A friend of mine told me that Japanese companies look for the following in vendors: 1. have they IPO'd? if not then, are they 2. funded by a big VC? and, failing that, have they at least 3. won some award?
It all comes back to a lack of desire to reward innovation despite its obvious risks and wanting to play it safe by requiring external validation.
This can be good, in a way, because it forces entrepreneurs who still decide to operate in this environment figure out the needs of what we in the US would call the "late-majority" on the technology adoption curve (which is also usually about half of the largest part of any given addressable market).
I'm guessing (though only guessing) that some of these things are also true in China. Perhaps it's very different in B2C.