Chinese Companies Are Buying Up Cash-Strapped U.S. Colleges
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I think that sentence provides some insight into the deal. As China becomes wealthier, their aspirations will be elevated as well. There's a lucrative opportunity here where the prestige of an American institution can be used to attract family who have the means and aspirations for their children to be acquainted with cultures and arts other than the ones they are born into.
It's kind of funny to hear people complain about a former steel company taking an interest in music education given the prestige that Carnegie Hall holds in American culture.
The only ones who can attend art school anymore are kids coming from very wealthy backgrounds.
> Westminster’s odd couple may not be such a mismatch, given Xu’s background as a choral singer at Peking University. In the early 1980s, his high-school music teacher in Beijing took students to performances of operas “Carmen” and “Madama Butterfly,” and the ballet “Swan Lake,” he said.
At the very least the buyer does appreciate the art involved.
Reminds me a little bit of when Jim Beam, and all of its associated brands, was purchased by Suntory, from a long line of face- and soul-less international holding conglomerates.
Suntory is a family-owned company that has the distinction of being the first distiller of whiskey in Japan over a hundred years ago.
A few people whined and moaned, but I suspect that most bourbon drinkers are happy to see a major distillery back in the hands of people that care about whiskey.
First, that's quite racist.
Have they ever questioned what do the US analogous of "longtime makers of steel spans" and ex-robber barons that have been their patrons, and which have dedicated buildings and schools and auditoriums named after them, know about elite schools?
Vanderbilt, for one, was a poorly educated steamboat and railroad tycoon.
Carnegie Hall wasn't built by the Carnegie Steel Company was it? It seems totally reasonable to separate the aspirations/interests of the owner of a company with the company that he used to make the money.
"After spinning off the steel business and adding schools, it changed Jiangsu Zhongtai’s name to Beijing Kaiwen in January."
They got rid of their steel business, went into education, and change its name to reflect that.
Thanks, Bush 43, for your legacy in this when you "reformed" the bankruptcy laws to make it impossible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. That set educational institutions free to raise their rates to ludicrous levels: it took away the incentive for student lenders to push back.
It took away lenders' incentive to say such things as "$126,000 is too much debt for a special education teacher. She'll never be able to pay it back. We won't lend it to her to give it to you. Reduce your tuition, and cut your administrative overhead."
Institutions with some cachet, like Westminster, will get rescued. Others will just collapse.
This bursting bubble is going to hurt.
It may produce some desired affect in the short term, but in time creates a massive liability for everyone, not just those who took out the debt.
And a %5 tax increase sounds like a pretty good deal. For most people it's going to be $25-$50k total, and you have no bill due when your unemployed.
If I could just cut out student loan payments the money would go towards paying down any outstanding debt or towards buying a house/condo which would help me not need support in retirement. The tax advantaged retirement funds are nice but many people with student loan debt it's like telling them they have won't have to pay taxes on any yachts they buy. Technically nice, but practically useless
Also, many (most?) student debts are less than $25k, and unpayable huge debts should never have been approved in the first place. The latter clause is the whole point of this anyway.
Why don't we just do that for everyone, and make higher education free. This works for the absolute majority of students. Provide an opt-out for the few that can pony up the cash up front.
One of the reasons I'm happy to be European. Education is free in most countries. It makes no sense to burden young people with a load of debt when starting out.
According to https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75, in the 2014–2015 school year U.S. colleges & universities spent $536 billion; the 2014 defense budget was $526.6 billion[0]. We could spend our entire defense budget and still not cover our higher education bill.
[0] http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudge...
I'm not sure this is the best number to use. This is what is currently spent, it is not how much we would need to provide a free higher level education option. The entire department of education budget is 70 billion [0]. Using Pennsylvania as a baseline, they have approximately 185 million planned for public education[1]. Let's round that to 200mil and multiply it by 50. This gives us a ballpark spending of 100 billion at the state level. So let's approximate 170 billion spent on K-12 and higher education last year.
