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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

#241

Post by ggggtez »

jeremyjh wrote: post #51
PakG1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

July 2016? Are you sure? If I was a US company, I'd certainly be cautious of overseas investment from China. Everyone knows they don't respect IP or Copyright laws, steal technology, and more. You would want to very carefully weigh the risks before doing business with a non-democratic nation, even outside of this administration's policies. Anyone planning on doing business with the US Government would be very aware that China is not an ally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...

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

#242

Post by nostrademons »

mfatica wrote: post #240
nostrademons wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of IP rights doesn't really exist in Chinese business culture. Your source code or any other proprietary technology is fair game. I know startup founders that have raised Chinese money and not regretted it, but it's important that it be "dumb money", i.e. they give you cash and go away while you write an occasional investor update and grow the business. Active Chinese investors (i.e. anything where you gi…

> You want to be in a position where if your investors ask you for something you can just ignore them. What reasonable investor would put themselves in that position? They're just going to give their money away and not have any say in what happens?

Ones who expect that the company in question is going to do well regardless of what they do and trust management to make good decisions on their behalf.

This is the same position that every retail investor, every LP of a venture or hedge fund, every shareholder of a company where the founder controls a majority of voting stock, and every person with a pension or 401(k) puts themselves into. You could argue about whether that's a stupid thing to do, but it's the vast majority of shareholders within the world, so stupid or not, lots of people do take that bargain.

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

#244

Post by tlear »

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…

WSJ is one of the very few news outlets that are worth reading now. Keep up good work. I am glad to pay subscription

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

#245

Post by KorematsuFred »

dang wrote: post #209
KorematsuFred wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally second that. Saudi arabia has been pumping money in India to radicalize muslims with active encouragement from USA. Attempts to stop this fund has always invoked American ire. India's strategic efforts to buy Oil from Iran instead of Barbaria have been hurt by United States. Without american help Saudi Barbaria would be a wasteland. America not just tolerate Barbaria but every actively helps them on internati…

Would you please stop posting political battle-style comments to HN? Also, this Barbaria thing is flamebait; please don't do that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Another Saudi Shill spotted !

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

#246

Post by maerF0x0 »

majia wrote: post #124
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.

> you can’t reasonably expect it to be forever

Why not? The resource is still coming from Canada, they still need these employees. They're just shifting the jobs to China.

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

#247

Post by corysama »

thih9 wrote: post #145
sorenn111 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find jokes are rare on HN, but I'll always upvote one that makes me chuckle

I think people here avoid puns and offtopic humor on purpose, so that it doesn’t distract from the discussion. I like this aspect of HN.

That is a big part of what has helped HN last so long without following Reddit down the path of becoming a cacophony of puns, memes and references.

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

#248

Post by mtrovo »

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.

And on the other side you have Occupied, a really good TV series where Norway stops to produce oil and the Russians starts an invasion of them with support from the EU. When I think about a country invading another for oil, there's always a name that comes to my mind, and it's not the one that appears on the series.

The reason is not that much about nationalism or soft-power. Filmmakers want to make money, and when you have a big enough consumer market filmmakers avoid controversial topics to get a chance to capture it.

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

#249

Post by sonnyblarney »

ETHisso2017 wrote: post #161

It's interesting: Chinese cash is welcome in real estate and the US treasury market. What is it about startups that makes the government concerned?

Real estate and Treasuries don't come with any real kind of leverage in other areas.

Equity has power and influence over companies.

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

#250

Post by ethbro »

SkyBelow wrote: post #211
ethbro wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I suspect there's a secret cabal of mole-men (and -women) who are selecting presidential candidates for the Democratic primaries. Are either of these claims falsifiable?

Yes, their claim can be easily falsified by a full investigation.

A full investigation by whom? They've broken no laws. Voluntary? Ha.

I realize what the parent was attempting to say, but internet rumormongering is poor form.

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