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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

#221

Post by unnamedprophet »

PakG1 wrote: post #34
antiviral wrote: post #16

Here is a snippet of the article, which I am posting under the Fair Use Act (I think you should all consider a subscription): "Silicon Valley startup Pilot AI Labs Inc. signed a Chinese-backed venture-capital firm as its first big investor. By last summer, Pilot AI wanted it gone. The U.S. startup hoped to sell more of its artificial-intelligence software to the U.S. government after working with the Pentagon, accord…

That's a horrible example. Of course that's not going to wash. Of course an investor would not be willing to sell back their stake before seeing the return they were looking for. If they wanted to sell AI software to the US GOVERNMENT, they should have found US investors. If they couldn't, then investors from US allied nations. They should have seen this coming a mile away, no?

Agree, you take someone's money you have to give up something in return. It's a quid pro quo. To think that only means a hollow stake in the company without strength to influence the company's direction, culture, ethos, or mission is naive. Let the free market speak - if you want to eliminate Chinese or anyone else's investment, buy back their stake at whatever price they demand.

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

#222

Post by mobilemidget »

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.

You don’t have to watch those? If million+ Chinese like it though what’s the problem?

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

#223

Post by kelnos »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #111
ishikawa wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is WSJ I don't even click anymore.

Subscribing to a few major newspapers is probably not a bad idea. Otherwise we’ll only see the news/ads FANG sees fit to show us. Christian Science Monitor is apparently an overperformer (very modest brand awareness and hence very affordable, but generally respected for its journalism).

The problem for me is always which ones? If I were to dig through my browsing history and plot a frequency/frecency list of news-ish sites I visit, I don't think I'd see a small few dominate the list. I wouldn't mind throwing a couple bucks a month at the sites at or near the top, but I can't justify giving each of them even $5/mo, and certainly not the $10-$30/mo most publications charge for memberships. I just don't get that much value out of each one.

I'm still a big proponent of a micropayments system where my browser can automatically send a single- or double-digit amount of cents to the publisher (with my permission, of course) when I read an article. But I have no expectation of something like that gaining traction.

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

#224

Post by bubmiw »

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…

I have stayed subscribed to the WSJ since you guys broke the theranos story. The non editorial sections are the best in journalism today. NYT political bias has seeped through every article wheras WSJ clearly separates political bias between editorials and news.

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

#225

Post by Theodores »

muricula wrote: post #204
Theodores wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

"The dollars printed to go overseas to buy oil and other stuff don't come back to cause inflation." I think this part is wrong. When overseas oil companies get the dollars they are going to spend them, otherwise they wouldn't sell in the first place. If the economy worked the way you suggest I think we would see inflation from those dollars sent overseas for oil etc.

This article introduces a new term 'structural' for describing the US trade deficit.

Essentially if a country is to have their currency as the world's reserve currency then they have to run at a deficit.

Since all those extra dollars that get printed go overseas they are not in the US economy to cause price inflation, i.e. too much money chasing too few goods.

https://qz.com/1266044/why-does-the-us-run-a-trade-deficit-t...

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

#226

Post by gist »

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.

> In hindsight would have rather closed up shop than taken their money.

Very idealistic and not the way I think at all. What are you going to do? Stop using any product associated with China? Where do you draw the line exactly? And who is to say that all chinese investors are the same anyway? Are you going to vet future investors (from any place) fully to make sure they are clean in every way and their intentions are pure? Or are you simply going to decide after the fact that you did enough when it actually makes no difference at all and you can say 'wow I wish I never did that'.

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

#227

Post by bouncycastle »

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

> keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation

No, they don't want to be a separate nation. It's a more complex situation than that. Taiwan considers itself as the Republic of China, where they consider the government in Beijing to be illegitimate, and reject communist rule.

Note that the rest of the world has also moved on, when we say "China" we also mean the one ruled by the government in Beijing, which makes the whole situation more complex.

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

#228

Post by w1nst0nsm1th »

sampo wrote: post #162
kamfc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shift can influence on easy a admin/mod will ban certain thread and comments if content "diss China". Again, like how the action of Israel is rarely (never) mentioned by politician.

There was a time when r/politics was generally about the US politics. Now it's been almost only "Trump is bad" content for several years.

To be fair Trump doesn't inspire the "freshness" neither the fairness of his POV.

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

#229

Post by tomcam »

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.

Well... they were seed investors, after all.

Apologies, I’ll see myself out.

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

#230

Post by w1nst0nsm1th »

jacquesm wrote: post #107
leroy_masochist wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Now ask them in what year...

I know that. May I answer ? It's 2003... November 9, to be more precise.

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