Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure
wsj.com
wsj.com
*edit
If Reddit is the "forum of the internet" then it won't matter if it slowly erodes into a Fox News like media presence. It will exert the gravity over other forums through its "reasonability" on non-sensitive topics.
Kind of like how most modern politicians don't say anything bad about Israel.
And people governed by the recipients of that aid are rightly suspicious of the strings attached.
I'd bet that PG/sama have thought about this set of issues, and they probably have their redlines drawn, but are probably also not advertising them, as is strategically prudent.
Absolutely nobody but a very select few people would care. YC is not even on the radar of lots of tech start-ups or their founders, the world is a lot larger than what you might think from hanging out here. And that's with full knowledge of the sea change that YC has brought for founders and the absolutely incredible number of companies it has generated, there are still many more people - and founders - in the world that have never heard of YC compared to those that have.
Are you kidding me, it would be on the front page of the Journal. People would care after that.
If YC has to stop doing business in China, it will be a very momentary blip and China will most definitely not change course because of a PG blogpost.
And also, do you really know multiple people who do not know what year 9/11 happened? C'mon
It's not a strawman when that is exactly what you wrote:
>> Meh...PG writing a blog post entitled "Why YC Is Quitting China" would cause plenty of tsoris in Beijing, and the Chinese certainly know this.
>> Absolutely nobody but a very select few people would care.
> Are you kidding me, it would be on the front page of the Journal. People would care after that.
YC is incredibly important to the start-up world but strategic priorities of the PRC aside if YC leaves China then that's not going to move any needles. If Google isn't powerful enough to make a play there you can just about forget what influence YC has there. To think that PG can influence Chinese policy with a blogpost is ridiculous.
> And also, do you really know multiple people who do not know what year 9/11 happened?
Yes. They typically know it was somewhere in the early 00's but not what specific year. It baffles me, but it is about as solid a fact as I have about this given that I've tried this many times now. Feel free to conduct your own little experiment and see what happens. I think in part it is because everybody always talks about 9/11 without adding the year.
Edit: FWIW: I just checked one more person and they did not in fact remember what year it was, only be linking it to some event in their own life were they able to make the connection.
I didn't say that this would drive a policy change after the fact. Quite the opposite, it would likely result in some kind of drama related to the CPC digging in its heels and attempting to recast the drama in a nationalist context. But, the initial loss of face would still be bad from their perspective.
I do think that YC/PG do in fact have some leverage/deterrence power with regard to being politically pressured by the CPC leadership because of their ability to walk away from the table in a publicly embarrassing manner.
Does that clear things up, and do you agree or disagree?
Given the number of fuerdai in elite US schools, you really don't think that the CPC leadership would care about a public spat with YC?
I'm not trying to be right here, I'm honestly curious and would be honored to be disabused of my ignorance by a more informed perspective.
You really think a single VC company that plays no critical role in national security is even on their radar?
I know that. May I answer ? It's 2003... November 9, to be more precise.
Paul Graham is not as well-known or influential as you think.
But in the US tech sector, the Chinese market is at best an after-thought. We're also living through probably the strongest seller's market in history when it comes to venture funding. My guess is that in most situations if a fund like Tencent tried to force an Internet startup to censor their content, they'd get laughed in the face as the founders just walked next door to the next VC firm on Sand Hill Road.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a SV insider by any stretch. So take these speculations on my part with a big grain of salt...)
> Tencent tried to force an Internet startup to censor their content
I assume you are referring to Tencent's recent investment in popular social media site Reddit, during their $300mm series D, at a $3B valuation, so they've already taken the money, whether they will laugh across across sand hill road is another question.
There is not yet direct evidence, of such censorship having yet occurred, but once it does happen, could any outsiders prove censorship beyond a shadow of a doubt? Give it time, first, for corporate censorship to become normalized on the English areas of the site, before pro-Hong Kong viewpoints become demonized, and Chinese mainland views propagate. Like, honestly, weird memes of shirtless Putin on horseback.
