>>16344203everyone knows the China thing is false. This is going to be long, but I think it's important for you to understand what doing business in China actually entails and why Cover's relationship with Bilibili was destined to fail.
China severely limits the amount of money foreigners are allowed to take out of the country. They do this through many different avenues, the biggest being you're not allowed to operate a business in China without going through a Chinese middleman that owns 50% of the operation. This is part of the China trap that many businesses fall into. Even when a foreign company is successful in China, they're essentially forced to invest that money back into the Chinese side of things not only through taxes, levees, and other business laws, but also as part of their negotiated contracts. This is then used as leverage to force foreign companies to hand over technology and trade secrets to the Chinese half, which then nine times out of ten, try and force the foreign side out of China after securing their tech and audience in a type of hostile takeover. Many people suspect that's what Bilibili was attempting to do with Cover as it's no secret they tried to negotiate for Cover's tech before everything fell apart in November 2020.
The reason China is good at this kind of underhanded strategy is due to several different factors. First, every major business in China is invariably linked to the Communist Party by law. They're able to organize against foreign interests in a way that others can't because if you become large enough, companies will begin to conspire against you at the state level, creating an insurmountable obstacle to your continued business in the country. Second, Western companies are often blinded by greed and optimism. In the West and other parts of Asia, connections are incredibly important and so it's important to trust the people you do business with. You have to operate in good faith, otherwise your opportunities and potential trade partners become severely limited. In China, things are different. Businesses can spring up and shut down out of nowhere, completely obfuscating what is actually happening and who you're actually trading with. No one trusts anyone. Cheating and stealing is ingrained into daily life. You need to do what you can to survive, not only as an individual, but also as a business. After all, there are literally tens of millions of people, all within walking distance, willing to replace you at a moments notice.
Bilibili was Cover's Chinese partner, a relationship that didn't begin with Cover's consent, by the way. Chinese fans essentially uploaded pirated Hololive streams to Bilibili on what they called "official channels". After seeing an opportunity to make money, Bilibili approached Cover and told them if they were to partner with them, they would moderate these fan channels on behalf of Cover and provide them with a new source of revenue. They told Cover they would facilitate translation of their content, host "simultaneous" streams from Youtube, and provide them access to Chinese fans' donations. Part of the negotiations was for Bilibili to manage a new, separate side of Hololive with its own talents, and thus Hololive China was born.
It's obvious that from the beginning, Bilibili's real intention wasn't to partner with Cover, but instead to learn from them, take their tech, and become their own rival company. Everything that happened with Coco was used as a pretense to finally move on Cover. Bilibili didn't start the fire, but they did everything they could to pour gasoline on the flames to further their own ability to negotiate Cover's exit, including withholding all of their unpaid funds. Remember that Bilibili management were the ones that told Artia and the rest that they would be able to keep their models before Cover had wrapped up negotiations. Remember that Bilibili were the ones that were supposed to pay the Chinese fan translators on their own website, but later told them they had to ask for pay from Cover directly.
The numbers are impressive because of the economy of scale, but the Chinese are notorious for playing dirty, especially when it comes to foreigners. I sincerely doubt that even if a Holomen received 10x the superchats they did on Youtube, they would ever see a fraction of that money. The proof of this is essentially completely open. Chinese will often come here and say that x Holo earned a ton of money from streaming on Bilibili, but if that were true, then why didn't any of them stream there that often? The highest earners were supposedly Aqua and Fubuki, but neither of them streamed there regularly and no where near as often as they did for Youtube.
