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YC China and Qi Lu

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#101

Post by dang »

varsitywork wrote: post #26
jumelles wrote: post #15

YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

Exactly. I am not sure what Sam Altman is up to here, but this may be something that Silicon Valley companies and the free world will regret deeply in the future. He mentions > to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity. Yes, but technologies at the hands of a dictatorship is dangerous. This morning, there was just a thread about Chinese surveillance/censorship technologies being sold t…

You've been using HN exclusively for political argument about China since you created this account. That's not a legit use of the site, as the guidelines explain: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is a place for curiosity-driven discussion on a wide range of things, not prosecuting a political or national agenda.

Edit: it looks like you've been creating tons of accounts just to argue about China. That's clearly abusive, so we've banned this one. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#102

Post by hueving »

shard972 wrote: post #52
jumelles wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caring about human rights is silly?

If you want to make it in China then yea, you probably shouldn't be too hung up on human rights. It's not some universal concept that has applied throughout the world for our existence so it's quite rude to pretend like China has to bow to these systems of human rights we developed without china's input.

You don't need input to realize that the government oppression of millions of individuals is wrong.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#103

Post by hueving »

shard972 wrote: post #78
IntelMiner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government is not the Chinese people I don't think the Chinese people approve of many of the things their government does. Though censorship makes dissent harder to "prove"

A lot of americans don't approve of many things the government does but we don't call them a dictatorship oppressing the people. Plenty of western countries are involved in censorship on a smaller scale but that's not considered evil and suppressing the true views of the public. One easy example being mega projects, here in the west we seem to wax poetic constantly about returning to the good old days where a nation…

>A lot of americans don't approve of many things the government does but we don't call them a dictatorship oppressing the people.

Because the government doesn't block you from saying those things. It's concerning to me that you don't appear to know what the definition of 'oppression' or 'dictatorship' is.

>One easy example being mega projects, here in the west we seem to wax poetic constantly about returning to the good old days where a nation could undertake mega-projects and yet china just keeps doing them faster than we can keep track.

When you throw enough suffering and death at a project, you can build quickly. Nobody with a brain is suggesting we do projects the same way we did the hoover dam that resulted in silicosis.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#105

Post by fhe »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #49
ulfw wrote: post #44

I find it funny how YC is focusing only on places where the majority of the world won’t or can’t easily work (US visa policy is atrocious and getting worse every year + raising xenophobia in recent times) and China isn’t an easy country to navigate if you don’t speak Mandarin, let alone succeed in as a foreigner (for a variety of reasons). Asia and Europe are big places as are Canada and Australia. Time to think broa…

Mandarin isn't strictly necessary to live in China. Plenty of my laowai colleagues only knew a few words and got along just fine in a tier one Beijing, which admittedly is a bit behind Shanghai and Shenzhen. The only thing that really drove us out was the pollution (a huge problem in Beijing that is supposedly finally getting better). Given the US visa policy, as bad as it is, still attracts far more many foreigners…

to live in China, one could get by with little to no mandarin; but to do business in China, mandarin is a must.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#106

Post by GuiA »

telltruth wrote: post #24

Sam, this exec BS doesn't look good on you. If Qi Lu is the "one of the most impressive technologiest" you have known then I would say you can be impressed pretty easily. Qi Lu is the guy who couldn't do a squat with Yahoo so he jumped ship to Microsoft. His main achievement there was to rename their product to "Bing". Finally not getting anywhere for almost a decade, he finally got pushed out and so he jumped on the…

YC needs a suit who will let them convince the PRC that they should be allowed to have a slice of the Chinese economy. They could not have chosen a better person.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#107

Post by kaptain »

The political concerns are real. It's too cynical to say that YC just cares about money, though. There would be better ways to create an incubator than to do it like this, if that were the case. One obvious question that hasn't been raised is: "Why not base it in Taiwan?" It's still "China" (for some definition of China), you can still get access to the talent that you want (you just have to try a little harder), and you could still get access to the market you're targeting.

It's not going to be easy, but it would better address the political and humanitarian issues raised.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#108

Post by rqs »

vadym909 wrote: post #11

Nice move YC. I know Qi is highly regarded by Chinese students. He seems like a corporate vs startup guy though, so while I trust he has great access to talent and connections in industry and Govt, I'm not sure he's the best person to mentor a scrappy startup. Hope he has a good support cast.

Given the previous information, he's a capable person [0], and more importantly, "honest and dedicated to work" (Originally: 自去年一月陆奇加入百度以来，公司发生了很多积极向上的变化。我和广大同学一样，都对他正直的人品、忘我的工作精神和在技术及商业领域的敏锐洞察力印象深刻……) [1].

So I guess I'm not join the team of doubt this time for now.

(Before you click, grab yourself a translator first)

[0] https://www.zhihu.com/question/277693647/answer/396254674

[1] https://www.pingwest.com/a/167091

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#109

Post by tanilama »

ulfw wrote: post #44

I find it funny how YC is focusing only on places where the majority of the world won’t or can’t easily work (US visa policy is atrocious and getting worse every year + raising xenophobia in recent times) and China isn’t an easy country to navigate if you don’t speak Mandarin, let alone succeed in as a foreigner (for a variety of reasons). Asia and Europe are big places as are Canada and Australia. Time to think broa…

It should be easy to see, China and US are where money are. There is advantage to have a local branch there. YC is a venture capital, don't pretend it is something else.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#110

Post by Leary »

jumelles wrote: post #15

YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

Indeed, given the recent news in East Uyghurstan. I had to double check my calendar to see that it was not April 1st. Limits to human rights by a government is intolerable in the modern epoch. Anyone that uses a Chinese product is complicit in cultural genocide. If HN doesn't speak truth to power, who else will?
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