This is coming around especially as censorship in the US is also slowly becoming normalized. Try saying the phrase global climate change/warming as a government scientist. And then watch the people that try to justify it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chinareddits/comments/bz177v/got_ba...
Tencent recently invested in Reddit.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-11/reddit-users-revolt-o...
I had a lawyer friend who liked to post in a legal advice sub, moderated by someone in law enforcement, who banned him for posting information about your rights if you're arrested.
Are either of these claims falsifiable?
Unless it's a term I'm not aware of, a full investigation is still limited to human actors and limits.
I realize what the parent was attempting to say, but internet rumormongering is poor form.
The scientist seeking to determine if it is falsifiable. That no scientist has the resources necessary to do so now does not have bearing on determining if some claim is falsifiable or not.
I think Flickr had this back when they were a big property. You'd have site admins look at your complaint and follow up as necessary.
It's be nice to have and if they have it that it'd be more active to keep things from going off the rails --within reason.
Any user supporting the incumbent government or speaking against Islamic terrorism gets banned.
Similar scenario on r/worldnews. Anti-Muslim posts get removed and users banned, while Anti-Hindu posts get to the front-page.
Reddit should make atleast the 'Official Country' subreddits from obvious bias/influence.
A lot of comments still up are even more directly critical of Beijing than that post. Mods flagged it for "vote manipulation."
So I don't know what to make of this.
A sympathetic voting ring could have boosted the comment without the commenter knowing, confusing everyone here.
Or maybe Tencent really is picking specific posts to complain about to Reddit admins, or planting mods in high profile subs (but those mods can only catch so much).
Is there any way to sample which comments have been deleted by mods, to see if there's a consistent bias?
https://www.removeddit.com/r/pics/comments/byjify/arial_view...
Any user supporting the incumbent government or speaking against Islamic terrorism gets banned.
Similar scenario on r/worldnews. Anti-Muslim posts get removed and users banned, while Anti-Hindu posts get to the front-page.
Not surprising, since there are 3 mods who moderate both r/worldnews & r/india
Indian Agency RAW is the major sponsor of terrorist attacks and still Muslims are terrorists.
Muslims are being killed in Palestine by Israel and still Muslims are terrorists.
US attacked Afghanistan for oil and still Muslims are terrorists.
US threatening to attack Iran and still Muslims are terrorists.
On another note,
>Muslims are being killed in Palestine by Israel and still Muslims are terrorists.
>US attacked Afghanistan for oil and still Muslims are terrorists.
>US threatening to attack Iran and still Muslims are terrorists.
You can talk about and criticize all three of these things freely if you want, without worrying about being retaliated against physically by extremists or being censored by platforms who are afraid of the lashback if they fail to do so as Muslims are somehow a protected minority.
In any case, to suggest Chinese influence on reddit censorship, either the reddit admins are doing the censorship, or the Chinese influence is somehow reaching the mods.
No one has made a good case for that that I've seen.
Ah yes, conspiracy!
Seriously, it’s like worldnews doesn’t have an army of mods, and senior mods who agree with the actions of their fellow mods.
It can’t have anything to do with the subs and users who are banned from r/India for harassing normal people, islamaphobia, Alls for genocide and so on, right?
I mean, it’s not like there’s THREE right wing pro govt Indian subreddits which constantly harangue and badger the main sub, attack ABCDesis and are coordinating some sort of absurd propaganda war to make it seem that r/India is.... what?
No no. It’s a conspiracy.
The reddit frontpage is a cesspool worse than 4chan. At least in 4chan people don't try to hide behind fake veneers of moral superiority.
I stopped visiting the site after the pulse shooting in Orlando when moderators deleted my post listing blood donation facilities in the Orlando area.
"Tencent imposes new regulations on streamers in China"
Yes, these regulations are currently China-specific, but (1) that's bad enough itself, (2) Companies may apply censorship worldwide as a an engineering-simplification measure.
> they'd get laughed in the face as the founders just walked next door to the next VC firm on Sand Hill Road.
Money talks, and Tencent and other Chinese companies have a lot. Once they've bought their stake, they can't be simply laughed off.
