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YC China and Qi Lu

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#301

Post by tanilama »

natch wrote: post #279
tanilama wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Considering that there are over 300 million, yes million, people in China who do not speak Mandarin I don't think your numbers are right. Tibet has 4 million population. Xinjiang has 20 million, among which 50% are Han. Those are only 2 provinces where I can think of that doesn't require Mandarin to get by in certain area. The rest of China, at least, could understand Mandarin without problems.

You're just going by intuition, which can be misleading. Guangdong province alone is 100 million people. Some of whom are Mandarin speakers (1st or 2nd or 2nd+ language). But many are not, not even as 2nd or 2nd+ language speakers. And their predominant language is Cantonese. Many people grew up before mandatory Mandarin education was instituted. There's a similar situation in other huge provinces all around China, e…

I would say assuming people from Guangdong province, and majority of them don't speak Mandarin is an exaggeration to great extent. Of course they do, it is imperfect with heavy accent. But I won't go that far claiming they don't speak Mandarin, as if saying all English speakers in India don't count, that is just hilarious.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#302

Post by vl »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #10

Ah, this is the same Qi Lu who was basically responsible for the creation of Bing, then got Office and AI in a reorg, and then somehow got pushed out by Satya and went on to be CTO of Baidu for awhile. The YCR connection makes sense, since he has a lot of experience in AI where much of YCR is now at, but it will be interesting to see how he will interact with Bret Victor's group. Are they going to start a YC-like inc…

>Qi Lu who was basically responsible for the creation of Bing

Qi Lu is not responsible for the creation of Bing. MSN Search project was well underway in 2005, then it was re-branded as Live Search, then as Bing. Qi Lu is joined in 2008.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#303

Post by carapace »

DanielGee wrote: post #232
google_censors wrote: post #192

It's amazing that a company that Paul Graham co-founded is getting into bed with an authoritarian government notorious for its human rights abuses. To succeed in China you can't go against the government. So is he going to be pushing as hard for political change in China as he is in the US, or will he remain silent as his company reaps the profits?

Companies exist to make money. I think the tech community's biggest mistake was assuming that tech companies are moral agents. Of course tech companies ( "do no evil" ) had a hand in misleading us. But tech companies are no different than oil companies, pharma companies or movie studios. They want market share and money. Maybe we should stop putting tech companies and tech leaders on a pedestal.

Or we should accept that there's no magic get-out-of-moral-obligations card issued to them when they become agents of a business?

There's this weird rationalization that somehow a person becomes immune to moral considerations when they accept a job as a corporate executive.

I don't that's true. And I don't think most businessmen think that's true either. I'm pretty sure Warren Buffet doesn't think that's true.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#304

Post by qiqing »

o0-0o wrote: post #292
pnathan wrote: post #283

This is a recognition that the Chinese world is a rising superpower, both in innovation and in politics. Reminds me to study Mandarin! I wish them all the best, and I hope that the interactions with the great qualities of YC produces an excellent step forward for China and its technologists.

China is 3000 years years old and still considered an emerging market. Why do you think that is?

Well, prior to the 1600's, it was the dominant economy on the planet, and then during the mid-later Qing Dynasty, there was the critical leadership error in not sufficiently investing in the military instead of investing everything in economic growth.

As a result, China was invaded over and over again by colonizers who levied punitive fines for losing the war. And then there were a series of revolutions. (I know, I was born in a part of Shanghai that's commonly called "the French Concession.") The Bolsheviks were the first to give a bunch of that money back ... maybe because they wanted an ally or because they had a conscience.

Oh, also the Versailles Treaty, which ended WW I, involved a clause that gave Shandong province to Japan (from German control), which caused students to take to the streets in protest against the KMT who ratified it, the political party that eventually lost popular support and went to Taiwan and prevented the international community from recognizing the CCP's government as official China because the KMT maintained that they're the official China.

Is that what you're referring to?

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#305

Post by natch »

tanilama wrote: post #301
natch wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just going by intuition, which can be misleading. Guangdong province alone is 100 million people. Some of whom are Mandarin speakers (1st or 2nd or 2nd+ language). But many are not, not even as 2nd or 2nd+ language speakers. And their predominant language is Cantonese. Many people grew up before mandatory Mandarin education was instituted. There's a similar situation in other huge provinces all around China, e…

I would say assuming people from Guangdong province, and majority of them don't speak Mandarin is an exaggeration to great extent. Of course they do, it is imperfect with heavy accent. But I won't go that far claiming they don't speak Mandarin, as if saying all English speakers in India don't count, that is just hilarious.

I never made any such claims. This kind of poor quality conversation is not worth engaging in.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#306

Post by bjlorenzen »

b_b wrote: post #262
kaptain wrote: post #107

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…

I don't think it's too cynical given this move at this point. They have willingly entered into a market where corporations are sponsored for their loyalty to the state, which has done horrendous humanitarian crimes, without which they could have succeeded economically just as well. Seems to me any semblance of a soul has been lost here in favor of pure VC profits.

China's actions seem horrendous from our perspective, but at least they are only operating within their own borders. How do you feel about the decades of war and destruction wreaked worldwide by our own government, including the bombing of schoolchildren just this week?

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#307

Post by qihqi »

nailer wrote: post #286
maxkwallace wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan is not "China" for reasonable and informed definitions of China. Independent of that, to the best of my understanding: (1) The talent pools in Taiwan and China are different (2) The markets in Taiwan and China are very different Right now the Chinese market is more important than the Chinese talent pool, but both are important. Basing an accelerator in Taiwan would be good for Taiwan, but it would not meaningf…

> Taiwan is not "China" for reasonable and informed definitions of China. Taiwan is literally the Republic of China. The leadership is descended from the same people who overcame the Japanese. Pretending the Communist Party has a monopoly on the word 'China' is uninformed and unreasonable. Off topic, a better compromise would have been Hong Kong, inside the PRC with some degree of democracy, though less than original…

You are not wrong that Taiwan is part of China according to official definition (from both PRC and Taiwanese gov).

However, "Taiwan is literally the Republic of China." is disingenuous considering that their government is not the one that sits in the United Nations.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#308

Post by carapace »

Not a word, not a breath, of concern in that press release for the ethical aspects of doing business with the Chinese Communists.

I think I'm gonna have to close my HN account. I don't even want to be this close to YC anymore.

(They practice organlegging over there. Your wait time for a new kidney is so low because there are prisoners kept as involuntary donors. Most of the prisoners are incarcerated due to practicing something called Falun-Gong. They are not violent criminals.)

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#309

Post by europeanperson »

I assume that most of the people that commented on this article live in the U.S. The majority of the world sees the U.S. as the world's biggest threat to world peace, yet I don't see anybody on Hacker News claiming companies shouldn't do business with the U.S. Since the war in Iraq, can we think of something that the Chinese government has done that is worse? I disagree strongly with the notion that the Chinese government's influence on the world is somehow worse than the influence of the U.S. I do think there is something to be said about boycotting governments that abuse human rights, but I think it is hypocritical to think that somehow that doesn't apply to the U.S.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#310

Post by seanmcdirmid »

europeanperson wrote: post #309

I assume that most of the people that commented on this article live in the U.S. The majority of the world sees the U.S. as the world's biggest threat to world peace, yet I don't see anybody on Hacker News claiming companies shouldn't do business with the U.S. Since the war in Iraq, can we think of something that the Chinese government has done that is worse? I disagree strongly with the notion that the Chinese gover…

You really don’t read HN much if you’ve missed all the criticism leveled at the USA.
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