5 ms·

OP here (no affiliation with YC in anyway), posted the link because was surprised it wasn't already on HN. I first got to know about it on WeChat actually. The

OP here (no affiliation with YC in anyway), posted the link because was surprised it wasn't already on HN. I first got to know about it on WeChat actually. There was an announcement from the official WeChat account of YC China in regard to the split-up (link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/SnSsli_ZGo0yI58YD-ddaw https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/SnSsli_ZGo0yI58YD-ddaw), though the announcement took a much more positive and exciting tone than its English counterpart. The announcement from YC China talked a lot about 本土化 (which is not to be confused with sinicisation （汉化））。 As someone who has moved back to China recently, I noticed that 本土化 is actually a really big thing in China and it basically means localisation on steroid to become more similar to other products/services in China in every aspect (including HR, internal operations, etc). Anyway I'm fascinated by all the comments here, none of which discussed the cultural and sociopolitical differences between that of the west and that of China, which I believe is one of the main factors that have enabled the disintegration between YC and YC China. The Chinese government is one thing. But "the Chinese way" is another thing. And "the Chinese way" actually underlines how the Chinese society works and how the Chinese government functions. To understand "the Chinese way", one has to try to emulate a generalisation of how a Chinese person thinks and acts in this day and age after all these revolutions and wars and pandemonium that have shaped the land and the way people interpret things and interact with one another. Without great knowledge in the modern Chinese history and a good grasp of the contemporary Chinese language and culture (from a none-bias perspective as much as possible), it's extremely difficult to form a proper mental representation of "the Chinese way". The thing is not many Chinese people are aware of this too (since they are already operating under "the Chinese way", emulating it would be like running a meta-circular interpreter - not impossible just highly difficult for an average person). Perhaps this is why people (Chinese and none-Chinese) often resort to understanding China through the lens of the media (i.e. state-sponsored or company-sponsored) and that is akin to looking at a 2d projection of a higher dimension object.

