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Comment by klelatti | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that it's not the 51% (and I think some of the 51% may be held by non Chinese investors) that has been key but rather Allen Wu having the seal - so even without control of the board he's still been able to get control of the company.

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Author here, there is a Singaporean investor as well, but they have deep Chinese ties. I agree with your assessment. Allen Wu is an American citizen too, but loyal to China with deep CCP contacts.

Since you are the author, there's a near duplicated paragraph below the CPU/XPU pictures, the paragraphs starts with "Besides standing out and calling themselves".

Very interesting content otherwise, I remember the seal issue being something very controversial too when other companies went there (I believe it was regarding Intel, that was maybe 15 years ago). To this day it still is a pretty prevalent issue when doing local branches in China.

Thanks, I messed up when copying to from the actual site to the Substack, which is the one being shared here. Thanks!

Did he register with the US gov. as a foreign agent? If not, he should be apprehended next time he enters the US.

Go look up the actual requirement for FARA before spewing nonsense.

The FARA act covers a person who “solicits, collects, disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or other things of value within the United States” while acting in the interests of a “foreign government, a foreign political party, any person outside the United States ... and any entity organized under the laws of a foreign country or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.”

But an individual person is not a foreign entity, especially not if they are a US citizen.

There is the loophole for "representing interests of a foreign principal before US government officials" though, so I guess this is written broadly enough to snag anyone who may step on some toes.

Who’s talking about the person being a foreign entity? You’re seriously confused.

Please don't cross into personal attack. If another commenter is confused, or you feel they are, it's enough to supply correct information in a helpful spirit. Alternatively, it's always fine not to post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You can't throw out accusations like that without evidence, what deep CCP contacts Allen Wu has? Elon Musk has a factory in Shanghai, is he "loyal to China with deep CCP contacts" too?

This is China, deep contacts with the CCP are expected. You can be sure that neither Musk nor Tesla has full control of the factory.

Basically every large corporation in existence has deep government ties, but CCP bad

Last time I checked the US wasn't harvesting organs, running concentration camps, blatantly committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Yes, CCP bad.

In fact, the US is doing all of those things.

Nope, it's only doing #2, and in far smaller numbers.

I'll agree with this but the difference is drastic. Compare the number of people in Guantanamo to the number of people in Xinjiang. An order of magnitude of an order of magnitude difference.

Guantanamo is an embarrassment but it isn't even close to the Xinjiang camps

America killed a million Muslims just in the time that I've been alive. China has done nothing so psychopathic and cruel.

Again, laughable. Care to justify that figure?

That's not nearly as bad as the 16 billion Uighurs the Chinese have in camps right now.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/unworthy-victims-weste...

Just say you don't care. The most unbearing thing for us is that you claim to care while brutalizing and fetishizing others to justify your own crusade.

How many Muslims has America sterilized and brainwashed?

I don't have the numbers on Muslims, but here you go: https://en.mundohispanico.com/the-uterus-collector-sterilize...

You've probably already thought of multiple excuses, because you've been conditioned not to think of immigrants in concentration camps as people.

That's because concentration camps refers to your own citizens. Which doesn't excuse what happened in those US facilities. This isnt a trivial distinction; government's have a specific responsibility to their own citizens which goes above and beyond. Besides which china does some super sketch stuff on its border with north Korea.

How about you don't make assumptions about who you're talking to?

You are comparing indirect casualties from a war to people intentionally murdered in concentration camps.

You are correct. I don't find that in any way to be a compelling argument.

I think you meant million instead of billion (ironic in a thread quibbling over orders of magnitude)

no, I'm pointing out how easy it is to make up numbers.

Very curious where the US is commiting genocide or ethnic cleansing. Honestly want to know.

Iraq and Afghanistan until recently. And we send billions to Israel which is a straight up apartheid state. That's not even getting into the millions of minorities in the world's largest prison population. We also killed a significant portion of the vietnamese population, in the millions. Also, you should look into the decades of CIA interventions in dozens of latin American countries.

have you heard of indian reservations?

You’re joking right? Indian reservations are their land. And they are free to move live work where ever without government oversight. This comment must be bait because I don’t see the logic.

This is laughable.

America has the largest slave population in the world, both per capita and in absolute numbers. I know you think that's funny, but most people don't.

i agree. the problem i have with the author's comment is "loyal". I think we need to distinguish people from justing trying to make money (apple, microsoft, tesla) and being CCP agents.

