Many European destinations and hotels hope for China to become one of their key markets in the future. So when Oliver Ueberholz from Germany offered a session about Web 2.0 in China at last week’s Barcamp Vienna, I was a very happy camper (do they still say that?)

Similar to other Asian countries the Chinese have a tendency to copy concepts invented abroad. This holds true to Web 2.0 platforms as well. Many are absolutely similar to their Western prototype. Oliver offered a very interesting angle on this. Copying most certainly has a different value in China. In the old days scholars devoted six years to copying the complicated signs of the Chinese language as contained in important books or letters. Only if they succeeded to produce identical copies would they accomplish their studies.

However, copycating is becoming more of a national challenge now, since Chinese companies and start-ups have started copying each other. Which in turn is producing problems in the same country and not "just" to foreign economies.

Baidu.com is the most popular search engine in China along with sina.com.cn which also features some news content.

Yupoo is the identical copy of the photo platform Flickr.

Toabao and Alibaba.com are China’s interpretation of Ebay/Amazon.

Cnboo.com is one of the many video platforms in China, just like Tudou.com, uume.com, Inovivi.cn, 51tv.com, Ku6.com. Oliver said that uploading videos is still not very common. In order to get more users to do this with the movies taken with their mobile phones one of these platforms organised street demonstrations where they approached passengers and showed them how easy uploading is.

Jiwai.de and Taotao.com are the Chinese copycats of Twitter.
QQ.com is some sort of instant messenger service.
Ipart.cn is a virtual apartment you share with your virtual significant other. You can furbish and decorate the rooms, give your partner presents and flowers and get stuff for the children, who do not exist yet.
Life365.com is a popular dating platform.
Last but not least, Linkist.com is the Chinese copy of the business platform Xing.

Interested to learn more about Web 2.0 in China? Check out the China Web 2.0 Review. To jump-start your Mandarin try these language podcasts recommended by Openculture.

Oliver Ueberholz is a social network expert and studied Sinology at University for two years. He was at the Shanghai Barcamp in September. I still have to watch his video.