Dan Wang

I forget something related to switchboards.

It's something that Huawei started on until it is now a company that makes 5G equipment, that makes all of these mobile stations, that makes a lot of mobile handsets, and kind of a million and one things.

And according to parts of Washington, D.C., it also has a really

close relationship with the People's Liberation Army and making some sensitive military goods for them as well.

But there's a lot of these Chinese companies that decide, why not?

Let's just be vertically integrated.

We're not only going to make all of our electric vehicles, we're also going to make the batteries, and we're also going to make some of the chips that are powering the vehicles as well.

And there is this element of vertical integration in which, to go back to one of our earlier points, I also want to set up a contrast between two of America's handset companies.

First, let's compare Apple.

What is the valuation of Apple now?

It's about $3, $4 trillion with Xiaomi, whose market cap is, I don't know, not more than one-tenth of Apple's valuation, probably not even one-twentieth Apple's valuation.

Apple has been famously working on a car for about 10 years named Project Titan until it decided to throw in the towel a couple of years ago.

Xiaomi, which let's say is worth $120 at the level of Apple, which is mostly a handset maker as well as a maker of rice cookers and fans and all sorts of other household consumer electronic goods.

The CEO of Xiaomi declared in 2021 that

I'm going to invest $10 billion in making my car.

This is going to be my focus.

This is going to be my last great entrepreneurial venture.

And what happened afterwards?

Again, Apple threw in the towel and decided not to make any vehicles.

Xiaomi's first electric SUVs are now on the streets in China.