That isn’t true. A friend of mine told me that Kai Fu (the Paul Graham of China) said something to the effect that Chinese VCs for a long time had focused on copying because they were much more risk averse than western VCs (copying an existing business model was a more sure bet than doing something new). It has only been in the last few years that they have been breaking away from that.

As for Chinese taking risks, I think you have to look at the alternative safer investments that basically don’t exist, you have no choice but to take risks in China, or in most other developing econonies for that matter.