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China Makes a Big Play in Silicon Valley
- mogadsheu 8y agoAs a co-founder of a China-focused startup this is fantastic news for me. Finding good partners who you can personally trust has and will continue to be the key to survival when interacting with China.
- loceng 8y agoCan you reference success stories where this is the case, especially in regards to surviving without needing to be part of their system of censorship?
- mogadsheu 8y agoLEGO worked with Kidsland for a few years.
- ridethetiger 8y agoYou are making a grave mistake methinks. Those who sought power by riding the back of the tiger, ended up inside. What I am saying is I don't trust the Chinese government to respect the human rights of my employees,the human rights of my customers, or my property rights. The chinese government is a repressive, totalitarian, arbitrary, capricious, cruel regime; fundamentally incompatible with human dignity and freedom. The foundations of the chinese government are mortared with millions of bodies. you are willing to compromise whatever moral beliefs you have-in exchange for what? for some money? for some prestige? Is it worth it?
- prolikewh0a 8y agoMostly all of the hits you take at China can also be said about the United States business, employer, & employee atmosphere. It's just everyday global unchecked Capitalism. Wait until we see the effects of the new Supreme Court heading into a new Lochner Era. Chomsky points out that going to work in America is akin to walking into a Communist Dictatorship where you lose all of your rights [1]. [1] https://taibbi.substack.com/p/preface-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky-the-fairway https://taibbi.substack.com/p/preface-an-interview-with-noam...
- whatshisface 8y agoWhen was the last time the USG nationalized an industry?
- 8note 8y agoshouldn't it be the last time the oligarchs took over an industry?
- whatshisface 8y agoEven the worst accusations against the US do not go so far as to say that it is less free than China - the proposed oligarchs are plural, but China is now a dictatorship.
- ridethetiger 8y agoCriticizing china does not mean I do not criticize the actions of the United States. nice tu quoque.
- whorleater 8y agowhy is it that any china related topic always springs up weird throwaways dedicated to criticizing China in some form? I get that you want to criticize China, and that's fine, but can you at least have the courage to do it on your main account lol
- linkinpark85 8y agoBecause that's what majority of HN's readers are -> A group of lefties who are in the same narrow mindset, and thought they have higher moral ground than everybody else, and yet doesn't know much beyond their tiny circle
- throwaway5783 8y agoPerhaps because it's well known that China will gladly go to extreme lengths to force the company you work for to fire you, even over something as innocent as liking a tweet. Think your company won't bend over? How about when they DDOS attack all the company's resources? Or force your company's partners to sever ties with said company? You even have to fear you'll be blacklisted from ever visiting China (even if it's a dystopian shithole then it would be shortsighted not to consider the consequences of getting blacklisted), or worse, arrested/kidnapped/sent to a "reeducation camp" after visiting the country.
- dang 8y agoNationalistic flamewar is not welcome on HN. We've banned this account.
- ridethetiger 8y agoI deleted my main account recently-too much time spent on the HN/reddit. I would not currently express beliefs like this on something that could be tied to my meatspace identity. I am an academic in a department with lots of international students and while I am not now prominent-I could become prominent and anyone with both eyes open knows how the chinese government responds to external or internal criticism. I would be in the future be willing to accept that type of attack-but not over an HN comment.
- abstractbeliefs 8y agoSilicon Valley already fails here, with Apple supporting Foxconn's human rights nightmare. Your concerns are valid, but the idea of simply doubling down on Silicon Valley's US companies doesn't ring true. The US has built its empire on the foundations of Chinese manufacturing, and now there's the panic coming because that foundation will enable China to build it's own tech industry that will likely outcompete the USs.
- jjeaff 8y agoChina has the capability to build the hardware, but is that really the future? Apple is one of the only American companies that is still doing well with hardware. Most tech hardware always becomes commoditized and unprofitable. Is there really much hand wringing going on about China building their own stuff? They've been copy catting for decades.