frozenport 7y ago
So what exactly is the Chinese Way other than something Westerners can't grasp?
spectramax 7y ago
> The Chinese government is one thing. But "the Chinese way" is another thing. And "the Chinese way" actually underlines how the Chinese society works and how the Chinese government functions. "The Chinese Way" is a cop out, it points out the cultural differences between the West and China, but that does not change the fundamentals of political ideologies. Fascist and authoritarian regimes, all, justify their actions through the proxy of cultural differences. It is not right to shut down discussion about political climates by reducing it to a non-negotiable argument, i.e. the other party does not understand "The Chinese Way" or they will never know the history of China. There are plenty of non-Chinese historians arounds the world who have studied China deeply, academically and by experience such as expats including myself who have spent significant time in China. We know "The Chinese Way". > The Chinese government is one thing. No, that's the elephant in the room here, don't be so quick to dismiss it. Ask yourself this - "Would I feel threatened to criticize the Chinese government publicly while I am in China?" If the answer is yes, you either A) Took allegiance to the Chinese nationalism B) or afraid to speak out. If it is B, then it is time to move out of China before it is too late.
- archibaldJ 7y ago
  > It dismisses, insults the argument that is pertaining to human rights, freedom of press, justice, freedom of speech, liberty, right to vote - some of the pillars of Democracy. The more fundamental question here is: What if the modernist's definition of democracy which you have just laid out is extremely one-sided and full of grey areas and, when implemented into a society accordingly, would be full of vulnerabilities to be exploited for things the very ideology opposes? > It is not right to shut down discussion about political climates by reducing it to a non-negotiable argument, i.e. the other party does not understand "The Chinese Way" or they will never know the history of China. Firstly, I don't see how reducing an argument into a different form would end up "shutting down discussion". Secondly, this is not a non-negotiable form, actually it opens up more areas for research and there are many questions to be asked and answered such as "how does metamodernism manifest itself as we see a ~800% increase in middle class in China between 2000 and 2018"? Also, read about the history of China so you can be more informed before discussing about China? I don't understand what do you mean by "they will never know the history of China". > There are plenty of non-Chinese historians arounds the world who have studied China deeply, academically and by experience such as expats. Exactly. So go read some books about the history of China. Or read a paper, say, about postmodernism in China. It really helps to put things in a different perspective. The thing is that nowadays comments on HN have certainly diluted. > No, that's the elephant in the room here, don't be so quick to dismiss it. Ask yourself this - "Would I feel threatened to criticize the Chinese government publicly while I am in China?" If the answer is yes, you either A) Took allegiance to the Chinese nationalism B) or afraid to speak out. If it is B, then it is time to move out of China before it is too late. When you put people into two polar categories you are basically radicalising them just like on any other social media. The problem here is that "speaking out" doesn't change a damn thing. And it never will. Not in China. Not in the States. If you want to improve the system you first understand how the system works, then work hard and do things that will improve the system. When "speaking out" works that is merely an indication that the system has evolved and changed over the years. When LaToya Jackson spoke out in the 90s did it work? No, and that's because "the system" was still fucked. Criticising is only useful when it actually influences something. Otherwise you are just playing the devil's advocate in a Nash equilibrium that is not in favour of your proposition. And then there is the question: what is the proposition really? Can it be fine-tuned to satisfy the people's needs without shaking up too much the status quote, the legacy code? Ultimately I believe it is about improving people's lives. And it's a constraint satisfaction problem.
unityByFreedom 7y ago
> Anyway I'm fascinated by all the comments here, none of which discussed the cultural and sociopolitical differences between that of the west and that of China To be fair, you don't describe any particular difference yourself in the following paragraph. You say these cultural differences can't be defined and simultaneously expect us to discuss them.¿ The fact is, there are plenty of businesses who have successfully navigated the cultural and political waters of China-Western relations. Maybe it's not the right time for YC - that's fine. I think we all understand that dealings between the West and China are complicated, to say the least, by cultural, language, and historic differences. That is why we look to the best of us to reach across these differences and make deals so that we can all prosper rather than be left behind as the rest of the world moves on.
- archibaldJ 7y ago
  It is possible. Just extremely hard. And I will love to write a book about it after I have gone through a good amount of papers on cultural theories and had a good amount of interaction with Chinese of all walks of life so to have a better grasp of "the Chinese way" and somehow utilise the very knowledge of it in my new start-up to make Vsauce-inspired Chinese videos on liberal arts, philosophy, science and tech for Chinese audience (and hopefully go viral) and build a "quality content marketplace" where people in China get to directly connect with local and oversea creatives and they can sponsor these creatives to make explanatory videos on things, etc. The business model would have to follow "the Chinese way" and I'll need to conduct more experiments.
  - unityByFreedom 7y ago
    This does not do much to clarify. Which person in Chinese history has had the most influence on your perspective of the "Chinese way"?
    - archibaldJ 7y ago
