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

wsj.com

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

#41

Post by rconti »

rchaud wrote: post #20
lagadu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just flag them and move on. Your garbage site doesn't want me reading it, I won't.

It's precisely because the WSJ has a paywall (since 2007 IIRC) that it's not a "garbage site". That dubious honour would go to the hordes of medium.com and elektrek.co links who give their information away because, well, exposure is better than nothing. You get what you pay for.

It's still annoying. I subscribe to the NYT and WaPo. I can't even logistically subscribe to every news site I might get linked to. WSJ is the most obtrusive I've seen in terms of being restrictive towards non-subscribers. And there's STILL no micropayments solution that's widely adopted.

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

#42

Post by elefanten »

chewbacha wrote: post #31

In conjunction with the trade wars and increasingly hostile posturing between leaders, I'm nervous that the ultimate consequence may be war between super powers. If raising the number of trading partners decreases the likelihood of war, decreasing may increase it's chance instead. https://phys.org/news/2015-12-partners-wars-nations.html

There's been no change in number of trading partners as a result of the trade war.

Also worth noting that the claim is more trading partners lowers likelihood of war. War can still happen.

At some point, economic interdependence cannot save a situation where two sides desperately want to change/preserve the state of something (about the world) and those desires come into conflict.

IMO, with US-China, the best inoculation against war would be to push for multilateral engagement... in either direction. But speaking from the US side, US needs to bring other countries into the efforts to reform the aspects of the CCP's behavior that are unacceptable long term.

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

#43

Post by ffn »

I'm all for openness and transparency, but wouldn't an increase in US refusal to play with China just lead to more censorship and oppression by the communist Chinese government?

Consider the following:

1. The Chinese communist government derives its legitimacy to rule almost exclusively from its massive economic growth (i.e. Chinese citizens and corporations are effectively saying to themselves "I'm ok to trade some of my human rights for lots of money")

2. The Chinese communist government wishes to remain in power

So if the US decides to target Chinese economic growth - i.e. lower the amount of money that an unit of human rights could buy - this should cause the Chinese citizens and corporations to respond by exercising the human right that the Chinese government is no longer able to buy with growth. In turn, this would cause the Chinese government to use alternative methods (i.e. straight-up oppression by force) to prevent the Chinese people from becoming unruly.

This sort of pressure on the Chinese government may lead to reform (which is indeed a good thing), but it may also lead to civil / politic unrest and a massive economic slow-down that will have aftershocks around the world (which is certainly less than ideal) - and all of this pretty much will depend on how Xi decides to handle this pressure.

Here in the US, We should at least recognize that this is a risky move and take measures to protect ourselves against this (somehow)

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

#44

Post by ben_jones »

dcolkitt wrote: post #30
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…

As someone who just spends a lot of time in engineering slack channels, comments seem to alternate every other day on how hard or how easy it is to raise money. I've been through fund raising once (~5 years ago) as a small-time founder and can't help but believe the reality is somewhere in between gold-rush and desert.

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

#45

Post by scarface74 »

Causality1 wrote: post #33

Even if the Chinese government never interfered with a single company, I don't want Chinese corporate culture "leeching into the groundwater" as it were. They put Europe and the US to shame when it comes to not giving a damn. About safety, the environment, intellectual property, you name it.

And US venture capital cares about feeding starving children in Africa and other ways to make the world a better place?

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

#46

Post by ulfw »

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-...

Oh that's cool. Thanks mate!

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

#47

Post by avocado4 »

bduerst wrote: post #37
omginternets wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate? What made it toxic?

Not GP, but I've pitched to a crossover fund from China and they were super seedy. On top of having a questionable website and other investments, one of the red flags was they wanted their engineers to review our source code before/without signing any NDAs or commitments.

We also had Chinese VCs ask to review our code (their value proposition was access to Chinese hospital data). Also "system design interviews" asking to essentially how everything works in technical detail, and would work for future expansion plans.

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

#48

Post by peterwwillis »

This is the turning point where tech has become a munition again. Rather than export controls, it's business blacklists.

It's a weird switch. Before we would sell billions in arms around the world with little risk of it being used against us. But digital munitions can be used against anyone, anywhere, any time. The USG will have to tightly control all tech used in the country to prevent cyber weaponry being used against us.

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

#49

Post by devy »

For those who claimed Chinese cash is toxic, let me ask you an important question: what about Softbank's cash that primarily coming from Saudi? What about the Ivy League schools' endowment money donated by "morally unethical"(including but not limited to middle east) sources? Are you not going to send your children to Ivy League schools?

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

#50

Post by aclsid »

umeshunni wrote: post #11
Leary wrote: post #3

What is the legal basis, if any, for getting rid of your investors for this or other reasons?

There's no legal basis. It's just Xenophobia.

Nah, nobody is complaining about Taiwanese or Japanese investment, so that is moot point, mostly made by Chinese from the continent when things don't go their way.
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