatever it takes to build and scale tech companies that can compete with the best American tech companies," said Marc A. Ross, former communications director of the US-China Business Council and founder of Caracal Global.

That's the opposite of the American free market ethos, and there's no guarantee China's centrally directed method will work long term.

"China's central government limits or forbids foreign investment or foreign access to over 100 sectors of the Chinese economy," said Ross. "Much of this protectionism is to ensure Chinese companies do not have any real competition with the belief this will allow them to build the necessary skills and resources to be competitive on a global stage."

That creates the appearance that Chinese companies are big and successful, but appearances may be deceiving. Government support prevents the market from truly knowing how strong and resilient Jack Ma and Alibaba are for example, since the company is selected as the Chinese e-commerce "winner," said Ross.

"[Alibaba] is protected from a real marketplace challenge and hasn't had to compete against Jeff Bezos and Amazon in China," said Ross.

Read the full article here:

- Marc A. Ross