The author clearly suggests this American CEO is a "loyal CCP" agent. I am just curious how did she/he spot him?

Thanks for an interesting piece. Presumably Wu wouldn't have done this if he didn't have (or think he has) CCP approval? Also Son with his long term business interests in China probably thought he would be OK. Someone has miscalculated badly?

Arm China was conceived and even happened before Arm was bought by Softbank

I don’t understand why this is buried and not at the top. Thanks for the article.

> but loyal to China with deep CCP contacts

What are the evidence of this? Other than him being self interested and commit misconduct.

Allen Wu having the seal

For those of us not familiar with Chinese business practices, is this an actual seal? Like someone would use to frank documents, or squish into hot wax to seal documents? Or is it a symbolic seal, like a legal document, or something else?

These days it's a round plastic handle with a carved rubber bottom that pairs with a spongy red-ink filled bottom. There's a picture and an explanation at [1]. It basically functions the same way as the signature of an authorized representative of the company does in the West.

Presumably it comes out of personal seals which are a fun item to get if you're in China. I never interacted with someone who used them, but it's cool. See pictures at [2] and history at [3].

"Chop" is also frequently used instead of "seal". I assume its not onomatopoedic, but that is a fair description of the "thunk" sound produced to when the seal is quickly pounded against the document on the table.

[1] https://www.china-briefing.com/news/company-chops-in-china/

[2] https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/culture/chinese-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(East_Asia)

In Japan seals/stamps (hanko) are still widely used as signatures.

Ditto Korea. Something that shocked me is that it is common in medium-sized sole proprietorships (tech startups, small businesses, research labs) for the CEO to give their personal seal to the accountants/secretaries. It the West the equivalent would be giving away an autopen for your signature.

It’s more common in the west than you think - we had a printer loaded with MIRC toner and a SIMM with the CEOs signature for printing checks.

There are different grades of seals for different purposes. The secretary will have the garden-variety "The company has received this shipment" chop; they will not have the "The company has agreed to this contract" chop.

I wonder if they were giving their full official seal? I suppose if you're signing a ton of documents, handing that over might be needed. It would be interesting if there were a system to register certain seals with only some permissions (for example, manage business but not personal assets with a green seal). You could create a document stamped with your most important seal that indicates which seal is permissible for which purpose.

In Japan, the official "hanko" seal with red ink carries the force of a signature, but other seals do not carry as much or any legal weight.

https://www.nippon.com/en/features/jg00077/

That article talks a little bit about a similar system to the one I mentioned, where one seal is used for banking, one for title transactions, etc. Something like that but more customizable could be pretty useful.

in western companies, executive assistants very often have the exact same ability, up to and including signed full power of attorneys for executing on the ceo’s life where work blends into personal life.

i’m not surprised at this at all.

in the western context many executive assistants end up being appointed the executor of the ceo’s estate / will as a matter of business continuity.

Japan, Korea, Vietnam, China all using seal/stamp

It's a thing in the US too. Just formed a C-Corp and power to create a seal that serves as the company's official signature is one of the parts that needs to be figured out in bylaws. You can specify that the current Chairman or CEO's signature counts as a seal, but you legally need some seal entity so that .gov knows what's legally binding. We elected to have an actual seal just for the kitsch value of it. Why make a company if you can't have a little fun with it?

That's the problem with physical seal...

A chairmanner can be declared by the board, and the power of his seal goes with that automatically.

Say, somebody steals a seal now...

Sensible businesses usually keep the seal locked up somewhere in the head office, probably with a backup in a safety deposit box at their bank. They certainly don't let the CEO take it home with them.

Yes, there are corporate seals in the USA as well. Sometimes it is an embosser, others an ink stamp.

I don't quite understand this either, isn't this something where you could make a new seal with the same design? Does the original seal have something specific that's not supposed to be copied? Or is this like the copyright ownership of the company's seal?

The seal for a Chinese company is registered with the local government. An important part of verifying China contracts is double-checking the seal.

In my country seals are used for business. There's a legal arsenal that makes forging a company seal or using it without authority more risky than dealing drugs. You can get in jail for life for this kind of crime. It's very efficient because companies making seals took the habit of asking for a proof of authority for making the seal representing a company to shield themselves from prosecution

Not really. The key here is that he needed to maintain legality, by contesting the ruling of the board and suing, he can now argue he is still the boss and keep the seal till chinese justice deliberates.

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