I don't think it's so easy, because the issue wouldn't come up during funding, it'd happen later.
Also - the vast majoriy of companies do not 'waltz into VC to raise money'. Consider that if they are taking Chinese money, it might be a sign they had difficulty with American firms, because why would you take money from a super foreign investor if some entity in the Valley would fund you? 'Better terms'? Well, those terms might have 'strings attached'.
But I think it's right to point out the possibility that this mightn't be rampant.
Maybe it's more common, possibly on a case to case basis, but I don't think startups are acting in the 'strategic interest of Donald Trumps trade war' plan, so to speak.
Can we say with certainty that American money isn't coming to other countries with strings attached ?
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1137831840188948485
At any rate none of this is different from what Saudi citizens have been doing for years in Europe and USA.
The US is an enabler of Saudi nonsense, but the Saudi state is not being propped up with American resources. They would be powerful in the region regardless of American support.
At the same level? I have my doubts. If they weren't a close ally of the US, terrorist financing/leading stings would be going much further. Would they be able to do their thing in Yemen without US support? Or would they be a pariah on the world stage because of their acts, which are hard to tell apart from those of ISIS/ISIL? Not that I'm a big fan of the Iranian Mullahs and their backwards idea of how to run a society, but they appear somewhat moderate compared to the wahabi style.
The United States meets its own definition of a rogue state.
Agreed. I've said this before and say it again - if a Chinese acquirer is willing to buy your company for a much higher multiplier than their Western counterparts then there is an obvious reason.
No, they don't want to be a separate nation. It's a more complex situation than that. Taiwan considers itself as the Republic of China, where they consider the government in Beijing to be illegitimate, and reject communist rule.
Note that the rest of the world has also moved on, when we say "China" we also mean the one ruled by the government in Beijing, which makes the whole situation more complex.
> No, they don't want to be a separate nation. It's a more complex situation than that. Taiwan considers itself as the Republic of China, where they consider the government in Beijing to be illegitimate, and reject communist rule.
Tell that to the currently-ruling Democratic Progressive Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Progressive_Party#P...):
> The current official position of the party is that the "Republic of China (Taiwan)" is an independent and sovereign country whose territory consists of Taiwan and its surrounding smaller islands and whose sovereignty derives only from the ROC citizens living in Taiwan (similar philosophy of self-determination), based on the "Resolution on Taiwan's Future" in 1999. It considers Taiwan independence to be a current fact, making a formal declaration of independence unnecessary.
It is a more complex situation, but your view is dated. Taiwan has to maintain the fiction that it still supports a one-China policy, because to do otherwise and declare independence would invite Beijing's wrath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#PRC...
There is a growing movement in Taiwan to give up on this claim and instead pursue an existence as a de jure, rather than merely de facto independent nation.
(Thank you, I'll be here all week)
Whose value proposition to whom?
Any VC that asks non-independent third parties to review your code should be shunned.
I know startup founders that have raised Chinese money and not regretted it, but it's important that it be "dumb money", i.e. they give you cash and go away while you write an occasional investor update and grow the business. Active Chinese investors (i.e. anything where you give up board seats, decision-making power, strategic partnerships, etc.) are bad news. You want to be in a position where if your investors ask you for something you can just ignore them.
What reasonable investor would put themselves in that position? They're just going to give their money away and not have any say in what happens?
This is the same position that every retail investor, every LP of a venture or hedge fund, every shareholder of a company where the founder controls a majority of voting stock, and every person with a pension or 401(k) puts themselves into. You could argue about whether that's a stupid thing to do, but it's the vast majority of shareholders within the world, so stupid or not, lots of people do take that bargain.
I've personally done this for multiple companies that the enterprise I work for has purchased.
In all cases it was a 1-day review, while supervised by someone from the company being purchased.
It seems perfectly reasonable to get an idea of the state of what you are planning to purchase.