We were able to fund our entire K-12 system and give money to public universities for under half that 536 billion figure. So yes, we may not be able to cover our current higher education bill with the defense budget. However, what we are currently doing is not the best or cheapest system. Someone could definitely come up with a free higher education proposal for half of that 536 billion figure. The system needs reformed badly. Everyone knows the costs of higher education are out of control. Using it as the baseline isn't fair IMO.
[0] https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/index.html [1] https://www.governor.pa.gov/governor-wolf-reaffirm-commitmen...
Europe can afford free education because it isn’t American-style education.
That's something that a large percentage of people do anyway. What a strange and poorly-thought-out suggestion.
What good could possibly come from intentionally banning someone from saving for retirement?
I guess that system is possible because all loans are provided by the Student Loans Company which is ran by the government - and tuition is capped at 10k/year, so it doesn't matter what or where you study - the cost is exactly the same.
Also worth noting that loans can still be sold off by the SLC (though remain managed by the SLC, so probably makes little if any difference to the individual), and government ownership hasn't completely stopped the use of questionable tactics (e.g. debt collection letters purporting to be from "Smith Lawson & Company").
>The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program forgives the remaining balance on your Direct Loans after you have made 120 qualifying monthly payments under a qualifying repayment plan while working full-time for a qualifying employer.
[1] https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancell...
> If you file bankruptcy in Canada a federally guaranteed student loan is only automatically discharged if the date of your bankruptcy is more than seven years from when you ceased to be a student. This rule was created to prevent student from incurring huge student loans, and then graduating and immediately going bankruptcy.
[1] https://bankruptcy-canada.com/bankruptcy-blog/bankruptcy-can...
It's completely unfair that mine went away and people that are upside down and have been "playing the game" are still in the slog, but it by a wide margin the most fortuitous thing that has ever happened to me.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2017/07/18/5-billi...
Or could a bunch of former students band together and do this in a cooperative type corporation? Buy defaulted student debt, then forgive it?
You know, a distributed ledger of defaulted US student debt might actually be a useful use for a blockchain.
(I say this as a NZer whose student debt was held by the govt. and had capped fees etc.)
And if, like now, the government backed the loans and they were dischargeable, it would create a death spiral of companies encouraging loans to no end with tons of students accepting them, knowing that they can just file bankruptcy right after graduating.
There's an even better side effect of this. There is no real and inherent reason that university prices have skyrocketed out of control. It's mostly a consequence of government removing all economic concerns for students. That of course sounds nice, but they also simultaneously removed all economic concerns from universities who can, and do, charge arbitrarily large sums and justify it by increasingly reckless spending. This a recurring problem when messing with the market - we create unforeseen problems, though in this case this should have been very foreseeable!
By returning to market forces universities would be obligated to themselves also take economic matters into consideration with their decisions. Too high of tuition and fees are unlikely to get paid off, thus unlikely to produce much in the way of loans, and thus generally not economically viable. Similarly there would be less of an incentive to grow programs that do not substantially improve the ability of students to create a comfortable life for themselves.
Basically we would start on a path back towards the world some baby boomers seem to think we still live in where somebody with a bit of hard work could put themselves through college with a part time job graduating not only debt free but with a enough of a nest egg put aside to have a nice down payment for their first place.
Because it's debt to get a degree. I don't agree necessarily but the idea is that students would get large loans, go to schools, get a degree, then declare bankruptcy.
I think the GP comments makes a good point that large loans would be harder to get if all of the sudden they knew bankruptcy option is going to considered after graduation.
As so nicely represented by the explosion in student debt:
Eh, no. College tuition increases have always far, far outstripped wage and inflation increases: http://toughmoneylove.com/2008/12/08/the-college-student-deb...
I will say that the slope of the curve gets a bit steeper after 2000, so perhaps you’re on to something to a degree, but to say that college costs weren’t increasing at unsustainable rates prior to Bush is laughable. And with everything, perspective is key. I started school in 2000, and what you consider reasonable my dad balked at (because it was roughly 3-4x what he paid 25 years prior).
> As so nicely represented by the explosion in student debt:
There is more to this than just the raw tuition value to consider: far more people are attending college than in years past (far more than should really be doing so, honestly). A graph that normalizes against student population would be much more interesting (otherwise your graph doesn’t tell what portion of the increase is due to tuition explosion versus student population explosion).
