Drupal in China

Hi,

I'm a web developer that have been working dedicatedly in Drupal area for around 2 years in China. In my opinion the reason could be summarized as following:
1. Lack of English read/speaking skill
Most of Chinese people can't speak English very well (including me). Unlike some widely used technologies in China which have many translated tutorials, manuals etc, most of Drupal's documentations/books are in English. Because of that, it's not easy for a Chinese developer to study Drupal.
2. China is a slightly different world
You may be noticed that many biggest internet giants in the world are either failed or not very successful in China. For example: EBay had been beaten completely by Taobao although it started much earlier, Google has got only 21.23% of the market share while it's competitor Baidu takes 76.52% of it. That's because in term of marketing method, custom of web surfers, China might be slightly different than the rest of the world because of it's unique culture. That's why Mozilla has decided to develop a special China version of Firefox and that's the first country specific version of Firefox.
For CMS and forum scripts, local Chinese websites tern to use the scripts which is in conformity with the user's custom. We've got many so called 'open source' (which I think it should be called 'free' instead) CMSs, which website owners think they are easier to use considering the language different, complexity of building some common functionality which we use widely in China etc.. Those CMSs also know how to market in China well, and they take profit from selling services or more advanced version of the software. I think Drupal's marketing is a bit of weak in China, and they way they do it is not the local way. Also, it's lack of some functionality that we used to have from other products.
3. Low participation of open source software in China.
It might have something to do with the culture but it should be not much, in my understanding.
China isn't a cheap place to live really because of the low average of income. Most of experienced developers are live in big cities. In those cities, the average price of a flat/average income ratio could be 3-9 times higher than a most other countries, so people in these cities should be working quite hard to actually buy a place to stay (it usually costs 30-50 years of salary to buy a decent flat). So most developers choose working for money but not for fun or for the future of the computer industry.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks,
Hu Yifan

Thanks Hu Yifan,

Thanks for your great answer. It's certainly not easy to get some good developers in China. Maybe, one day we will see some.

Thanks
Mark

My Drupal company site
My Drupal/Ubercart wholesale site

如果我用中文回這個題目，多少人能看懂？ ;-)
Translation: How many people can read if I post the reply in Chinese?

１生活困難，如 Andy 所說，下班已經太累，回到家會開個 compiler 出來的，太少了。

２「編程是低級職位」在中國可能還是個現實吧。大部份的 programmer 都想盡快「不用再編程」而不是「提高編程技巧」。

３創作沒有回報。實質利益固然沒有，精神上也相對孤獨。

４賣技術，不如賣關係。好產品不如好關係。要客戶明白 Drupal 是什麼，倒不如想想回扣怎算。

...

在香港五年，在加拿大六年，在中國四年，十幾年的開發生涯了。有時候問自已，為什麼會干那麼多年？因為一個夢想吧：就覺得軟件開發太像印鈔票了，要是做好一個軟件，是像開了印鈔機。呵 ~