Very idealistic and not the way I think at all. What are you going to do? Stop using any product associated with China? Where do you draw the line exactly? And who is to say that all chinese investors are the same anyway? Are you going to vet future investors (from any place) fully to make sure they are clean in every way and their intentions are pure? Or are you simply going to decide after the fact that you did enough when it actually makes no difference at all and you can say 'wow I wish I never did that'.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/09/chinese-cinema-e...
All film and media is propagandistic in some way. Just because you swing the needle in a different direction doesn't change that fact.
To add to that, one of America's biggest exports is it's culture - see "Military Recruitment and Hollywood" https://youtu.be/N5xfBtD6rLY
The reason is not that much about nationalism or soft-power. Filmmakers want to make money, and when you have a big enough consumer market filmmakers avoid controversial topics to get a chance to capture it.
We provide a SaaS for data analytics and often we hold a copy of the client database to provide rapid answers to queries.
We were recently finalizing a deal with a US based retailer when it came out that we worked operated in China and the tone of the conversation shifted immediately. They literally sought all manners of guarantees on data security and storage that were unnecessary, but due to the current climate, seems to make everyone paranoid.
Now we have to specificlly mention in our integration docs that when we do multi-zone backups, none of those backups are in China. They never were, but now we have to be explicit because it's coming up in so many of our conversations.
Our pilot with the Chinese company ends in November. We are seriously considering terminating the deal because it's trending towards the case where we can either have China, or Non-China markets. Not both.
I worked with US and European financial institutions who regularly requested / needed guarantees that data (not necessary financial data, all sorts of data), who had access to what, and etc.
Most of it all seemed design to ensure that the things / company / people were within a reasonable legal context, sometimes that context was just what country the data was in, the people who worked on it.
Laws provide everyone a framework to know how things might play out if something goes wrong, if someone is in a country that generally doesn't respect those laws all rules are out the window.
>> Now we have to specificlly mention in our integration docs that when we do multi-zone backups, none of those backups are in China.
"Silicon Valley startup Pilot AI Labs Inc. signed a Chinese-backed venture-capital firm as its first big investor. By last summer, Pilot AI wanted it gone.
The U.S. startup hoped to sell more of its artificial-intelligence software to the U.S. government after working with the Pentagon, according to people familiar with its operations, and worried its effort could be hurt by the investor’s ties to China’s government. The chairman of the Chinese-backed investor, Digital Horizon Capital, was asked to sell back its stake, said one of the people. He angrily refused.
Chinese investors were once embraced in Silicon Valley both for their pocketbooks and their access to one of the world’s largest and trickiest markets. Today, they are suddenly less welcome.
Since late last year, amid rising U.S-China tensions, venture firms with China ties have been dialing back their U.S. investments, structuring deals in novel ways to avoid regulators or shutting their U.S. offices. Some American venture firms are dumping their Chinese limited partners or walling them off with special structures. And some U.S. startups that have taken significant Chinese money are keeping the investments quiet or trying to push their Chinese investors out to avoid scrutiny..."
Things have been on a strong downtrend since 2012 and alarms have been ringing loud since around 2014.
Edit: Anyone writing a business plan including sensitive technology sales to the US government should DEFINITELY have seen this coming in 2016.
Edit2: Also, candidate Trump had loudly been yelling about China for over a year at that point
Can you elaborate?
He ramped up control over the population, consolidated power for himself and cracked down on dissidents/party criticism.
The 2014 bit is more subjective, but going from memory that's when I started to regularly see semi-mainstream technology, business and politics publications focusing on problems/concerns with China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...
The principle of fair use is just part of copyright law, and there's no need to explicitly invoke it when availing yourself of it.
I generally sympathize with the position of rejecting Saudi money where possible, but it's inaccurate to frame US policy towards China in purely moral terms. In the case of China, there's a lot of ideological self-interest at stake for the US.
Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states are vassals of the US.
Not exactly the same level of threat if you ask me
Resources are also being pulled out of China, as U.S. companies have spent the last several decades plowing tens (if not hundreds) of billions into China a year. It'll be a fairly large windfall coming out of China as well. To India, Mexico, Taiwan, the United States, etc.
To think the two are comparable is just head in the sand at this point.