      That is an interesting question, unfortunately I would say probably no one. "The Chinese way" that I'm talking about here is a contemporary phenomenon that has enabled the Chinese economy to thrive in the last 30 years, which is what makes it more interesting economically speaking than, say, "the Russian way". Basically it is about how the 1.3-billion-people system works and evolves to be more efficient over the years, macro-economically as much as micro-economically. And this is where culture theories come in. Ultimately, it is cultures that govern how people act and think in groups. Cultures towards interpersonal relationships, work-life balance, technology, infrastructure, human right, cynicism, dignity or 面子, how to navigate in grey area, irony and sarcasm, criticism, hierarchy, what roles authority play, how to game the system, etc. Of course, there are also the social-political aspects that arise from it, etc. Recently I stumbled upon a Zhihu post (Zhihu is basically Quora in China) discussing about Vox: "What do you think about the Youtube channel Vox" (https://www.zhihu.com/question/314185948 https://www.zhihu.com/question/314185948) filled with opinions accusing Vox of slandering (抹黑）China in a malevolent (恶意）manner. And the accusations regarding the biasness of Vox were in no way unbiased themselves, commingled with comments on how bad the content quality of all Vox's videos are. If you think this is just pure propaganda or some sort of communist bot commentary then you are taking the simpler path out of this, and people in China would probably find it to be disrespectful. These Chinese comments reflect the general view of people in China who are exposed to Western media that would otherwise be censored without the use of VPN. These people support the government by their hearts and they believe in the government and the surrounding ideologies. There is a somewhat modernist honesty in it. This is why people actually get agitated when the government is being criticised in ways they condemn as "pure slandering". You may be tempted to call out bigotry and label these people as having been brainwashed but from their point of view the same label and description can be applied to people in the West. And epistemologically what is brainwash but just another Freudian invention from the time of bigotry? And what is bigotry really but closed-mindedness? My point is that this is a very complex social-political situation of the 21st century. And some aspects of it certainly have direct impact on consumer behaviours - we have seen that with the boycotting of Dolce & Gabbana. And some aspects of it influence business processes too, and what it means to be professional, and how politics plays or not plays out in a working environment, etc. There are just a lot more to it than what you see on the surface. I have denoted the central mechanism to be cultural but in many ways it is behavioural and psychological as much as linguistic and philosophical. And out of all these the most fascinating is that - let it be a bubble or not - the Chinese economy has been doing extremely well over the past few decades with crazy growth rate and my prediction is that they would continue to do well in the next many decades or so until some sort of a Nash equilibrium is reached. Not only would "the Chinese way" continue to work, it would be more and more relevant in the future, especially to people in the West that will increasingly be affected by it as the world gets ever more interconnected. By understanding more about "the Chinese way", and by having a better appreciation for it, people in both the East and the West would have a much more accurate view of how not just China but the world works. As much as "the Chinese way" is about China it is also about pragmatism and a deviation from Western ideologies.
spangry 7y ago
Genuinely curious, what is "the Chinese way"?
- indemnity 7y ago
  An ineffable, inexplicable thing, bound up in the mystery of 5000+ years of culture, that you can only understand if you are Han Chinese, as they are above the rest of us humans.
  - paganel 7y ago
    It's funny cause any specific "Chinese way" that might have existed during these thousands of years was inherently crushed in the second half of the 19th century. I mean, the party that runs the whole thing is the "cultural" creation of some European idealists who lived in the 19th century (from Saint-Simon and Fourier going to Marx and Engels). Not to mention that the Taiping Rebellion, which was to blame for the death of 10 to 20 million people, was the result of a Chinese farmer who thought of himself as Jesus Christ, partly as the result of interacting with an American baptist priest [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issachar_Jacox_Roberts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issachar_Jacox_Roberts
    - pas 7y ago
      That's exactly the point people are trying to make, just not so eloquently! (So in that sense I could say "woosh", because the parent comment sarcastically pointed out that the only valid way to understand it - as claimed by the CCP - happens to be only available to them, yet analytically it's just as easily deconstructed as any other totalitarian state, and not even completely new brand at that, because it's still very recognizably follows the "revolutionist" doctrine.) However, at the same time people rightly point out that sure, it's totalitarian and rooted in socialism and whatever it was around in the 1920s, but it's full of Chinese characteristics. And ... somehow this makes it very indecipherable, and a-okay, and not a big human rights crisis. :|
addictedcs 7y ago
It's the same narrative all over again. When no strong arguments are present to defend a viewpoint, the topic suddenly becomes a "cultural" thing. Sounding smart and mysterious. In Russia, it's "the Russian way", in China it is "the Chinese way" etc. It's just BS.
- archibaldJ 7y ago
  What you have just said is very postmodern and the meta-narrative (or meta-sentiment) could be applied to virtually anything. I was merely trying to shift the focus of the heated discussion here as things were getting homogenous and reddit-like.
  - kristjankalm 7y ago
    so a specific example then -- in your opinion is putting ca one million Uighurs and Kazakhs into internment camps compatible with the 'Chinese way'?
  - addictedcs 7y ago
    I was born in the USSR and it also had it's "own way". And it didn't resist even 70 years. The elephants in the room mentioned by others in the comments are all "meta" things at the highest level of human cognition: basic human rights, freedom of expression, religion, overall civil liberties are all above any "<insert nation> ways". Cultural differences are just irrelevant here.
  - pas 7y ago
    Huh. Claiming that there are no valid outer narrative is postmodern.
    - archibaldJ 7y ago
      That is the central problem of the postmodern. It is a framework that inevitably dismisses itself when you go enough meta-level up.
      - 7y ago

