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Comment by google_censors | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing that a company that Paul Graham co-founded is getting into bed with an authoritarian government notorious for its human rights abuses. To succeed in China you can't go against the government. So is he going to be pushing as hard for political change in China as he is in the US, or will he remain silent as his company reaps the profits?

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I would like to see a statement that YC China will not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation and more importantly will not support startups which create technology which make doing so easier.

> I would like to see a statement that YC China will not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation and more importantly will not support startups which create technology which make doing so easier.

I too would like to see this, but no such statement exists for YC at large (outside China) either.

There are a billion MORE people in China than in the US. There is enormous industry and innovation there. China's government is terrible but that is their issue to resolve. All we can do is speak out, but refusing to do business hurts Chinese and American people far more than it hurts the Chinese government. Our government kills many innocent people accidentally as part of the normal course of war, but we consider it an acceptable place to do business anyway.

I'm sure that some more fully articulated and sophisticated version of what you've said forms the basis of YC's decision to continue pragmatically pursuing its goal of being big and important (and incidentally making lots of money).

What, I'm not sophisticated and articulate at 3 AM? ;)

They've just had a hell of a long time to polish their excuses :)

That is very unlikely. When you start or own businesses in China you largely give up the right to criticize the Chinese government. Not only because you have to deal with the Chinese government, but because you won't have any credibility left at home. You can't on the one hand argue that the Chinese government is oppressive and on the other that it is practical to change peoples minds.

One accidentally breaks an egg. One doesn't "accidentally" kill innocent people because they "accidentally" launched a missile to an area where civilians are.

Yeah, "incidentally" would be a better qualification.

I think it is essentially the opposite. Speaking out does nothing since we, nor the Chinese, have any power to change the situation. All it does is makes the speaker feel good about their own situation.

The power we do have is to make our own choices. The Chinese might certainly have, what they think are, good reasons for doing what they are doing, but that doesn't mean you have to participate if you think you have better reasons for not doing so.

Chinese companies are largely forced to align with the Chinese government. US companies disagreeable behavior, including aligning themselves with the US and Chinese governments, are largely their own choosing. The reality is that Silicon Valley's moral compass is buried at the bottom of their own Superfund sites.

Suppose I'm Tim Cook and refuse to participate in the Chinese market. No iPhones for you. Who is hurt? Mostly Chinese people. They get a crappier phone with less security and privacy protection. I'm also hurt financially. There are a lot of people in China. Real people are getting hurt, and the political situation stays the same. Political change will happen in China when it does. It feels somewhat inevitable to me but one thing we can't do is force democracy on them. They have a lot of "anti-imperial" ideas in their culture due to many invasions from Japan and other western nations and for the idea of democracy and free markets to really take hold it needs to come naturally from China itself -- not through economic pressure from US companies.

> China's government is terrible but that is their issue to resolve. All we can do is speak out, but refusing to do business hurts Chinese and American people far more than it hurts the Chinese government.

No. You can't do business with China and speak out because then the Chinese government will refuse to do business with you. You have to toe their line in the West in order to get access to their market. See the recent articles regarding airline's treatment of Taiwan on their websites [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-airlines-china/u-s-ai...

Is pg really even involved much in the direction of YC anymore?

If he wants goverment support he probably is stealing IP from the american side and YC is either naive or knows this very well but is willing to trade IP for cashflow.

Believing in his good morals, the underlying hope might be to achieve change through subversion: If YC becomes popular in in China, people might visit news.ycombinator.com and find very sane liberal thinking and many shocking truths about their country.

Much more likely that anything negative about China will be deemed political, like many other subjects have been in the past, and flagged off the site. That is largely how the Chinese Internet works anyways.

Not gonna happen. This site would be banned or censored.

Ah yes, the superior thinking of top minds that frequent news.ycombinator.com

Reddit was blocked by the Chinese firewall this month. The suspected reason is discussion of the Uyghur concentration camps. Shocking truths don’t last on the Chinese internet.

When YC is invested in China they won’t last on this website either.

Companies exist to make money. I think the tech community's biggest mistake was assuming that tech companies are moral agents. Of course tech companies ( "do no evil" ) had a hand in misleading us. But tech companies are no different than oil companies, pharma companies or movie studios. They want market share and money.

Maybe we should stop putting tech companies and tech leaders on a pedestal.

Or we should accept that there's no magic get-out-of-moral-obligations card issued to them when they become agents of a business?

There's this weird rationalization that somehow a person becomes immune to moral considerations when they accept a job as a corporate executive.

I don't that's true. And I don't think most businessmen think that's true either. I'm pretty sure Warren Buffet doesn't think that's true.

as If the US was any good

why do you think any of these companies and VCs care about anything but $$$?

why is Qi Lu required to push for "political change"? is he supposed to share your views?

that same regime built your phone, so why not lead by example?

If you admire PG as I do, please read an essay from PG again: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

I believe Paul Graham knows better than average American about China. I appraise him, not for his move as a venture capitalist who want to make money (Many people who share your belief think he is cynical and only thinking about making money, which might be part of the reason), but quite opposite , for his moral courage against prevailed belief of Mob which is the same evil as authoritarian region's.

Politics is often compared to religion but it's actually worse: many religion believer can keep their belief private but in politics most "belief oriented people" are not aware of they don't differentiate their opinions/beliefs from facts. This can radicalize many opposite side people knowing the truth. Eventually this cognitive defect of modern human being caused conflicts all over the world. Even here in HN, I've seen quite a few radicalized HNer's beaned by dang (the moderator of HN) due to their misbehave that were (mistakenly) considered to be caused by strong nationalist views.

I would suggest all HNer's keep political view private as much as possible if totally avoidance is not piratical.

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