- dang 8y agoWe've banned this account for using HN primarily for political battle. Nationalistic flamewar is particularly not ok here. And boy has it been upticking lately. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dstick 8y agoHere’s an article from a while ago about Chinese business culture: http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/postcard/bro-code http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/postcard/bro-code Have you ever experienced anything of the like? How is beind involved in Chinese startups as a non-native? (I’m assuming based on your post)
- mogadsheu 8y agoMinimal trust of strangers is #1. There can be a lot of drinking baijiu and long parties not talking about business at all.
- wileyminer 8y agoWe need to kick China out of Silicon Valley. China is now US's competitor, as announced by VP pence a few days ago. White house top economist warned US businesses to 'Stay away from China'. China has hacked many US companies such as Apple and Amazon (who cannot deny because they have a big portion of business in China). Not to mention 1.) China is a dictatorship that is harmful to democratic and open market economies worldwide. It has imprisoned millions of muslims, forced muslim women to abortion https://www.rferl.org/a/kazakh-woman-tells-of-forced-abortions-in-china/29527881.html https://www.rferl.org/a/kazakh-woman-tells-of-forced-abortio..., interfered with many other countries politics, and created artifical islands and set up military on those islands. 2.) China has stolen many techs from companies and governments around the world. When companies want to leave China, they are faced with huge taxes, blockade, and unable to extract equipments. 3.) China is very belligerent right now, fearful of its pending economic collapse. (no sane country would ban winnie the pooh, imprison its most famous actress for months, piss of every single country on earth, including other muslim dictatorships) It is raising up an army, and building up nationalism, with possible scenarios of first strike on US, Japan, or Taiwan. It needs military techs since it is way behind in military capabilities.
- linkinpark85 8y agoI'll be glad to see US/Silicon Valley's leadership be destroyed by anybody. The world shall unite against their arrogance
- aboutchina 8y agoI generally agree though it's worth noting that the US also makes it nearly impossible for citizens to leave financially. We're the only country in the world that taxes based on citizenship and not residency. The new tax law implemented by trump's administration, though generally good, makes it nearly impossible to start a business as an American citizen residing in another country. We are prisoners of our country, financially, similarly to Chinese citizens.
- dang 8y agoNationalistic flamewar is not welcome on HN, regardless of which nation you have a problem with. We've banned this account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rmkoek 8y agoMain reason the American government takes its sweet time to selectively choose which startup to help is lack of knowledge by the old cronies in charge. They simple are scared of it due to the lack of understanding and overwhelming desire to maintain status quo. If they are reinsured something is going to be used to benefit commerce, then good. If it's going to be used to allow younger citizens to combine, organise and execute ideas- bad. Simple as that. China sees the idealistic trend of the America youth and wish to embrace it, where old cronies what to stifle it.
- coliveira 8y agoIt is very funny to see the US media complain about behavior that has always been the modus operandi of US around the world as if this was borderline criminal. China is doing whatever they can to advance their industry, in the same way the US does around the world. It is borderline ridiculous to read this kind of news from American media.
- jjeaff 8y agoI don't think it is the same. The US has always been open to outside investment. But we have things happening right now where a large number of major motion pictures coming out are from Chinese owned companies (like Legendary). Notice how the hero is China in so many films now. Chinese citizens are buying up media properties and tech stock at a dizzying pace. Meanwhile, American owned media companies are heavily restricted in what movies can be shown in China and what content those movies can have. There are also restrictions of foreign ownership of Chinese companies. The Trump administration is wasting time taxing trinkets imported from China, when what they should be doing is matching the restrictive laws that China is using to increase their soft power in the US and world.
