Technically, there are two governments that claim to be China: the People's Republic of China, and the Republic of China. Both claim to rule Taiwan and mainland China. "China", then, is underspecified, because no one means to claim that the ROC is running concentration camps.
Edit: maybe I should add that we do moderate posts that are just political, i.e. don't have an intellectually curious angle, as well as threads that depart from the path of curious discussion and sink into flames.
The reason given was "change of leadership", i.e., from Sam Altman to Geoff Ralston. Interestingly, Geoff wrote: "we are just working on launching YC China and I'll work hard to make sure Qi Lu has everything he needs to make that go well" after he was appointed, so it doesn't seem like he started out with different ideas.
Even YC is cowed into silence by the might of China. Understandably so, even if somewhat cowardly. Does YC want China to boycott or otherwise disable YC companies? Does YC want to threaten any future relationship with China? No. So they keep mum as to their real reasons.
Don't be silly, Sam Altman said that he was much more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco; YC couldn't possibly be self-censoring because of fear of Chinese reprisal.
These criticisms don't even make sense. YC is announcing that they're not expanding formally into China, which is something China very much would want them to do.
I am sure China would gladly welcome YC and all the IP it has access to.
There is no question China presents an opportunity to generate capital returns on a scale that YC can no longer achieve in the more mature US venture capital market. They also present many risks that are hard to put in an equation.
China could still do a lot of harm to both YC companies and what and who remains of YC china/MiraclePlus. Its pretty obvious that the boss woke up one day and gee we decided to completely withdraw from a country isn't the whole story.
Why disturb waters unnecessarily? YC's statement seems more like "let's wait for a better time" than self-censorship.
If YC truly saw no chance for YC-China in the future, then I don't doubt they would come out and say so. However, that's a pretty strong statement, and I don't think anyone can make such a prediction. There is always a chance for a more serendipitous time in the future.
While "As we worked to establish YC China, we had a change in leadership. With this, our strategy changed back " does give 50% of the answer as to "why", I'd be great to hear from otherwise transparent YC about why the strategy changed and why it didn't work out.
would be good to hear what they plan on doing instead.
YC China was a bet at doing something different. With that gone—and idk if it should have stayed or gone.. sometimes experiments fail—what is YCs plan?
Invite 200, 300, 500, 20,000 companies to SF? maybe it is the best option, but also maybe not the best thing to do. YC Seems stuck in an innovator's dilemma. Reminds me of Apple under Tim Cook. Keeping a good thing going, but nothing innovative.
They probably have a significant investment from Chinese LPs. It could put those investors in a very awkward situation if YC was more explicit with their statement -- we've all seen how childishly defensive the Chinese government can get.
That money isn't that important. History isn't going to look back and think that YCombinator should have done more to look out for the wealth Chinese investors.
RFA is a US propaganda operation. Leave it up to them to make "sleeping with the wives of detained Uyghur men" sound like the job description of those government agents, rather than a consequence of poor people not having free guest beds on hand, so they have to share beds with someone, potentially with the whole household. Also clever use of "sleep with" to imply sex. (I don't doubt that some will abuse their power, but I'd expect Uyghur families to think far enough ahead to have another male relative in the same room, if not the same bed.)
EDIT: I posted this as a bit of an experiment. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21601613 I link to a TV program criticising the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs. Here I criticize blatant propaganda published by an organization funded by the US government for precisely that purpose. Almost an hour later, this comment is at -4 while the other is at +6. Agreement-based voting at it's finest, but I'm not going to let propaganda slide just because it pushes a viewpoint I agree with.
Sadly the tabloid-style coverage of this horrific Chinese government policy is causing people to discount the broader issue.
The Chinese government sent government workers to take time off their normals jobs and live in the homes of Uighur Muslims suspected of disloyalty to the Chinese government. More than a million Uighur households had monitors sleeping in their rooms and watching their lives for troublesome signs like the children not using patriotic greetings or the parents wanting to keep Muslim dietary guidelines.
In this article "relatives" refers to Han Chinese government monitors and "little brothers" and "little sisters" refers to the Muslims they watched.
> The relatives were given written guidelines on how to conduct themselves. Based on reports from Uighur contacts in Urumqi and Khotan, such manuals provided guidelines and forms that needed to be filled out and then digitized for security databases. In a manual that was used in Kashgar prefecture, relatives were given specific instructions on how to get their little brothers and sisters to “let down their guard.” The manual, which was posted on the internet but taken down just as this story was going to press, advises relatives to show “warmth.” “Don’t lecture right away,” it suggests, and show concern regarding their families and bring candy for the children. It provides a checklist that included questions such as: “When entering the household, do family members appear flustered and use evasive language?” “Do they not watch TV programs at home and instead only watch VCD discs?” “Are there any religious items still hanging on the walls of the house?”
> The manual instructs the relatives to tell their little brothers and sisters that they have been monitoring all internet and cell-phone communication that is coming from the family, so they should not even think about lying when it comes to their knowledge of Islam and religious extremism.
> The manual also instructs them to help the villagers alleviate their poverty by giving them business advice and helping out around the household. They were told to report any resistance to “poverty alleviation activities.”
