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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

#101

Post by solidsnack9000 »

elefanten wrote: post #58
jeremyjh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our relationship with China looked a lot different in July, 2016 when they took that investment.

Ehhh.. no, not really. Not to anyone watching China beyond what appears in the mainstream headlines. Things have been on a strong downtrend since 2012 and alarms have been ringing loud since around 2014. Edit: Anyone writing a business plan including sensitive technology sales to the US government should DEFINITELY have seen this coming in 2016. Edit2: Also, candidate Trump had loudly been yelling about China for ove…

Seems like many of those who provide services to the government are familiar with the Berry Amendment and the implications of the “qualifying countries” list.

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

#102

Post by stcredzero »

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…

“If you’re not a 10 in the U.S., you’re not a 10 in China,” officials say they’ve told the executives.

Not true. If you're a 5 in the US, you're not a 10 in China. However, being Asian might well cost you a point or two in the US, depending on whom you ask. There are some weird cultural things going on in the US, in particular, manifesting as biases. I was raised in a place where we literally had to drive almost 50 miles to visit other Asian friends of the family. I have some perspective on this matter. Up until around 2011, it was not hard to find online assertions that Asian men were fundamentally less masculine and desirable, and it's still not impossible today.

Decades ago, I'd been called a "hottie." Strangely, the reactions I've gotten from women have varied tremendously -- more than makes sense to me. My conclusion after all these years, is that it had more to do with them than with myself.

My wife is from Fujian province in China. She has 4 degrees, including a PhD from Stanford. She used to perform Salsa dance. There's a video of her dancing in a gold sequined outfit looking like a starlet from the 60's. (Not public and which I'm not going to post, thank you.) She used to date millionaires, before I somehow snagged her. I've talked to her about these issues of bias, and my conclusion from those talks, is that, yes, there's some weird, pervasive "filter" in US culture, with regards to Asian men.

(I think it's in the same category of phenomena as the "Shiksa" attraction.)

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

#103

Post by educationdata »

fmajid wrote: post #84
nine_k wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Chinese growth was slowing anyway. Now they have a convenient scapegoat for that, big bad America. The long-term consequences of deep hostility against America in the general Chinese population are hard to predict, but they are not going to be favorable to us.

The anti-American rhetoric has always been there, no matter what. The Communist party can even blame the tiananmen square massacre on the western world. This is called brainwash.

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

#105

Post by [deleted] »

stcredzero wrote: post #66
avocado4 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#106

Post by Rapzid »

elefanten wrote: post #42
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 inocula…

The EU is acting after what has come to light in New Zealand, Australia, and Africa. Unfortunately it appears they are acting separately because we are such great friends these days /s .

A lot of people only familiar with the surface link this to the trade war and Huawei, but those are largely reactions to the scope and reach of China's propaganda, control, and soft-power efforts that have been coming to light over the past few years.

Ultimately I believe these are all symptoms caused by a fundamental incompatibility between China's "communist", fascist government and the liberal democracies of the world. Unless that can be reconciled, which I don't believe it really can, everything else is just managing for time.

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

#107

Post by jacquesm »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #89
jacquesm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PG writing a blog post entitled "Why YC Is Quitting China" would cause plenty of tsoris in Beijing, and the Chinese certainly know this. Absolutely nobody but a very select few people would care. YC is not even on the radar of lots of tech start-ups or their founders, the world is a lot larger than what you might think from hanging out here. And that's with full knowledge of the sea change that YC has brought for f…

> Absolutely nobody but a very select few people would care. Are you kidding me, it would be on the front page of the Journal. People would care after that.

The typical news cycle lasts about 48 hours. People have no problem remembering what 9/11 was all about because it was the top item for over a year. Now ask them in what year it was and see if you get the right answer.

If YC has to stop doing business in China, it will be a very momentary blip and China will most definitely not change course because of a PG blogpost.

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

#108

Post by rhacker »

I doubt it. During the Khashoggi thing it turned a few heads but most businesses just stayed quiet for the few months it was a thing. Now biz as usual. I would expect that the same is happening for China money. Hush hush until we get out of the cloud.

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

#109

Post by GordonS »

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.

Brit here. Reviewing source code before a purchase is pretty normal.

I've personally done this for multiple companies that the enterprise I work for has purchased.

In all cases it was a 1-day review, while supervised by someone from the company being purchased.

It seems perfectly reasonable to get an idea of the state of what you are planning to purchase.

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

#110

Post by [deleted] »

fmajid wrote: post #78

I'd be more concerned about Chinese financing of Hollywood. Nearly every big-budget production these days has Chinese co-producers. This leads to farcical episodes like the remake of Red Dawn featuring feeble North Korea as the villain rather than China as originally envisioned.

[deleted]
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