- ridethetiger 8y agoRegarding the actions of the Trump Administration and trinkets-CIFUS [Committee on Foreign Invesment in the United States] and FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] enforcement are increasingly rather dramatically. I think these improvements are in SPITE of the actions of Donald Trump and his top lieutenants-but they are happening nonetheless. in fact they are probably happening in response to the very actions of Trump/Trump surrogates with Russia! https://www.lawfareblog.com/foreign-investment-risk-review-modernization-act-2018 https://www.lawfareblog.com/foreign-investment-risk-review-m...
- malandrew 8y agoI'm curious which restrictive laws you have in mind that we should copy. The only one I can think of that may be worth mimicking in some form is the majority citizen ownership percentage requirement.
- abstractbeliefs 8y agoSomething like half the comments so far are from newly created accounts that probably aren't going to engage in the discussion honestly. HN should always be open to new users, and the ability to create throwaways is important, but I am a little concerned that these new accounts don't fit either of those moulds - that they are created not by truly new users, nor as alts for people wanting to bring hard truths they're not comfortable with attaching their real identities with, but instead ~something else~.
- ridethetiger 8y agoI take offense at your implication. This is a topic I care deeply about and reading the comments moved me to express my opinions.
- wycs 8y agoThe scope of engineering talent in China is hard to contemplate. Because of the, on average, higher quantitative talent of Hans Chinese over gentile whites and much larger population, China has, on average, at least 10 times the number of people capable of high-level engineering. This is not a false alarm like India. India's talent pool is proving much shallower than people expected - though not to the people politically incorrect enough to keep an eye on PISA scores. This just is not the case with China. Chinese human capital is more plentiful and of higher quality than that of any other country on earth. An additional multiplier is an almost fanatical work culture that is comparable to that of Japan. Combine this with local governments that are as competent as the Bay Area government is incompetent, and there is finally a threat to America's domination of tech. My money is on China, or it would be if it was possible to get exposure. I sort of wonder what the comparative advantage of the west will be when this all shakes out. This old comment from nopinsight goes through the scores: Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills as well as huge population and the hard working and competitive culture of its populace. An objective measure is PISA results [1]. When comparing with even the best performing US state, Massachusetts, China has many more top performers in Math, as a proportion of population [2]. (In 2015 only four provinces of China participated, but their combined population was 230 million vs Massachusetts's 6.8 million. The math result of Shanghai (24 million pop.) alone would show an even larger gap.) Since PISA results are scaled such that OECD country's mean is 500 and standard deviation is 100. China's 531 math score implies country mean at 0.3 SD above PISA mean, and US' math score at 470 implies 0.3 SD below mean. If people capable of doing AI research or proper AI implementation need to have math skills at, say, 2 SD above PISA mean, then there will be a tremendous difference in proportion between two populations with 0.6 SD difference. My back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming above figures, is the difference in proportion will be about five times. But China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in potential numbers of AI-capable natives could be over 20 times. (Since other provinces may drag down China's mean, it could be a bit less. We'll see soon since China as a whole will participate in 2018.)
- lawrenceyan 8y agoAll the smartest people come to America though by and large. The brain drain is real, and I don’t think that will change anytime soon. Why stay in China where you face pollution, a salary depressed job market, and increasing authoritarianism when you can come to the Bay Area and make 10 times the salary you could otherwise? Of course not everyone can make it with the bar set so high, but the people who do end up coming are the ones you really don’t want to be losing.
- vonnik 8y agoI was quoted in this piece, and I think people are interpreting it wrong. I believe the reporter was simply trying to describe the competition between the US and China in the race to develop technology, and the measures both sides are taking. There is indeed a race. In fact, there are many races at once. On some fronts, the US is not moving very fast because of the way the government procures and invests in technology. Simultaneously. China is looking for ways to transfer technology. The CFIUS law limited the ways in which they can do so legally. Both countries are acting in their national interest, but they're starting from different points, which different advantages and disadvantages. While the US is leading in many ways, China is catching up in others. If the US is complacent, or if it takes the wrong measures in over-regulating the tech industry, it will increase the likelihood that it will lose the race(s) and slowly become a secondary power.