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Comment by jumelles | Hacker News Reader

YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

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> I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

Especially since the PRC government is getting much more aggressive in forcing Western companies to kowtow to their political stances even in their operations outside of China. Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologize for posting a Dalai Lama quote on Instagram [1], and a Marriott employee was fired after he "liked" a post about Tibetan independence [2]. This happened despite both websites being blocked in China.

The implications for companies with new Chinese operations that also operate an open web forum is left as an exercise for the reader.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/mercedes-bows-to-chinese-pressure-afte...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-employee-roy-jones-hit...

Agreed 100%. To me it's madness that Marriott and Benz wouldn't stand up for the right to speak one's mind.

I'm pretty sure Marriott and Benz stand up firsthand to their owners and in their list of priorities access to chinese markets is more important than human rights.

Given our worship of capital I'm amazed global emancipation of slavery ever happened. But I suppose that was only because new financial markets and industrialization created lots of better opportunities for capital investment than slave labour force - hence the market for slaves dwindled.

> I'm pretty sure Marriott and Benz stand up firsthand to their owners and in their list of priorities access to chinese markets is more important than human rights.

That is indeed the problem.

You mean Mercedes, the company that used slave laborers from camps to build vehicles and engines for the Nazis?

> You mean Mercedes, the company that used slave laborers from camps to build vehicles and engines for the Nazis?

One would have hoped they'd have learned something from that.

I think this is a very American perspective; I'm American as well. It is very easy for us to forget our own human rights abuses, like bombing children in the Middle East, torture in Abu Ghraib, etc. etc. and focus on other countries as the "bad guys". America's leadership has made mistakes, China's leadership has made mistakes, but to use those mistakes to promote isolationism divides us as a global people. China runs their country differently. If YC can promote new startups in China, perhaps one day those startups will be the driving cause of unifying the world. Most citizens only loosely affiliate with their country. Many Chinese, like Americans, want to make their home and the world a better place. To remix from Richard Dawkins, A child is not an American child, not a Chinese child, but a child of American parents or a child of Chinese parents.

Many Chinese, like Americans, want to make their home and the world a better place

How about respecting human rights? That would be a start.

Technology can help for some things, but past a certain point, "making the world a better place" also imply policy changes.

And what I'm saying is, my government doesn't respect human rights, but I as a citizen do. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater arguing private US business shouldn't work with anyone in China because they must all be human rights abusers. /s

You seriously think this is about making the world a better place?

It's about money. Private businesses don't care about Chinese citizens. They care about cold hard cash.

Now, am I saying private US businesses shouldn't work with anyone in China? Not really. All I'm sayng is: at the end of the day, technology can only do so much. Eventually, policy must change also and this is valid for any country, including the US.

https://thediplomat.com/2018/05/uyghurs-victims-of-21st-cent...

I don't mean to be blunt, but YC, as an institution, doesn't really care about anything besides money. They're venture capitalists. That the CCP is putting Muslims in high-tech concentration camps is of little concern compared to how much they think they can make in the Chinese market.

That's why I feel compelled to speak up about this. There are things more important than money.

Not sure why that parent comment was flagged, he was just pointing out the fact that companies value profit, everything else is optional.

Is that not allowed to be uttered around here anymore?

There was also something about "Muslims in concentration camps" - but there's another link in this very thread talking about how Uyghurs are being put in camps by the PRC, so I'm not sure either how speaking truth to power got flagged.

Markets have already given the Chinese regime enormous economic power, its easy to ignore the gross human rights violations if you have a cheap iphone and your own dignity isn't impaired. Beware the new colonial power.

Every one wants to be part of the next Chinese startups, an incubator has less risk than other big corporations. Qi Lu knows technology and knows how to navigate his way with the Chinese government. Hopefully they can be part of the startup ecosystem in China.

Exactly. I am not sure what Sam Altman is up to here, but this may be something that Silicon Valley companies and the free world will regret deeply in the future. He mentions

> to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity.

Yes, but technologies at the hands of a dictatorship is dangerous. This morning, there was just a thread about Chinese surveillance/censorship technologies being sold to other countries. Lord help us if the Chinese government somehow gets its hands on a superior weapons tech, or smarter AI.

He also says

> Qi will also take over as the Head of YC Research, YC’s non-profit research lab.

We've heard several prominent lawsuits in recent months on how Chinese nationals stolen and transfered US techs into Chinese companies (possibly government involvement). Qi Lu literally said "The Chinese government understands what AI can do, and they show a lot of commitment for sustained and long-term investment...AI is part of China’s national five-year plan, and just a few months ago, the Chinese government published a comprehensive white paper to call out a systematic investment in AI." https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/09/baidu-coo-says-chinas-gov.... We're literally handing the Chinese government some of the Western world's greatest knowledge and inventions.

This is scary scary thing. I am not sure what YC is thinking, allowing Sam Altman to do this.

You've been using HN exclusively for political argument about China since you created this account. That's not a legit use of the site, as the guidelines explain: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is a place for curiosity-driven discussion on a wide range of things, not prosecuting a political or national agenda.

Edit: it looks like you've been creating tons of accounts just to argue about China. That's clearly abusive, so we've banned this one. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

> Lord help us if the Chinese government somehow gets its hands on a superior weapons tech, or smarter AI.

Why wouldn't they get their hands on that? With companies like HPE existing as now defacto chinese companies I just don't see how anyone can see this as a if rather than a when.

> We're literally handing the Chinese government some of the Western world's greatest knowledge and inventions.