Our government is worried about competition in tech, not investment in our equity markets. One is viewed as harmful, the other we depend on.
I am disappointed by this entire affair. I like to see each country have its own culture and uniqueness, but I would like the world economic and tech engines to function well for everyone. Even playing field.
No powerful US entities have a vested interest in keeping foreign Chinese money out of US real estate, especially if it's due to wealthy individuals investing abroad. The real estate owners win, the developers win, construction companies win, the mortgage-underwriting banks win, the losers are the young/renters/non-capital owners seeking jobs in these hotspot areas because their rent just goes up and up per square meter. This segment of the population has no political power, they can only hope to make enough to put a down payment on a house and join the vested interests as capital owners - hopefully the bubble doesn't burst taking their job and leaving their mortgage underwater. The exception here would be if a Chinese government-owned investment vehicle tried to purchase large swathes of real estate, it could potentially use this large investment as a weapon to control cost of living/tank real estate values in that area if the government wanted to.
The real reason is because US technology (networking, telecom, A&D, automotive) companies have a huge vested interest in keeping their competitive advantage over Chinese technology companies which are on the cusp of transforming from cheaper/lower quality alternatives to preferred suppliers in building out information technology infrastructure globally, including in the US. The US government also has a huge vested interest in controlling this infrastructure, especially in the US, or at least being on good terms with the companies that build and manage it. It doesn't want partially government-owned and directed companies like Huawei supplying complicated and sometimes unvettable hardware and software over which Americans send each other vital information.
[1] China's central bank uses a modified version of a traditional fixed exchange rate. That's different from the floating exchange rate the United States and many other countries use. The People's Bank of China manages the yuan's value. It keeps it fixed to a basket of currencies reflecting its trading partners. The basket is weighted toward the dollar since the United States is China's largest trading partner. It keeps the yuan's value within a 2 percent range against that currency basket.
Why does China fix the yuan's value to the dollar? It manages its currency to control the prices of its exports. It wants to make sure its exports are reasonably priced when sold in the United States. Every country would like to do this, but few have China's ability to manage it so well. China's command economy allows it to control the central bank and many businesses. As a result, the Communist Party directs China's economy. The U.S. government regulates exchange rates instead of managing them.
https://www.thebalance.com/how-does-china-influence-the-u-s-...
It's said that most of this cash has pushed up prices mostly on the West coast, but I have this belief that a lot of money has trickled into almost all metro areas of the US. I can't see any other reason for home prices to be so out of whack in medium-sized US cities with no apparent influence (e.g. Amazon HQ2 in DC).
Prices have dropped where I live (although could easily be due to other causes). Mortgage rates have also dropped recently.
Equity has power and influence over companies.
If you want high value news, you have to pay someone a reasonable salary to report/write it.
Anyway, hope you enjoy and here's another fun part of the story:
The FBI office has conducted hundreds of briefings for companies on cybersecurity threats and economic espionage. It discourages people from using their regular smartphones and laptops when traveling in China and warns male U.S. executives to avoid “honeypot” espionage attempts by attractive women. “If you’re not a 10 in the U.S., you’re not a 10 in China,” officials say they’ve told the executives.
Thanks for hopping in to engage here, where paywalls are met with hostility. I appreciate both sides of this argument.
But thanks especially for the reporting!
Are you planning any follow-ups on this topic? If so, would you like to be contacted with possible leads?
Not true. If you're a 5 in the US, you're not a 10 in China. However, being Asian might well cost you a point or two in the US, depending on whom you ask. There are some weird cultural things going on in the US, in particular, manifesting as biases. I was raised in a place where we literally had to drive almost 50 miles to visit other Asian friends of the family. I have some perspective on this matter. Up until around 2011, it was not hard to find online assertions that Asian men were fundamentally less masculine and desirable, and it's still not impossible today.
Decades ago, I'd been called a "hottie." Strangely, the reactions I've gotten from women have varied tremendously -- more than makes sense to me. My conclusion after all these years, is that it had more to do with them than with myself.
