There's definitely a significant difference in cultural strength between chinese immigrants in SF and in Toronto. Basically what I think it boils down to is that the Toronto chinese community is extremely self-sufficient - insular, even.
My chinese in-laws can comfortably live there without speaking a word of English because there's that much chinese cultural infrastructure - from church groups to supermarkets to gardeners, handymen, doctors and real estate agents whose _entire clientele_ is 1st-gen chinese. Chatting with the neighbor in chinese about so-and-so's grandson is a fairly normal thing.
In contrast, my wife would consider the chinese community in SF heavily "americanised" - Similar to how Sao Paulo has "nihongakkous" (immersion schools for 2nd/3rd gen japanese), some schools in SF have "immersion" programs. These basically indicate that the community as a whole doesn't have cultural momentum to imprint onto new generations. By contrast, at my kid's kindergarten in Toronto, the teacher would at times actively have to discourage kids from speaking chinese in class (when it would be disruptive/exclusionary to the minorities - caucasians - of the class)!
WRT VC culture, my understanding is that in China, there's a great deal of literal politics (IIRC, Didi and many other prominent startups were owned by family members of prominent politicians), but that culturally speaking, "success" tends to be narrowly defined as doing well in school and getting a socially desirable job after that. I'm told that indians have similar cultural pressure to raise to management positions. (Women have it even worse, with pressure to get married in their 20s, give their parents grandchildren, etc). I feel like in SF, tech workers are heavily immersed in liberal ideas (e.g. risk taking, individualism) and tend to "detach" from their birth culture to a much higher degree than in Toronto.