From the 1940s to 1960s, college costs were rising some, and from 1985 to 2003 costs also increased some. But the rate of increase after 2003 definitely is higher.
Both sources are blaming things other than student loans for rising costs. I will say the second link is intriguing, in that it postulates that state education budget cuts play a responsibility in rising costs. This might go hand in hand with the student loan balloon: basically, the cost of college is shifting heavily to the individual student, but in a very poor manner if the end goal is an attempt at meritocracy via education. I agree that demand might play a role too (the first link sort of implies this).
It would be interesting to compare tuition cost history in the United States to other countries, which as far as I know do not follow our funding model. (For some reasons this was not easy to quickly Google.)
[1] http://www.nasfaa.org/news-item/4565/Myths_and_Realities_abo... [2] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/years-of-...
Remember that I knew a few people who managed to both work and go to school at the same time and pay the tuition with the salary. So they took longer to graduate (5-6 years) but graduated debt free. It was a state school in mid West not a fancy private school or anything like that.
Too bad it won't happen, because it's cruel to not provide students the opportunity to acquire hundreds of thousands of debt.
If the funding was cut, the schools may have to make due with only 100 million dollars for the ice hockey stadium.
[1] https://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/2017report/fsa-repo...
Unfortunately that might make our entire economy collapse as we've let the student debt bubble get so large. We'll likely have to all shoulder some of the pain, regardless of how fair it is
Why not? You totally can. It's not some fundamental law of nature that regulation can't be changed after some time. The loans were made under the assumption that they are not dischargeable, at that time someone could attempt to estimate what's the probability that the laws would be repealed or modified in some time horizon. That probability is going to be > 0. Is that risk large enough to change the business case for making the loan in the first place?
Non-bankruptable student loans aren't "regulations" they are specific contracts between students, lenders, and the US government.
But my original point (I wrote the top-level comment to which you're responding) was this: Taking away ALL risk from the .edus and the lenders took away a really important part of downward tuition-price pressure. Easy student loan money means escalating student fees.
Who should "pay" if a schoolteacher can't pay her Salem State College loans? Good question. The college who charged so much ought to be on the hook, at least partly. The same goes for the lender, taxpayers in the community where she teaches, and she herself.
Who should pay if an investment banker can't pay his Harvard Business School student loans? Is it a different kind of question? That is hard to know in general.
Without the ability to bring student loans to bankruptcy court, there's no legal way to address these questions of fairness. That is not sustainable for student debtors, colleges, or the society at large.
What's often left out of these amateur discussions we have is that education loans are non-collateralized debt. There's no asset of any value to repossess, and except for a few specialized programs where you owe a few years in the military or troubled school or free health clinic, not even a pledge of the very thing this loan is supposed to return value on, i.e. the person's own labor productivity. (And even in those cases, if the person reneges and suddenly becomes liable for the cost of their education again, they're still probably eligible for the same kind of forbearance and forgiveness programs being pushed for the more general student-loan indebted population.)
That's a (if not the) key reason this kind of debt isn't dischargeable.
[0] "Foreign investors are not allowed to buy land in China. The land in China belongs to the state and the collectives."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_law#Buying_la...
Edit: I think it's reasonable to leverage our freedom as an asset instead of a liability to be abused.
Edit: Replaced "fair" with "equal"
They're taking advantage of us.
FWICT, they also don't allow their own citizens to purchase land. In that sense, they're treating foreign citizens equally.
Also, this seems to return some useful info:
https://www.google.com/search?&q=how+to+buy+land+in+china
Seems like people have found a way to purchase land.
>I think it's reasonable to leverage our freedom as an asset instead of a liability to be abused.
What do you mean by leverage?
Use our freedom to implement a fair trading system. We are free to buy and sell here, but not in China. China takes advantage of us because of this, and up till now, we have had no recourse accept "trade wars".
Instead of a trade war with tariffs and accusations and bickering, why not remove all possible complaints and treat others as they want to be treated?
