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Steve Jobs’s decision to step down as Apple’s CEO is big news across the globe and big news in China.

But it hasn’t just topped the news in the Middle Kingdom, it has also prompted some tough questions.

There has been plenty of praise for Jobs on Chinese internet forums. Zhong Wei, the CEO of Qihu, wrote on his microblog:

We don’t need to discuss the share price of Apple. Jobs wants to change the world rather than these prices. It’s great for a person who can do one thing to change the world. But Jobs has changed the world many times.

Meanwhile, some asked if Apple (AAPL:NSQ) would could keep on succeeding without its talisman. This from Deng Hongjian:

Microsoft hasn’t developed any successful products like Windows 95 since Gates resigned. What about Apple in the post-Jobs era?

But perhaps the more lasting impact of Steve Jobs’s move at Apple is the unflattering comparisons some have made with China’s own high-tech visionaries. This from social commentator Wang Chuantao, writing on people.com.cn.

Why isn’t there a person like Jobs in China? Jobs has created and expanded his kingdom, using innovation as the most useful weapon. He will feel no regret after stepping down.

What’s shameful for China is that innovation is like a fairy tale in this country. When Jobs and his colleagues are developing new products one after another, factories in southern China are satisfied with being a copycat phone production line…

We have a magical equipment manufacturer – Foxconn – which produces huge numbers of iPhones and iPads. However we cannot produce a nice phone with our own brands. We are called a copycat country.

What Jobs thinks is always different with what our companies are doing. There will be no Jobs in China and no Apple in China without innovation. We are at the bottom of the smile curve. We can get 5% profits while others get 95%. The “factory of the world” cannot realise its technology dreams.

Despite fake Apple stores [which may have sold some real Apple products], things could hardly be going better for the company in China. The Shanghai store is its most profitable, with much of the company’s seemingly endless growth attributable to appetite for Apple in China.

There will be 25 real Apple stores by the end of the year in China, while the world’s biggest Apple store is set to open soon in Hong Kong. This too will be aimed squarely at mainland Chinese shoppers, who account for over a third of retail sales in the city.

And soon Apple may have yet another weapon in its arsenal – a emerging market iPhone. Reuters reported earlier this week that a cheaper, 8gb version of the handset could be released in tandem with the iPhone5.

So while some at the top may lament that there isn’t a Chinese Steve Jobs, the consuming majority seem content with the American one.

By Josh Noble and Zhou Ping in Hong Kong

Related reading:
China in thrall to the cult of Apple, FT
Aping Steve Jobs: just semantics?, beyondbrics
What Steve Jobs can learn from fake Apple stores, beyondbrics
Apple Store? Yup, we can fake that too, beyondbrics