My wife is from Fujian province in China. She has 4 degrees, including a PhD from Stanford. She used to perform Salsa dance. There's a video of her dancing in a gold sequined outfit looking like a starlet from the 60's. (Not public and which I'm not going to post, thank you.) She used to date millionaires, before I somehow snagged her. I've talked to her about these issues of bias, and my conclusion from those talks, is that, yes, there's some weird, pervasive "filter" in US culture, with regards to Asian men.
(I think it's in the same category of phenomena as the "Shiksa" attraction.)
I know for a fact my white female friends (at least in high school and college) had large biases against Asian dudes.
What's worse, it seems that many American-Asian women go for white guys instead of Asian men, though I have no idea why.
On the flip side, I believe I do get an extra few points with the ladies when I travel to Asian countries. I don't know if it's because they assume I'm wealthy (which I am compared to most in low wage Asian countries) or if it is just the foreign novelty.
And it's kind of a stereotype now where the unattractive American or British gent goes over to East / SE Asia to teach English (and pick up a girlfriend or bride).
Thanks for this! I dislike identity politics when used as a bludgeon for the sake of power. However, many of the phenomena talked about are indeed real.
There's one Brazillian rom com, where the Chinese boyfriend was something of the "bad guy" or at least the punching bag. There's nothing about the character that's actually characterization. It's all about his being an Asian guy, who furnishes his apartment in a stereotypical "Asian" fashion, teaches martial arts, only ever wears his martial arts uniform, and makes gross noises in the bathroom. Wish I could remember the name of that movie.
And it's kind of a stereotype now where the unattractive American or British gent goes over to East / SE Asia to teach English (and pick up a girlfriend or bride).
It also works like this for Irish and Scottish guys with that "cute accent."
It was a good read! I appreciated your work!
Lets not forget that elizabeth holmes and the theranos nonsense was built up by journalists. Lets not forget that she was the media darling of an agenda driven "journalists" who wanted to push a narrative rather than search for the truth.
Crediting the WSJ or journalists for the theranos story is like crediting an arsonist firefighters for putting out the fire they themselves set.
Lest we forget.
https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/11620036/theranos-ceo-elizabe...
If raising the number of trading partners decreases the likelihood of war, decreasing may increase it's chance instead.
Also worth noting that the claim is more trading partners lowers likelihood of war. War can still happen.
At some point, economic interdependence cannot save a situation where two sides desperately want to change/preserve the state of something (about the world) and those desires come into conflict.
IMO, with US-China, the best inoculation against war would be to push for multilateral engagement... in either direction. But speaking from the US side, US needs to bring other countries into the efforts to reform the aspects of the CCP's behavior that are unacceptable long term.
A lot of people only familiar with the surface link this to the trade war and Huawei, but those are largely reactions to the scope and reach of China's propaganda, control, and soft-power efforts that have been coming to light over the past few years.
Ultimately I believe these are all symptoms caused by a fundamental incompatibility between China's "communist", fascist government and the liberal democracies of the world. Unless that can be reconciled, which I don't believe it really can, everything else is just managing for time.
It's funny how many people are emotionally attached to the delusion that they are psychic. I honestly wonder where they got that idea.
FYI: xenophobia =\= racism
> We should have Japan and we should have Saudi Arabia and we should have all of these countries who are literally ripping us off left and right.... They should pay for our $200-billion deficit.... We are supporting -- we are literally supporting -- Japan, which is the greatest money machine ever created, and we created it to a large extent. -Donald Trump
> There is going to be a tremendous backlash against what Japan is doing in this country -- sucking the lifeblood out of it because of our stupid policies. Our policy is to have free trade, but Japan is not reciprocating. -Donald Trump
There were complaints about Japan not opening its domestic market to American products, about Japan buying up American companies, about cheap Japanese knockoffs of American products, and about Japanese companies being tightly connected with the government. The phrase back then was "Japan, Inc.," rather than today's "China, Inc."