Use Chinese rules for the Chinese. Completely and utterly balanced trade. If they don't like it, they can change their rules to be more free, and they get more freedom to buy here.
How would the Chinese government complain to the international community about the US applying their own rules to land ownership? How could anyone complain? It would be the height of hypocrisy, so they wouldn't.
So why not use our freedom as the ultimate bargaining tool to create a balance in the world? Other countries could do the same to us, and we couldn't complain either. It seems there has to be a game theory equation to explain this, it can't be the first time it's been considered.
You're essentially advocating to reverse decades if not centuries of policy that justified US foreign policy actions, because the US assumed moral high ground on several geopolitical fronts. IMO it would degrade the USs standing on several policy issues. "trust us, we're the good guys." no longer works. I'm sure China and Russia would love to park their navy outside of Florida in international waters because the US does similar things.
I didn't suggest "closed like China", I said "treat them how they wan to be treated". Every country treated equally on their own rules.
>...US assumed moral high ground on several geopolitical fronts.
How is it not the moral high ground to "treat others as they want to be treated"? That is straight from the mouth of Jesus.
Edit: I misquoted Jesus... It's supposed to be "Treat others as you want to be treated"
Should we cut off a man and woman who had sex during the woman's period from society?
Jesus was only referenced as a rhetorical flourish. I prefer Kant's articulations, but the Jesus books include a not necessarily religious moral philosophy.
Society cannot hold together, when people make exceptions for themselves, or play the 'you did it first, so it's o.k. for me' game. That indicates an absence of moral principles.
But that doesn't change the argument. The US wants to be treated as equals with China. Not like a sucker being tricked by a hustler, but as equals.
The only thing we control is our own actions. So to make our selves equal with China, why not make our deals with China based on China's rules?
Here is the tariff picture around the world for example:
https://i.imgur.com/ucahKjK.jpg
It's time for the US to start reciprocating trade behavior. Just look at those agriculture tariffs that nearly everyone else is using.
No eyes are in fact lost. The US increases the amount of goods it produces domestically and reduces the amount that it imports (ideally buying less consumer junk from China), which is entirely feasible now that China's manufacturing costs are nearly as high as the US. Or alternatively, the US trades with more open partners (eg where the US can properly own assets & businesses), or chooses partners that are strategically a better fit (such as Vietnam, where trade is booming with the US).
We're now, apparently, starting to do that. It has been heating up for years, pre-Trump. We currently appear to be in a total freeze on allowing China to buy US technology assets. Which is exactly what we should be doing, until they allow US companies to operate similarly in China.
[2016] "One of the companies that first brought silicon to Silicon Valley — Fairchild Semiconductor International — said it would remain in American hands after rejecting a takeover offer worth about $2.5 billion led by Chinese state-backed buyers. Instead, Fairchild embraced a smaller bid from an American rival on Tuesday, citing concerns that federal regulators might reject the Chinese deal."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/business/dealbook/china-f...
And more recently, prevented or killed under the Trump era:
- Qualcomm by Broadcom (Singapore)
- Xcerra by Hubei Xinyan Equity Investment (China)
- MoneyGram by Ant Financial Services Group (China)
- Cowen by China Energy Company Limited (China)
- Aleris by Zhongwang (China)
- HERE by Navinfo (China)
- Lattice Semiconductor by Canyon Bridge (China)
- Global Eagle Entertainment by HNA Group (China)
- Novatel Wireless by TCL (China)
- Cree by Infineon Technologies (Germany)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-12/trump-iss...
Thing is, it's Americans selling this land. So compromising on those freedoms just to align yourself with bad policies a country is following that sound wise.
I think you are conflating two separate issues, nations vs individuals. If an individual wants to buy land and happens to be Chinese, who cares? But this is the Chinese Government buying land in the US.
It's not the same thing, so different rules should apply.
Let's take this to the extreme to see how bad it could unreasonably get. What would happen if a single foreign government (for the sake of argument, run by a dictator for life) bought all the land in the US...? Or even less crazy, a majority of the movie production companies (or used their market share to force government paid censors to be at the filming and have editorial rights), colleges (or controlling interest in them), news companies, or valuable land (no need to buy deserts), etc ... seem far fetched?
http://naturalsociety.com/nestle-ceo-water-not-human-right-s...
