Conspiracy talk was buzzing through the microblogging realm this past week, as numerous executives weighed in on 2 major news events in the China tech world. One of those saw Apple (AAPL) finally unveil its new iPhone 6, only to mysteriously yank China from its global launch map without any explanation. The other saw executives speculating on the significance of and reasons behind the surprise defection of Zhang Yaqin, a long-time China-based Microsoft (MSFT) executive who abruptly left the company for a job at leading Internet search company, Baidu (BIDU).
I've previously written about both of these stories, with my own thoughts on what was happening behind the scenes. But these tech executives are more familiar with the local industries, and their observations almost certainly come closer to the truth of what was really happening with these 2 big stories. The first of those came when Zhang Yaqin announced his departure from Microsoft, where he had previously worked for 16 years, most recently as head of the software giant's Asia R&D operation based in Beijing (previous post).
I previously remarked that Zhang's defection reflected the rise of a new generation of homegrown Chinese tech firms that could offer competitive employment opportunities to match the big multinationals like Microsoft. Zhang himself wrote about his decision, but was diplomatic and simply said that he had finished his mission at Microsoft and was ready for a new challenge (microblog post).
Several other tech executives pointed out that Zhang was just the latest high-profile Chinese to leave a big multinational for a domestic company, and pointed to former Google (GOOG, GOOGL) executives Lee Kai-fu and Lin Bin as examples of similar defections. Lee was Google's former China head who left the company 5 years ago to start his own technology incubator, Innovation Works, in Beijing. Lin