Interestingly, while Japan was criticized for copying American products, the hysteria about Japan really took off as Japan began competing seriously with the United States in high-tech sectors. There's a clear parallel to China there. Now that Huawei has invested heavily in R&D and leads in 5G equipment, we suddenly hear about Huawei stealing Cisco IP in the early 2000s (the two companies settled in 2004, and one of the major claims was that Huawei copied an implementation of strcmp). China has become more serious about protecting IP and now invests as much as the US in R&D, but the issue of IP theft is suddenly urgent.
Given the demographics of HN, it's probably difficult for most people here to imagine this, but in the 1980s, there was palpable fear in the United States that Japan was taking over. There was a general angst about the United States being displaced as the #1 world power, but there was also fear of the rival's inscrutable and ominous culture.
As you correctly point out, there is a hysteria about Russians at the moment, as well. I think the US is primed for this because of the long history of anti-Russian propaganda during the Cold War.
When it comes to China, I see all sorts of extra negative characterizations of Chinese people coming into play. I've seen threads here on HN which people go on about how Chinese students are cheaters, and how Chinese culture promotes cheating. That's just an outrageous and ignorant characterization of Chinese culture, and I do think it represents a type of widespread prejudice.
What happens if countries want to buy dollars? The U.S. government (well, the Fed) has to print them. If you look at the balance of trade and look at the dollar as a printed thing, the US is very good at getting the rest of the world to buy their dollars (that can be just printed or magically made on a computer screen) and getting real stuff in return. I wish I could print money and get boxes of nice shiny iphones, shoes and other trinkets.
I think this is a pretty successful exploitation model. The dollars printed to go overseas to buy oil and other stuff don't come back to cause inflation. Apart from anything else, if another country decides to dump its dollars then if that did cause inflation in the US then that would devalue their remaining holding.
Meanwhile the US can spend as much as it wants on gunboats and the like to enforce this hegemony.
If you benefit from this system, i.e. by being an American, then the dollar is far from toxic. If you are a farmer in a developing nation trying to sell wheat then your view of the dollar may be different.
Essentially if a country is to have their currency as the world's reserve currency then they have to run at a deficit.
Since all those extra dollars that get printed go overseas they are not in the US economy to cause price inflation, i.e. too much money chasing too few goods.
https://qz.com/1266044/why-does-the-us-run-a-trade-deficit-t...
Fast forward 7 years later and it's a ghost town, they cite "business need" but somehow all the jobs have moved abroad and the only thing remaining in Alberta is a resource pump sending all the value abroad.
This comment is not intended to be about racially Chinese people, but the constantly malicious and negative behavior of the communist government in China.
CCP has done horrible things, but it isn’t really a CCP specific behavior; any greedy capitalist would have done the same.
Why not? The resource is still coming from Canada, they still need these employees. They're just shifting the jobs to China.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-cash-is-suddenly-toxic-...
Christian Science Monitor is apparently an overperformer (very modest brand awareness and hence very affordable, but generally respected for its journalism).
I'm still a big proponent of a micropayments system where my browser can automatically send a single- or double-digit amount of cents to the publisher (with my permission, of course) when I read an article. But I have no expectation of something like that gaining traction.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-cash-is-suddenly-toxic-...
The discussions are often fruitful even if not everyone can read it.
(For News+ - open the article, click the sharesheet, select Open in News)
Rather, the claim of toxicity stems from the perceived tendency for Chinese investors to be difficult LPs and steal intellectual property both pre-deal during diligence and post-deal once they are in the capital structure. There's an additional perception of 'toxicity' in terms of the way that having Chinese investors might limit a company's ability to procure US Gov contracts, which is getting tighter under this administration, as described in the article.
The comparison to sending your kid to an Ivy League school makes no sense to me whatsoever, seems like a total non-sequitur.
IP theft/strongarming and sales opportunities are the more likely concerns from the entrepreneur/business side.
Some people are taking the moral stance, but TFA lines up with parent comment well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
https://www.france24.com/en/20190510-reporters-plus-survivin...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-...
From a purely tech perspective, state-sponsored hacking[5] and IP theft[6] are common.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
[3] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/china...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
[5] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/state-hacking-1220201...