It actually happened:
https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2006/bechtel-surrenders-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633122
Second, there are two sides to a deal. The parent's plan will penalize the seller as well the buyer, both buy reducing demand and by taking away the best deal.
That's a problem with all trade restrictions. If your country won't buy from others, why will others buy from you? Only North Korea tries to go without trade to a large extent and even they smuggle goods.
Are you suggesting a completely free market without any government constraints at all?
There you have it. The Chinese company is buying the college specifically for the purpose of using their intellectual property. Is this not the same thing they have been doing buying US businesses? Purchasing the know-how that they lack to gain a competitive edge, while preventing MNCs from competing fairly in the Chinese domestic market?
It's a smart strategy and seems to be working. Not fair though, and shouldn't be allowed.
Or making them leave, not sure.
In the end, the more countries and firms compete on expert knowledge, the better it is for knowledge workers.
No, the US doesn't do the same. You're comparing two very different things. Property is/can be owned, people are not and should not be. China & the US do not own their people or their brains, even if they'd like to.
Both countries technically allow people to move to and work in them, from other nations. It's practically impossible to become a citizen of China as a foreigner. The US grants a million green cards per year.
China almost entirely disallows outbound technology/IP/property/asset tranfers. That's the overwhelming point of contention.
Also, this is musical and educational colleges they are buying, how did tech/IP transfer sneaked into the discussion?
My favorite example to give to explain their hiring problem is the professor of a webapp development class, a computer science professor, who was completely dumbfounded by ES6 syntax and closures and taught straight from the W3 Schools website. Literally came into class, plugged in his laptop, opened W3 Schools and started reading. I ended up tutoring a lot of people for that class, and typically had to dispute all my test grades by proving that my (handwritten -- he was that type) code worked.
That is to say, he was simply not qualified to teach that class. Not even close. We didn't even get anywhere near finishing all the material, we never even wrote a single webapp in that class. We didn't even get close to that point.
However, the building is gorgeous. And also sunk so far in the first year that they had to bolster their drainage considerably. This is Florida, by the way. Rain is a way of life here, and they didn't plan for it. After the recent hurricane, the building was damaged, but they can't do a whole lot to fix it because the architect owns a copyright on the building. It's a damn shame that if the damaged parts fail, it will be a huge disaster because directly under them is the glass-filled roof over the student commons.
Feel free to guess the school if you like, it should be easy. But I have nothing more to add.
E: Wait, I do have one more thing to add. I worked in a lab with grad students, ostensibly as a tech but since I was already experienced with the stuff we were doing (mostly development), I was instead tasked with real R&D. Except all of my work just ended up on a table to be used as a marketing tool during the ten tours that stopped to gawk at us every day. None of it ever went anywhere. And now that lab is going unused. So basically all that money just went completely wasted.
On a more serious note though: I recently graduated from a private university in upstate NY (probably wasn't worth the tuition, but as an 18 year old I wasn't very informed past "the culture of this school seems great!", and it admittedly worked out), and they have similar issues.
I worked with a few students who helped with setting up websites and the like for some of the higher-level administration, and it's an absolute sham how much money goes into administrative positions, sports, and shiny new dorms instead of academic programs and necessary infrastructure (anybody else's class enrollment done via a 1980s mainframe that crashes every enrollment period for hours?). Because their tech infrastructure was so bad, I actually once got to see some of their salary information... and let me just say, you've got to go a long way down the list of top salaries before you get to somebody who's set foot in a classroom in the past 10 years. And who doesn't have an MBA.
Admittedly anecdotal, but I wonder if some state schools have visible budgets where we could look into this stuff.
Washington State University [2]
In both cases, professors aren't the highest paid, but they do show up in the top 5. Not that this is exhaustive or necessarily representative, but it shows that for at least these two schools, it's not terrible. The gap between the highest paid and the highest paid professor is substantial though.
What's more disconcerting, is looking at the highest paid in public schools vs the highest paid teachers. Again, this data is only for Washington state [3]. Sorting by highest total compensation, the highest paid teacher shows up at 234th highest paid. Next highest paid teachers are at 1,804, then 2,235, 2,294 and sporadically thereafter.
Given the average salary data [4], it's pretty clear that Washington state public schools are overrun by administrators. I suspect that exchanging most administration for teachers that have the same existing teacher pay would go a long way to bringing the student/teacher ratio to more appropriate levels, reducing teacher stress and increasing student outcomes. Or maybe we could get more teachers and raise their pay.
I believe reducing the student/teacher ratio will allow teachers to handle a lot of the stuff administration already does, which, if true, would demonstrate how administrator's aren't just not needed, but are actively detrimental to a good school.
[1] http://data.spokesman.com/salaries/state/2015/306-university...
[2] http://data.spokesman.com/salaries/state/2015/307-washington...
[3] http://data.spokesman.com/salaries/schools/2016/all-employee...
[4] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/pay-vari...
Hahahaa. Hahahaaa. Ha.
Tenure-track professors are simply denied tenure in the end of their glorious $50K/year 6-year stay.
Hard to fire a tenured professor? You aren't thinking big, my friend. Shut down the entire department. Who[1] needs[2] physics[3], after all[4]?
That's not to mention the obvious solution - eliminate tenure altogether[5].
Think that's hard to implement? Time is on your side then (if your side is the side that wants to ruin academia for good). Simply let the academics retire (or die out), and never open tenure-track positions[6]. When someone leaves the department, replace them with an adjunct.
For every linked reference, I could also provide personal anecdata. And as far as problems in academia go, I didn't even scratch the tip of the iceberg.
[1] https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201110/physicsprogr...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/sep/29/highereducat...
[3] https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.2018021...
[4] https://www.aaup.org/media-release/crisis-university-norther...
[5] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/13/legislation-t...
[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/upshot/so-many-research-s...
Where I attended, they relocated whole buildings to different locations on the campus. One was a historic Women's Studies building. They spent a week putting a truck bed under it, then moved it uphill on a Friday morning as I walked to class. A month later they were building another building where it originally stood.
The next summer they completely demolished and rebuilt half of the student dorms - 4 buildings.
In the past 10 years, while tuition has doubled twice and their sports teams won championships, they also rebuilt half of the campus. It doesn't look like the place I attended.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/26/opinion/beijing-free-spee... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/05/23... 3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/xi-create...
http://time.com/4148838/koch-brothers-colleges-universities/
It’s foolish to test their companies as independent from the government.
The Mitsubishi Estate Company of Japan plans to walk away from its almost $2 billion investment in Rockefeller Center, the Hope diamond of world real estate.
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/12/business/japanese-scrap-2...
It smells weird that a foreign state-owned company wants to buys a US college. Maybe they want the land, or maybe its all about that tuition money. The China sees that we Americans are stupid enough to pay $30-40k per year to go to a private music college, and they want a cut of that.
What would be the outcome?
It’s sort of weird that such buyup isn’t seen as a national security issue.
Now it’s gonna be China.
It’s too profitable to worry about it, and just like we sold out to the Americans, they’ll now sell out to China, as the circle continues.
Trains/rail, bus systems, power generation, power distribution, telecom - US companies own an extroardinarily tiny share of those things in Europe overall.
Verizon + AT&T are worth ~$420 billion and are giant, wildly profitable businesses. Why don't they own most of Europe's telecom industry, which is mostly dominated by numerous far smaller companies? Because it doesn't work that way. You can't just go into a dozen European nations and buy up all of their telecom, the government roadblocks to doing that make it impossible. Instead, it's Softbank (Japan) that owns Sprint (#4), and it's Deutsche Telekom that owns T-Mobile that is the #3 telecom carrier in the US.
It refers to an American Investor buying up a European company, destroying it in some way (e.g. by using its voting power to force the company to sell all its assets and take on lots of debt, then pay out all that to the investor), and then letting the company go bankrupt.