Isn't this great though? More innovation spread amongst the world. This is what liberalism tells us, that there is no distinction between people living under different nations.

If we can make the lives of chinese citizens better like we use AI to make ours better, why should minor issues like government "stealing knowledge" (whatever that is) be some big issue?

> why should minor issues like government "stealing knowledge" (whatever that is) be some big issue?

Because that's not at all the only issue; the ruling party actively suppresses dissent, stifles speech, and allows little to no disagreement. Minorities and dissenters are locked away with no trial. Censorship is rampant. There's a lot more to worry about than just IP theft or corporate espionage.

Ok even if i don't like those actions a startup shouldn't worry about those issues. I might have political views but I don't bring them to work.

If something is so bad then that's for the governments to sort out, we are just here to do our best to make profitable companies.

Large companies have vastly more influence on governments than regular people. It's unethical to just turn a blind eye to "those actions." Companies have leverage and should use it.

Are you seriously willing to work for anyone, their politics and actions be damned? Have you heard about the concept of the "Good German"?

Companies should, and do, take an active role in the world around them (both positively and negatively)

> Why wouldn't they get their hands on that?

They wouldn't because most of the western democratic countries are now actively preventing China from stealing their technologies. US with the empowered CFIUS, with the latest defense bill. Germany just prevented 2 key companies from being taken over by China. France drafted anti-takeover measures (aimed at China) amid foreign investment boom. EU is actively seeking to put up united front against Chinese investment by end of year. And yet Sam Altman is just going to give China free knowhow/technologies.

> make the lives of chinese citizens better

Are you not aware of the sesame credit enacted by the Chinese government? Facial recognition in cameras installed everywhere? Millions of muslims in reeducation camps in Xinjiang? Are you proposing we give this government even more power and innovation??

If anything, the Chinese government can take over a private startup quickly, and use the tech against Silicon Valley companies.

> They wouldn't because most of the western democratic countries are now actively preventing China from stealing their technologies.

Thats all kind of small considering the kind of information that has already been dropshiped out with no real punishments to the chinese government itself.

All these efforts are is trying to plug the holes, not realizing the holes aren't just company buyouts but mostly espionage via chinese citizens. Even if you lock them up, they still sent the data, nothing was really prevented.

> And yet Sam Altman is just going to give China free knowhow/technologies.

Yea? Because that's all government and politics. This is markets and profits.

> Are you not aware of the sesame credit enacted by the Chinese government? Facial recognition in cameras installed everywhere?

Yea alot of people actually like it, being able to get benefits for being an upstanding system. I've heard it described as a system of karma.

Besides, we have the same things anyway, credit scores and CCTV, we just have a different cultural view of it.

> Millions of muslims in reeducation camps in Xinjiang?

And we don't put muslims in jail at higher rates than the native populations? See this just all seems like reflecting the fact that all countries have these issues.

> If anything, the Chinese government can take over a private startup quickly, and use the tech against Silicon Valley companies.

Maybe, but that's the business risk you take. If they think that's the best way to run their country, what right do we have to tell them they are wrong? Especially when we aren't exactly innocent.

This sort of whataboutism isn't helpful. We have the right to call out human rights abuses; further, I think we have an obligation to use that right lest we lose it. Are you aware that the average citizen in China simply cannot tell their government that it's wrong? It doesn't matter what abuses the US or other Western nations have or haven't done - the PRC is still in the wrong.

> the PRC is still in the wrong

Ill just leave it here by saying that to even label something in another culture as "wrong" you first have to understand that the word "wrong" is deeply entrenched in western culture and can't simply just be thrown around at other cultures who have constructed entirely different systems of morality and language to express them.

> Thats all kind of small considering the kind of information that has already been dropshiped out with no real punishments to the chinese government itself.

The western world IS punishing the Chinese government right now. $50B in tariffs and investment restrictions. And it is having an effect on China. Chinese leadership is panicking. Its stock market keeps dropping, its currency weakening, its factories leaving. Wait until the tariffs go up higher and higher.

And you make it sound like China has already got all the techs - no it doesn't. Its military at least 2-3 generations behind. It is still far behind in semiconductor technologies, aircraft, engine, hardware, software, operating system, AI, robotics, etc.

> we have the same things anyway, credit scores and CCTV

The world isn't black and white; it's shades of grey. credit score is not as sesame credit. One can travel/leave the country and one cannot. CCTV is not the same as surveilance/arrest without court of law.

> See this just all seems like reflecting the fact that all countries have these issues.

Do you seriously not understand the difference between concentration camps for people that have not violated laws, vs prisons?

> Especially when we aren't exactly innocent.

You don't need to be angelic to stop evil.

Lol, what makes you think they can’t invent their own

I suspect Altman is a staunch supporter of globalization (his twitter is pretty lefty). Meanwhile there is a large cross section of Americans who aren't as positive and some downright against globalization (myself one of them).

Indeed, given the recent news in East Uyghurstan. I had to double check my calendar to see that it was not April 1st. Limits to human rights by a government is intolerable in the modern epoch. Anyone that uses a Chinese product is complicit in cultural genocide. If HN doesn't speak truth to power, who else will?

Their job is to make money. Why people think otherwise is beyond me.

First they make money in China, then they'll copy what made them money to India, then to the western world. Sounds like a slippery slope to me. I saw a couple of sci-fi movies that showed this doesn't turn out well. [1]

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856101/

Not to mention their policies of stealing intellectual property and dumping steel and aluminum. Thankfully and as I expected the US tariffs have really hurt their stock market, meanwhile the US stock market is at near all time highs.

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