Dangdang.com CEO Slams “Incompetent” American Investors, Squares Up to 360Buy.com

The CEO of Chinese e-commerce site DangDang.com (NYSE: DANG), Li Guo-qing, recently spoke out about his competitors and the volatility of his company’s stock, saying most American investors are “incompetent.”

DangDang.com has had something of a rollercoaster ride since its December US IPO – rising to $36 shortly after its New York debut, and crashing down to $9.84 at about the time of Mr Li’s video interview with Sina’s finance portal. Today as I write it stands at $11.30.

In the interview – which has come to light today after an excellent translation by iChinaStock via BusinessInsider (see source link below) – Mr Li slams American investors as being sheep following the media in their demonization of this year’s wave of Chinese tech IPOs. Responding to Sina’s question about Dangdang’s slide in stock price, Li Guo-qing says:

Western investors consider Qihoo (NYSE: QIHU), Renren (NYSE: RENN) and Dangdang as targets to short, because these three are the very ones that are the highest valued and have the highest PE [price-earnings] ratio. I previously thought that the western capital market was more mature than China’s, and that the Western media was more independent. So I chose to go public in the US, which is less likely to be controlled. But I found out later that most American capital, funds, and individual investors are incompetent and replicas of the mass media.

Now is the winter of our capital discontent

When it comes to Dangdang’s renegade, upstart competitor 360Buy.com, Mr Li is actually more forgiving, saying he can understand the smaller site’s push for immediate growth. That’s despite 360Buy increasingly stepping on Dangdang’s toes. The smaller B2C site has been moving into the 3C (computers/communications/consumer) sector at the same time as it has been cutting book prices to drastic and controversial levels.

On this issue of rivalry and potential price wars, Mr Li observed:

360Buy is losing huge amounts of money on its sale of 3C. In terms of selling books, it is no match for Dangdang. We are still engaged with various kinds of competition with the old competitor, Amazon.cn.

360Buy’s CEO recently piped up to say that the Chinese e-commerce scene was facing a “cold winter” of hardship, hinting at a tech stock bubble. On this, Dangdang’s Mr Li defends his fellow IPO’d firms, saying their set profit models make today’s scenario most unlike a 2000 style bubble. He notes: