The sarcasm here isn't necessary. I wasn't claiming that it was the author's duty to educate the reader about the Great Firewall, government censorship and invasion of privacy, copyright law in China, or anything else. Obviously, most everyone reading this is aware of those things at least to some degree. But leaving them out of any serious discussion of the differences between the technology economy of China versus the US is a glaring omission.

This is especially true when it seems to be simply ignoring elephants in the room, such as in the oblique references to security/privacy or copyright law, or claiming that talking about censorship is "unfashionable". For another example, the article spends a good deal of time talking about WeChat, one of several unicorn technology companies which, while certainly it's been very innovative in its history, likely only exists in large part due to the blockage of Facebook and Twitter.

This isn't knee-jerk sinophobia, this is pointing out some pretty obvious holes in the discussion here and speculating as to the reason for them. Of course, the overall tone of the article is rather fawning, but this is Hacker News so that's nothing out of the ordinary.