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Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

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Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#21

Post by 1-6 »

surge wrote: post #6

Chinese investment means increased pressure on tech oligopolies* to increase censorship of media critical of China. They've been branching out to increase soft influence, keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation. Then there's what is currently going on in Hong Kong. Chinese investor cash is effectively Chinese government investment. It's not a good thing. *edit

How much of it is hype though? Tencent invested $150 million into Reddit but all I read on FP are Hong Kong demonstrations and Tank Man.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#23

Post by 1-6 »

thg wrote: post #12
ulfw wrote: post #7

Do all of you have WSJ and NYTimes subscriptions? I can't read any of those links submitted quite frequently

For WSJ submissions you can append ?mod=rsswn to the url and read the article that way. https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-cash-is-suddenly-toxic-...

The real unsung hero!

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#24

Post by goldcd »

surge wrote: post #6

Chinese investment means increased pressure on tech oligopolies* to increase censorship of media critical of China. They've been branching out to increase soft influence, keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation. Then there's what is currently going on in Hong Kong. Chinese investor cash is effectively Chinese government investment. It's not a good thing. *edit

To be fair we've all been using foreign aid, armament sales and all the rest for exactly the same reasons.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#25

Post by r00fus »

1-6 wrote: post #21
surge wrote: post #6

Chinese investment means increased pressure on tech oligopolies* to increase censorship of media critical of China. They've been branching out to increase soft influence, keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation. Then there's what is currently going on in Hong Kong. Chinese investor cash is effectively Chinese government investment. It's not a good thing. *edit

How much of it is hype though? Tencent invested $150 million into Reddit but all I read on FP are Hong Kong demonstrations and Tank Man.

The idea is that successful message control will be subtle to imperceptible at first, but through successive actions it will just become commonplace to "not diss China".

If Reddit is the "forum of the internet" then it won't matter if it slowly erodes into a Fox News like media presence. It will exert the gravity over other forums through its "reasonability" on non-sensitive topics.

Kind of like how most modern politicians don't say anything bad about Israel.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#26

Post by cheez »

rawrmaan wrote: post #17

Good. We raised Series A from Chinese investors a few years ago and they were toxic. Not to mention the political implications of enriching countries like China and Saudi Arabia. In hindsight would have rather closed up shop than taken their money.

Toxic how?

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#27

Post by omginternets »

rawrmaan wrote: post #17

Good. We raised Series A from Chinese investors a few years ago and they were toxic. Not to mention the political implications of enriching countries like China and Saudi Arabia. In hindsight would have rather closed up shop than taken their money.

Could you elaborate? What made it toxic?

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#28

Post by graeme »

ulfw wrote: post #7

Do all of you have WSJ and NYTimes subscriptions? I can't read any of those links submitted quite frequently

You can open them in apple News+ now. And a lot of people have it through work.

The discussions are often fruitful even if not everyone can read it.

(For News+ - open the article, click the sharesheet, select Open in News)

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#29

Post by Analemma_ »

surge wrote: post #6

Chinese investment means increased pressure on tech oligopolies* to increase censorship of media critical of China. They've been branching out to increase soft influence, keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation. Then there's what is currently going on in Hong Kong. Chinese investor cash is effectively Chinese government investment. It's not a good thing. *edit

That includes Hacker News, by the way. Now that "YCombinator China" is a thing, sooner or later YC is going to start getting gentle insinuations that they really ought to tone down the criticism of China on that forum site they run, if they want to keep doing business there. Then the insinuations will get not-so-gentle, and at that point either YC China or Hacker News will get the bullet.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#30

Post by dcolkitt »

surge wrote: post #6

Chinese investment means increased pressure on tech oligopolies* to increase censorship of media critical of China. They've been branching out to increase soft influence, keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation. Then there's what is currently going on in Hong Kong. Chinese investor cash is effectively Chinese government investment. It's not a good thing. *edit

Not that this isn't a valid concern, but is there really any evidence that this is happening in Silicon Valley? Hong Kong's a different matter because of just how comparatively dominating and close by the mainland Chinese market is compared to the tiny city state.

But in the US tech sector, the Chinese market is at best an after-thought. We're also living through probably the strongest seller's market in history when it comes to venture funding. My guess is that in most situations if a fund like Tencent tried to force an Internet startup to censor their content, they'd get laughed in the face as the founders just walked next door to the next VC firm on Sand Hill Road.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a SV insider by any stretch. So take these speculations on my part with a big grain of salt...)

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