In the early days of NYU Shanghai’s development, Professor Clay Shirky was not only trying to navigate the start of a joint-venture University, but also navigate his way around China. Maneuvering through the Shanghai metro system, Shirky got off at the wrong stop, and happened to come across a bunch of small technology stores. At the time, he thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to buy a much-needed phone. He picked up a Mi3, developed by the Chinese phone manufacturer Xiaomi (小米), with no intention that this would be the central topic of his next book. On Oct. 13, Shirky released “Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream”, published under Columbia Global Reports. The book, or “short essay” as Shirky modestly describes it, is an investigation into the popularity of the Xiaomi phone, and how the company has invented the term “budget-luxury”. Previously, Shirky was working for the Interactive Telecommunications Graduate Program (ITP) at the Tisch School of the Arts at the Washington Square campus. However, in 2013, Shirky and his wife, fellow NYU Shanghai Professor Almaz Zelleke, and children moved to Shanghai with the opening of NYU Shanghai. Since then, Shirky has thrown himself into the world of Chinese social media and telecommunications. In the spring of 2013, In a conversation with the Dean of the Columbia Journalism Program, Nick Lemann, Shirky was told that there was a circulating idea in the US that China could not design anything - especially not a smartphone. However, that was until Shirky bought his first Xiaomi (since then, Shirky has owned almost every new model Xiaomi has released). After his initial purchase of a Mi3, back at the ECNU campus, Chinese students were shocked that a 老外 (laowai: foreigner) even knew what a Xiaomi phone was, let alone owned one. “When I got back to campus, the Chinese students were all like ‘where did you get that?’”, explained Shirky. “I had accidentally bought a Xiaomi and was getting this crazy reaction from people who knew the Chinese phone market.” For Shirky, the reaction from students in Shanghai, combined with his conversations with Lemann sparked an interest. “Between having seen this on-the-ground reaction to students who really knew the local conditions and having heard the phrase in the US 'China only copy, they don’t invent' I thought that writing about something that joined these two themes would be something interesting to work on.” In his book, Shirky tracks the development of the Xiaomi company, as they have grown into the third largest phone manufacturer in the world. Despite the fact that they have the largest internal market, Xiaomi has managed to compete against the big leagues - the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy - mostly due to China’s rising middle class. “[Xiaomi did] something that resonated with Chinese customers… [they made] a well-designed and well-built product, for surprisingly cheap,” Shirky explains. When asked about the influence of Chinese nationalism on Xiaomi’s popularity and growth, Shirky remained optimistic about Xiaomi’s potential as a global phone manufacturer. “There is certainly pride in having a Chinese company design a product so well, but that’s a relatively small part of why Xiaomi succeeded,” Shirky said, “Xiaomi just understood that there was a middle market. The way to get [to the middle market], would be not just to make a slightly better phone, but to rethink and relaunch how you make a phone in the first place.” People were not just buying Xiaomi’s because they were a Chinese company, but because they were making good phones. Before Xiaomi started releasing phones, they originally developed MIUI: their version of the Android software. “They wanted people to install it on their Samsung Galaxies,” Shirky explained. “They just went after making software systems more responsive while using less battery life.” For Shirky, and every other smartphone user, battery life beats all other features, and was perhaps the reason Shirky was so sold on the Xiaomi. Once they started building hardware, Xiaomi began to develop a new operating system every single week - much like an automatic app update. “Mostly it was just little tweaks, and every now and again a new little feature or setting will pop up, and you think wow, I never used to be able to do that,” Shirky said, waving his Xiaomi phone, “it’s a weird experience.” The success of Xiaomi has not only been realized within Chinese borders but also on an international scale. As what Shirky calls a “budget-luxury” product, Xiaomi phones have moved into Southeast Asian markets and have planned to enter into South America and Subsaharan Africa. For Shirky, Xiaomi does not need to move into the “rich world network of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. Xiaomi does not have a very good competitive stance for these countries because they run into patent pool problems and look and feel lawsuits,” Shirky said. “If they were to enter the US market, the chance that Apple would sue them is high.” However, in Shirky’s predictions, Xiaomi will start to operate around the equator. “They are going to be a mid-marked international company. [They’re targeting] the middle three billion people [and that is] an enormous market.” As a loyal Xiaomi customer, Shirky and his family have gone through all that Xiaomi has to offer - and would recommend them to anyone looking to buy a phone. “The first choice in the market is you buy an iPhone or an Android, but if you’re going to buy an Android, I would buy a Xiaomi.” This article was written by Isabella Farr. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Joi Ito on Flickr