[6] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...
This judgement coming from the country with the highest incarceration rate, criminalized abortion, caged immigrants, historic systematic racism, legal bribery (lobbying), genrrymandering electoral system, countless invasions with disastrous results in the middle east, africa & asia
Don't get me wrong but outside the US everyone is wondering what is the moral high ground?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Criticism
Others have criticized the usage of accusations of whataboutism by American news outlets, arguing that the accusation whataboutism has been used to simply "deflect" criticisms of human rights abuses perpetrated by the United States or its allies.
They argue that the usage of the term almost exclusively by American outlets is a double standard, and that moral accusations made by powerful countries are merely a pretext to punish their geopolitical rivals in the face of their own wrongdoing.
In fact, invoking 'whataboutism' in the way you have done is a misuse and a deliberate attempt to deflect.
[1] https://econofact.org/what-is-the-problem-of-forced-technolo...
Nationalistic flamebait is not ok on HN. Would you please stop posting that, and political flamebait in general, so we don't have to ban you again?
China is emerging geopolitical rival (balance) to the US (and the West in general).
Mainstream US media is great at amplifying US govt propaganda and publishing hit pieces on US rivals (see media portrayals of Soviet Union during the Cold war as an example: https://www.e-ir.info/2013/10/26/the-role-of-the-media-durin... ) or of Japan during the 80s (see https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/japan_in_the_us_press_bi...).
The same is happening against China now and there is an effort to shame anyone with contacts with China.
There was a great look at American 'propaganda' in one of the China in Africa podcast where they were debating whether Voice of America is American propaganda. I think their specific debate was about the term collateral debt in relation to the infrastructure projects China has undertaken in Africa and the agreements that support them. It really helped me see that while the term is still sharply defined when speaking about "other" nation's propaganda, American's have a very difficult time extracting ideas which were put out by the American government and picked up as talking points by the media.
I don't know if propaganda is still the correct term anymore, but it at least feels like group think, which worries me.
My company automates things, not creates economic or political policy.
Consider the following:
1. The Chinese communist government derives its legitimacy to rule almost exclusively from its massive economic growth (i.e. Chinese citizens and corporations are effectively saying to themselves "I'm ok to trade some of my human rights for lots of money")
2. The Chinese communist government wishes to remain in power
So if the US decides to target Chinese economic growth - i.e. lower the amount of money that an unit of human rights could buy - this should cause the Chinese citizens and corporations to respond by exercising the human right that the Chinese government is no longer able to buy with growth. In turn, this would cause the Chinese government to use alternative methods (i.e. straight-up oppression by force) to prevent the Chinese people from becoming unruly.
This sort of pressure on the Chinese government may lead to reform (which is indeed a good thing), but it may also lead to civil / politic unrest and a massive economic slow-down that will have aftershocks around the world (which is certainly less than ideal) - and all of this pretty much will depend on how Xi decides to handle this pressure.
Here in the US, We should at least recognize that this is a risky move and take measures to protect ourselves against this (somehow)
I think the only reason the CPC regime might change is due to economic problems. The more abrupt they would be, the better: people need to remember better times and demand change to get back there — including people at higher positions in CPC itself.
Remember how the "cultural revolution" fiasco led to serious liberalization and eventually to the "economic miracle".
It was brought to its knees by economic issues. It was defeated by helping install a puppet imbecile. And looking at current affairs, I suspect they may have held a grudge.
The times they are a-changin!
That's peanuts; check out this: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/119106...
> The awkward moment reportedly arose when the Facebook founder, speaking in Mandarin, asked Mr Xi if could would honour him by giving his unborn baby daughter an honorary Chinese name. According to sources, Mr Xi politely declined, saying it was “too much responsibility”, reported Page Six, a celebrity news site for the New York Post.
It's a weird switch. Before we would sell billions in arms around the world with little risk of it being used against us. But digital munitions can be used against anyone, anywhere, any time. The USG will have to tightly control all tech used in the country to prevent cyber weaponry being used against us.