It’s been a common scheme of American investors in Europe in the 2000s, and has destroyed many local companies, which in turn meant that their marketshare was afterwards taken over by American multinationals.
It was such a common incidence that it became main topic of political debates for a while.
Here’s another article from 2016, discussing all kinds of US investors buying European companies, because never before have US companies taken over more European companies than now: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/auslaendische-i...
I have no idea if China is in a fundamentally different position than Japan was in the 80s, but just something to keep in mind when prognosticating doom and gloom about a "Chinese takeover".
It is. Its economy is much bigger, it is not a democracy and, most importantly, today's China is much more expansionistic than post-1945 Japan ever was.
Time will tell if China is in a bubble and if so when it will pop.
A lot of espionage recruiting goes on through academics, so I'm wondering if this isn't just a good opportunity to open avenues for spies to be sent over.
That name change alone makes me immediately suspicious of this company:
- From: Jiangsu Zhongtai Bridge Steel Structure Co
- To: Beijing Kaiwen Education Technology Co.
I don't think it's an anti-Asian bias but more of a pro-diversity bias. Colleges often want a good mix of ethnic groups such that having 60% Asians when the US population is about 8% Asian won't get them the mix they want. Whether the goal of "diversity" is more important than the "fairness" of raw merit is a complex moral and philosophical debate.
Having one group heavily- or over-represented may be seen as going against that goal. It's not necessarily personal against Asians. They may not want too many whites either.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-10/china-fin...
"Beijing Kaiwen Education Technology Co. agreed in February to pay $40 million for Westminster Choir College, an affiliate of Rider University that trains students for careers as singers, conductors and music teachers. The announcement came just weeks after the government-controlled Chinese company changed its name from Jiangsu Zhongtai Bridge Steel Structure Co."
Bridge steel -> Music education. Now that's innovation!
Carnegie gave away his wealth.
US Steel did not rename itself the US Library Corporation.
Look at the commenter's history for some of the comments on China related news. This is interesting. China is known for manipulating information and spreading propaganda.
I hope HN cracks down on comment manipulation related to Chinese government news stories.
Silicon Valley: 5% - 14%;
US: 32% - 56% (including SV);
Europe: 28% - 35%;
Canada/Australia/New Zealand: 7% - 8%;
India: 2% - 7%;
China: 0.5% - 3% (including Hong Kong). From European countries, the UK is 5-8% (of the HN total), Germany is 4-7%, France is 1-3%. The Dutch and Swiss are (stereotypically) stable at 2% and 1% respectively.
These ranges include measures like logged-in-ness. If you only look at total users then SV is less than 10%, and the US comes out less than 45%—or even as low as a third, depending on what's specifically measured.
Is this combined for all three, or each individually? If combined, could you break it down? If individually, wow for New Zealand!
These people are most likely Americans, of Chinese descent. They are probably also 2nd or 3rd generation Americans, like yourself. They went to American schools and universities. They speak perfect English. They vote. They are patriotic. And they pay their taxes.
These people have no connection to the China government. They probably don't have any more close relatives that even live in China. So their connection to their ancestral home lands have been severed. They are by definition, Americans.
Now, yes, there may be some people in Silicon Valley, who are Chinese nationals, and who are working with an H-1B visa. I don't know the numbers breakdown.
But, I think you need to make a distinction between the two types.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We always look for evidence when people are worried, and we take action, such as banning accounts, when we find it.
Frankly, though, the greater danger—orders of magnitude greater—is users' tendency to assume that other users must be astroturfing, or shills, bots, or spies, just because they hold opposing views. The truth is that HN is divided on divisive issues, just like society at large, all the more because it is a majority international community.
That is why the site guidelines ask you not to post comments like this. The attempted cure is more toxic than the seeming disease.
I've written about this a ton if anyone wants it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I certainly don't have the data to demonstrate a valid concern, this was an assumption.
The rules mention we should "email you" if we are concerned. Out of curiosity, if you did find manipulation in the data, would you share it with individual who emailed you about the concern?
Pretty much one per year. Let's keep looking at it, but probably nowhere as near as foreign companies investing in China's education system.