frozenport 7y ago

So what exactly is the Chinese Way other than something Westerners can't grasp?

spectramax 7y ago

> The Chinese government is one thing. But "the Chinese way" is another thing. And "the Chinese way" actually underlines how the Chinese society works and how the Chinese government functions. "The Chinese Way" is a cop out, it points out the cultural differences between the West and China, but that does not change the fundamentals of political ideologies. Fascist and authoritarian regimes, all, justify their actions through the proxy of cultural differences. It is not right to shut down discussion about political climates by reducing it to a non-negotiable argument, i.e. the other party does not understand "The Chinese Way" or they will never know the history of China. There are plenty of non-Chinese historians arounds the world who have studied China deeply, academically and by experience such as expats including myself who have spent significant time in China. We know "The Chinese Way". > The Chinese government is one thing. No, that's the elephant in the room here, don't be so quick to dismiss it. Ask yourself this - "Would I feel threatened to criticize the Chinese government publicly while I am in China?" If the answer is yes, you either A) Took allegiance to the Chinese nationalism B) or afraid to speak out. If it is B, then it is time to move out of China before it is too late.

archibaldJ 7y ago
> It dismisses, insults the argument that is pertaining to human rights, freedom of press, justice, freedom of speech, liberty, right to vote - some of the pillars of Democracy. The more fundamental question here is: What if the modernist's definition of democracy which you have just laid out is extremely one-sided and full of grey areas and, when implemented into a society accordingly, would be full of vulnerabilities to be exploited for things the very ideology opposes? > It is not right to shut down discussion about political climates by reducing it to a non-negotiable argument, i.e. the other party does not understand "The Chinese Way" or they will never know the history of China. Firstly, I don't see how reducing an argument into a different form would end up "shutting down discussion". Secondly, this is not a non-negotiable form, actually it opens up more areas for research and there are many questions to be asked and answered such as "how does metamodernism manifest itself as we see a ~800% increase in middle class in China between 2000 and 2018"? Also, read about the history of China so you can be more informed before discussing about China? I don't understand what do you mean by "they will never know the history of China". > There are plenty of non-Chinese historians arounds the world who have studied China deeply, academically and by experience such as expats. Exactly. So go read some books about the history of China. Or read a paper, say, about postmodernism in China. It really helps to put things in a different perspective. The thing is that nowadays comments on HN have certainly diluted. > No, that's the elephant in the room here, don't be so quick to dismiss it. Ask yourself this - "Would I feel threatened to criticize the Chinese government publicly while I am in China?" If the answer is yes, you either A) Took allegiance to the Chinese nationalism B) or afraid to speak out. If it is B, then it is time to move out of China before it is too late. When you put people into two polar categories you are basically radicalising them just like on any other social media. The problem here is that "speaking out" doesn't change a damn thing. And it never will. Not in China. Not in the States. If you want to improve the system you first understand how the system works, then work hard and do things that will improve the system. When "speaking out" works that is merely an indication that the system has evolved and changed over the years. When LaToya Jackson spoke out in the 90s did it work? No, and that's because "the system" was still fucked. Criticising is only useful when it actually influences something. Otherwise you are just playing the devil's advocate in a Nash equilibrium that is not in favour of your proposition. And then there is the question: what is the proposition really? Can it be fine-tuned to satisfy the people's needs without shaking up too much the status quote, the legacy code? Ultimately I believe it is about improving people's lives. And it's a constraint satisfaction problem.

unityByFreedom 7y ago

> Anyway I'm fascinated by all the comments here, none of which discussed the cultural and sociopolitical differences between that of the west and that of China To be fair, you don't describe any particular difference yourself in the following paragraph. You say these cultural differences can't be defined and simultaneously expect us to discuss them.¿ The fact is, there are plenty of businesses who have successfully navigated the cultural and political waters of China-Western relations. Maybe it's not the right time for YC - that's fine. I think we all understand that dealings between the West and China are complicated, to say the least, by cultural, language, and historic differences. That is why we look to the best of us to reach across these differences and make deals so that we can all prosper rather than be left behind as the rest of the world moves on.

