China Banned Clubhouse. Now There's Clubhorse, Clubchat and Capital Coffee

Clubhouse became big in China after Elon Musk endorsed it back in February. But the Beijing government soon blocked access to the app, giving it the same treatment as other foreign internet products like Gmail, Facebook and Twitter.

This created an opportunity for geographic arbitrage, an opening for Chinese companies to adopt and localize a proven concept from the U.S. This time, publicly listed companies like smartphone giant Xiaomi Corp. and live-streaming platforms Kuaishou Technology and Inke Ltd. are jumping on the bandwagon, as well as tiny outfits with just a handful of employees.

Most of these offerings look extremely similar to Clubhouse—as well as each other—even including details like the “Leave quietly” button. Some even borrow the name: I’ve come across Clubhorse, Clubchat and Clubtalk.

Bloomberg's Zheping Huang shows us what it’s like on another copycat called Capital Coffee, created in 10 days.

"I've been playing around with an invite-only audio chat forum recently," said Huang. "I follow a couple of tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on the app, listening to them expound on everything from deepfakes to drones to user interface design. In those chat rooms, there are little buttons that let me raise my hand to speak, or leave quietly."

It’s still too early to tell whether apps like Capital Coffee will make it in China. A mix of factors—such as Beijing’s censorship, a lack of early-stage VC money and the dominance by social titans like Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd.—will make it a difficult road for the upstarts.

China’s super-app model is pervasive in the country, meaning that incumbent players like Tencent’s WeChat usually just keep adding new features rather than getting edged out by competitors. For example, within its live-streaming function, WeChat already allows users to hop onto a host’s channel with audio chats only. Why bother to try something new if your daily app already promises a similar experience?

One winner is assured among all of this, though. Clubhouse is built using the same backend infrastructure that’s also used by most of its Chinese clones: Shanghai-based Agora Inc., which handles much of the app’s operations. Expect some good numbers when Agora unveils its next quarterly earnings.

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