Chinese business mode to beat US after 5-10 years: CEO

DAVOS - Once Chinese entrepreneurs change their focus from the domestic market to abroad, their business mode will beat US competitors and take a larger share of foreign markets, Chinese CEO Kai-Fu Lee said during the World Economic Forum here.

The founder and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm that specializes in creating successful Chinese start-ups, made the remarks recently to CNBC TV on the sidelines of the Davos forum.

Lee believes Chinese companies are better at localization and partnering with native companies, "more partnership-friendly" in short, while US competitors are "more monolithic, taking Facebook and Google everywhere."

Though Chinese business people and companies are largely targeting the domestic market, the situation will change within the next five to 10 years, he said.

The large amount of domestic opportunities somehow hinders Chinese entrepreneurs' from eyeing markets abroad, said Lee, who is also a computer scientist.

"The China domestic market is so large, it is three times the size of the US and even larger if you consider things like mobile payment and things like that, it's 50 times larger than the US," he said.

Therefore, "there isn't a lot of them (Chinese business leaders) looking overseas," the CEO said. However, when the time comes, he bets that "for those markets outside the US, English-speaking countries and Western Europe" China will take the lead in market shares.

"I think Chinese companies learn very quickly. They fail fast, learn fast, grow fast," Lee said.

Lee is one of China's most successful venture capitalists and influential micro-bloggers. Prior to starting Sinovation Ventures, Lee was the president of Google China.