archibaldJ 7y ago
It is possible. Just extremely hard. And I will love to write a book about it after I have gone through a good amount of papers on cultural theories and had a good amount of interaction with Chinese of all walks of life so to have a better grasp of "the Chinese way" and somehow utilise the very knowledge of it in my new start-up to make Vsauce-inspired Chinese videos on liberal arts, philosophy, science and tech for Chinese audience (and hopefully go viral) and build a "quality content marketplace" where people in China get to directly connect with local and oversea creatives and they can sponsor these creatives to make explanatory videos on things, etc. The business model would have to follow "the Chinese way" and I'll need to conduct more experiments.
- unityByFreedom 7y ago
  This does not do much to clarify. Which person in Chinese history has had the most influence on your perspective of the "Chinese way"?
  - archibaldJ 7y ago
    That is an interesting question, unfortunately I would say probably no one. "The Chinese way" that I'm talking about here is a contemporary phenomenon that has enabled the Chinese economy to thrive in the last 30 years, which is what makes it more interesting economically speaking than, say, "the Russian way". Basically it is about how the 1.3-billion-people system works and evolves to be more efficient over the years, macro-economically as much as micro-economically. And this is where culture theories come in. Ultimately, it is cultures that govern how people act and think in groups. Cultures towards interpersonal relationships, work-life balance, technology, infrastructure, human right, cynicism, dignity or 面子, how to navigate in grey area, irony and sarcasm, criticism, hierarchy, what roles authority play, how to game the system, etc. Of course, there are also the social-political aspects that arise from it, etc. Recently I stumbled upon a Zhihu post (Zhihu is basically Quora in China) discussing about Vox: "What do you think about the Youtube channel Vox" (https://www.zhihu.com/question/314185948 https://www.zhihu.com/question/314185948) filled with opinions accusing Vox of slandering (抹黑）China in a malevolent (恶意）manner. And the accusations regarding the biasness of Vox were in no way unbiased themselves, commingled with comments on how bad the content quality of all Vox's videos are. If you think this is just pure propaganda or some sort of communist bot commentary then you are taking the simpler path out of this, and people in China would probably find it to be disrespectful. These Chinese comments reflect the general view of people in China who are exposed to Western media that would otherwise be censored without the use of VPN. These people support the government by their hearts and they believe in the government and the surrounding ideologies. There is a somewhat modernist honesty in it. This is why people actually get agitated when the government is being criticised in ways they condemn as "pure slandering". You may be tempted to call out bigotry and label these people as having been brainwashed but from their point of view the same label and description can be applied to people in the West. And epistemologically what is brainwash but just another Freudian invention from the time of bigotry? And what is bigotry really but closed-mindedness? My point is that this is a very complex social-political situation of the 21st century. And some aspects of it certainly have direct impact on consumer behaviours - we have seen that with the boycotting of Dolce & Gabbana. And some aspects of it influence business processes too, and what it means to be professional, and how politics plays or not plays out in a working environment, etc. There are just a lot more to it than what you see on the surface. I have denoted the central mechanism to be cultural but in many ways it is behavioural and psychological as much as linguistic and philosophical. And out of all these the most fascinating is that - let it be a bubble or not - the Chinese economy has been doing extremely well over the past few decades with crazy growth rate and my prediction is that they would continue to do well in the next many decades or so until some sort of a Nash equilibrium is reached. Not only would "the Chinese way" continue to work, it would be more and more relevant in the future, especially to people in the West that will increasingly be affected by it as the world gets ever more interconnected. By understanding more about "the Chinese way", and by having a better appreciation for it, people in both the East and the West would have a much more accurate view of how not just China but the world works. As much as "the Chinese way" is about China it is also about pragmatism and a deviation from Western ideologies.

spangry 7y ago

Genuinely curious, what is "the Chinese way"?

indemnity 7y ago
An ineffable, inexplicable thing, bound up in the mystery of 5000+ years of culture, that you can only understand if you are Han Chinese, as they are above the rest of us humans.
- paganel 7y ago
  It's funny cause any specific "Chinese way" that might have existed during these thousands of years was inherently crushed in the second half of the 19th century. I mean, the party that runs the whole thing is the "cultural" creation of some European idealists who lived in the 19th century (from Saint-Simon and Fourier going to Marx and Engels). Not to mention that the Taiping Rebellion, which was to blame for the death of 10 to 20 million people, was the result of a Chinese farmer who thought of himself as Jesus Christ, partly as the result of interacting with an American baptist priest [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issachar_Jacox_Roberts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issachar_Jacox_Roberts
  - pas 7y ago
    That's exactly the point people are trying to make, just not so eloquently! (So in that sense I could say "woosh", because the parent comment sarcastically pointed out that the only valid way to understand it - as claimed by the CCP - happens to be only available to them, yet analytically it's just as easily deconstructed as any other totalitarian state, and not even completely new brand at that, because it's still very recognizably follows the "revolutionist" doctrine.) However, at the same time people rightly point out that sure, it's totalitarian and rooted in socialism and whatever it was around in the 1920s, but it's full of Chinese characteristics. And ... somehow this makes it very indecipherable, and a-okay, and not a big human rights crisis. :|

addictedcs 7y ago

It's the same narrative all over again. When no strong arguments are present to defend a viewpoint, the topic suddenly becomes a "cultural" thing. Sounding smart and mysterious. In Russia, it's "the Russian way", in China it is "the Chinese way" etc. It's just BS.

archibaldJ 7y ago
What you have just said is very postmodern and the meta-narrative (or meta-sentiment) could be applied to virtually anything. I was merely trying to shift the focus of the heated discussion here as things were getting homogenous and reddit-like.
- kristjankalm 7y ago
  so a specific example then -- in your opinion is putting ca one million Uighurs and Kazakhs into internment camps compatible with the 'Chinese way'?
- addictedcs 7y ago
  I was born in the USSR and it also had it's "own way". And it didn't resist even 70 years. The elephants in the room mentioned by others in the comments are all "meta" things at the highest level of human cognition: basic human rights, freedom of expression, religion, overall civil liberties are all above any "<insert nation> ways". Cultural differences are just irrelevant here.
- pas 7y ago
  Huh. Claiming that there are no valid outer narrative is postmodern.
  - archibaldJ 7y ago
    That is the central problem of the postmodern. It is a framework that inevitably dismisses itself when you go enough meta-level up.
    - 7y ago