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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

#61

Post by leroy_masochist »

devy wrote: post #49

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?

I think the assertion that Chinese cash is toxic is not so much because of bad things that Chinese do to their own citizens; it looks like the point you're trying to make is that Saudis : Khashoggi and gay people :: China : Uyghurs and Tiananmen, or something of that nature.

Rather, the claim of toxicity stems from the perceived tendency for Chinese investors to be difficult LPs and steal intellectual property both pre-deal during diligence and post-deal once they are in the capital structure. There's an additional perception of 'toxicity' in terms of the way that having Chinese investors might limit a company's ability to procure US Gov contracts, which is getting tighter under this administration, as described in the article.

The comparison to sending your kid to an Ivy League school makes no sense to me whatsoever, seems like a total non-sequitur.

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

#63

Post by nine_k »

ffn wrote: post #43

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…

I would like to remind that the Soviet regime was defeated by economic issues.

I think the only reason the CPC regime might change is due to economic problems. The more abrupt they would be, the better: people need to remember better times and demand change to get back there — including people at higher positions in CPC itself.

Remember how the "cultural revolution" fiasco led to serious liberalization and eventually to the "economic miracle".

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

#64

Post by robbrit »

lagadu wrote: post #14
ishikawa wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is WSJ I don't even click anymore.

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

In the era of fake news and clickbait, I'm very happy to shell out some coin for quality news. I've found WSJ to be one of the most objective newspapers out there (along with BBC) since they focus on describing what happens, rather than adding in lots of conjecture.

The opinion pieces are another story though (pun intended), I generally try to avoid those.

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

#65

Post by elefanten »

tibaiiplus wrote: post #59

Writer of the article here. Totally get the frustrations with paywalls. Bottom line is feature stories like this take weeks, months, sometimes a year or more to produce. Sites without paywalls have to go for clicks (which are worth close to zero now that Google/Facebook gobble up most online ad budgets). If low value clicks are all you have, you end up like dailymail.co.uk. If you want high value news, you have to pa…

Ha, good line.

Thanks for hopping in to engage here, where paywalls are met with hostility. I appreciate both sides of this argument.

But thanks especially for the reporting!

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

#66

Post by stcredzero »

avocado4 wrote: post #47
bduerst wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

(their value proposition was access to Chinese hospital data)

Whose value proposition to whom?

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

#67

Post by leroy_masochist »

Analemma_ wrote: post #29
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.

Meh...PG writing a blog post entitled "Why YC Is Quitting China" would cause plenty of tsoris in Beijing, and the Chinese certainly know this.

I'd bet that PG/sama have thought about this set of issues, and they probably have their redlines drawn, but are probably also not advertising them, as is strategically prudent.

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

#68

Post by gnome_chomsky »

devy wrote: post #49

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?

You're posting Whataboutisms. It's not all or nothing.

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

#69

Post by thwythwy »

ben_jones wrote: post #44
dcolkitt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

are these public channels?

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

#70

Post by sangnoir »

aclsid wrote: post #50
umeshunni wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Nah, nobody is complaining about Taiwanese or Japanese investment, so that is moot point...

FYI: xenophobia =\= racism

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