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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

#121

Post by entropea »

robbrit wrote: post #64
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.

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.

Most larger mainstream news with political objectives can also be defined as fake news with a major political bias due to the profits they need to create to stay afloat. Business comes before accuracy in reporting. WSJ and BBC are probably great & accurate for stories about plants and polar bears, but anything of any major significance will be extremely biased in the favor of profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

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

#122

Post by Theodores »

julienfr112 wrote: post #95

Don't they use the dollars they receive to finance the negative US balance of trade ? Is the dollar toxic ?

When you have a global currency that all other currencies are measured in and all oil is bought in, what happens to a country that has economic surpluses? They have to buy dollars.

What happens if countries want to buy dollars? The U.S. government (well, the Fed) has to print them. If you look at the balance of trade and look at the dollar as a printed thing, the US is very good at getting the rest of the world to buy their dollars (that can be just printed or magically made on a computer screen) and getting real stuff in return. I wish I could print money and get boxes of nice shiny iphones, shoes and other trinkets.

I think this is a pretty successful exploitation model. The dollars printed to go overseas to buy oil and other stuff don't come back to cause inflation. Apart from anything else, if another country decides to dump its dollars then if that did cause inflation in the US then that would devalue their remaining holding.

Meanwhile the US can spend as much as it wants on gunboats and the like to enforce this hegemony.

If you benefit from this system, i.e. by being an American, then the dollar is far from toxic. If you are a farmer in a developing nation trying to sell wheat then your view of the dollar may be different.

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

#123

Post by entropea »

mooseburger wrote: post #87
kmlx wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“does not mean it is ethical to do business with China.” what kind of business?

If it's up to me, doing any business that aids the Chinese government is unethical.

Why though? You could just make a bunch of whataboutism's that prove the USA has the very same horrors that China does in its own economy. Why the double standard? As someone pointed out above, this seems like xenophobia and not much else. They don't pose a war threat and any war would be initiated by USA.

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

#124

Post by majia »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #96

Anecdata time: In 2012 Canada allowed the sale of Nexen (an oil company) to CNOOC. CNOOC management promised they would keep the staff in Canada, the management local etc. Fast forward 7 years later and it's a ghost town, they cite "business need" but somehow all the jobs have moved abroad and the only thing remaining in Alberta is a resource pump sending all the value abroad. This comment is not intended to be about…

7 years is really a long time and there is likely to be some real needs to adjust business operation. If the deal doesn’t specify a duration to keep jobs in canada, you can’t reasonably expect it to be forever.

CCP has done horrible things, but it isn’t really a CCP specific behavior; any greedy capitalist would have done the same.

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

GordonS wrote: post #109
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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by PhasmaFelis »

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.

I don't even know which "Journal" you're talking about.

Paul Graham is not as well-known or influential as you think.

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

#127

Post by lenzm »

entropea wrote: post #104

Could somebody explain to me the vicious American hate for China from a totally uninformed viewpoint? Any links to read why I should also dislike China?

From a very broad moral perspective, their human rights violations are legion[1] including large open air internment camps for ethnic/religious minorities like the Uyghur[2], political imprisonment[3], alleged organ harvesting of prisoners[4], supporting North Korea ...

From a purely tech perspective, state-sponsored hacking[5] and IP theft[6] are common.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps

[3] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/china...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...

[5] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/state-hacking-1220201...

[6] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...

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

#128

Post by rhcom2 »

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.

I think the Red Dawn example reflects more on the power of the Chinese box office than any financing concerns. It's just too big to ignore.

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

#129

Post by inflatableDodo »

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.

I'd say that from the outside it looks much the same as it always did, just with jingoism added for China as well as the US.

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

#130

Post by entropea »

jorblumesea wrote: post #117
entropea wrote: post #104

Could somebody explain to me the vicious American hate for China from a totally uninformed viewpoint? Any links to read why I should also dislike China?

I don't think being suspicious of a country that has its citizens in literal concentration camps is "vicious hate". It's not a bad thing to turn a critical eye towards authoritarian states and questions their money and motives. Likewise, people should be critical of the US and its role in human rights violations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps https://www.france24.com/en/20190510-reporters-…

USA has 2.3 million incarcerated and prison slavery is legal under the 13th amendment, a lot incarcerated based on race and for very small crimes. A lot of those prisons also have very rough conditions and prisoners are exposed to violent and inhumane treatment. This is extremely unethical. Why is this any different? Companies send their work to these prisons for literal slave labor and I never see anyone up in arms about it. Not many seem to be critical of their own government, but love judging other governments.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html

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