I could get more internationally sourced coverage if you really need. More or less the only MSM not covering the Uighur concentration camps are the Chinese MSM.
I know my comment will be downvoted for sure because it isn't a popular idea, but I'm still gonna comment on this.
Reading news about any foreign country, including China, only from US MSM, is inherently biased (sampling bias). Maybe consider reading news from Chinese outlets in this case?
I know people will start arguing that Chinese outlets are mainly propagandas because they are controlled by governments and they are not independent...
But, but are we sure that Deutsche Welle or Japan Times are unbiased?
For example, Deutsche Welle is funded by German government. [1], and the editors of the Japan Times were appointed by their government [2].
Yes, German and Japanese governments are more trustworthy than the Chinese government, but every country has its own foreign policy and political agenda. Are we sure that we are not being "brainwashed" by those media outlets?
This is happening within the US as well. Think conservative news outlets vs liberal outlets.
Basically the entire world except for China including independent non profits is reporting on the internment camps. At this point you have to be actively trying to excuse them to believe they are fictional.
I don’t think any major business in the world cares about this. They only care about things that affect their own revenue streams, and the average consumer isn’t boycotting companies for not doing anything about it.
Seriously. Show me one major corporation that cited this as a reason for pulling out of China. I’m not justifying the actions—I’m saying western industries don’t care about genocide. Because they don’t.
Loads of companies make political and social statements all the time. Whether it come to gay rights, protesting censorship, etc. None have said anything about the issues in Xinjiang.
The international community barely cares about what India is similarly doing in Kashmir, despite India being a democracy. In effect the most fundamental right in a democracy, the right to habeas corpus is suspended there.
There is much politically informed anti-China coverage in the MSM, so it is hard to take reports on China from them without much skepticism. Even in Hong Kong it is on display that the police are largely acting with restraint similar to what a western police force might behave, it is the protesters who have been violent.
That line just proves how much of an echo chamber this place really is when it comes to international affairs.
I live in India. I just had lunch with my colleague who is a Kashmiri native. His parents recently arrived from that state, and his father has returned back to run his medical shop. Though the situation is not ideal, it is a far cry away from being a breach of democracy or humanitarian concerns. The government has evoked constitutional law to maintain peace and order, largely as preventive measures against extremist operations and organisation. This has certainly affected the lives of daily citizens, no doubt, but the way western media blows it out of proportion one can just wonder whether it is genuinely clueless journalism or ideologically motivated smear campaign.
The international community as HNers know is just part of whole international community, all western countries. There is another part ignored by English media audience. I would speculate that most HNers see the other part as naive , bribed by China , or evil while Western countries are the owner of final truth and stand on the high moral ground. Totally exclude other possibilities.
My speculation about YC is that there are always something beyond our understanding so they choose not to make judgement for time being. If that's the case I applaud their altitude. Modern human have serious cognitive defects in my view.
Quote
"...
Those that signed the first letter, criticizing China, include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
Signing the second letter, in defense of China’s policies, were: Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Gabon, Kuwait, Laos, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.
How is that different from the US having fuck knows how many migrants (and children) in concentration camps, or "terrorists" in concentration camps, or slaves in overcrowded prisons, etc etc etc.
I mean not specifically you, but why are people in these comments all moral policing a country halfway across the world while their own is just as bad?
The migrants, while in a terrible plight, are technically coming into a foreign country without following the proper process. They're suffering a (deeply problematic) government response to that action, essentially a poorly done catch and deport process.
China is systematically doing this to its own citizens, and intentionally harvesting body parts from them.
What elephant? Can you be more specific about what's controversial about this? Expansion into China would at least be a coherent basis for this stuff; then, sure, you'd want to know what compromises YC might be forced to make to stay in the good graces of their new host. This is YC withdrawing from China.
They made a mistake of going into China. The abhorrent behavior of the Chinese government was highlighted in recent events, so YC decided to pull the plug. Perhaps change in leadership also played a role in this. There is definitely an up-tick in public outrange in the West vis-a-vis China.
If they overtly offend China this would negatively impact YC current portfolio companies, discourage current/future LP, and other make their business more difficult. So they went with an intermediate approach.
I agree with you. It's a tragedy of the commons, no one want to be "the one" who offends China if all their competitors do not. It's the same thing that drove the mad rush for Chinese market share.
However, despite realizing this problem, it is not clear what to do about it. Clearly, YC did not choose to become leaders on the issue.
>Yeah, no, I've read a newspaper in the last year.
Did you read one prior to Summer 2018? Because when YC decided to go into China, there were people in internment camps then too. This stuff didn't start last year:
The international Muslim community has no problem with them and agrees that peaceful deradicalization is the best course of action. The reeducation centers are successful. The western capitalist-owned press is busy demonizing China and the CPC so we are ok with violence used against China, it's part of their agenda. When the west cries humanitarian concerns, it's never for good reason, always selfish and with intent to dominate.
As one example of deception, I've seen people claim that muslims are "forced to drink in concentration camps", it's silly and not true.
There is so much misinformation regarding China. China helps all sorts of countries against western aggression. I support socialist projects like China and do not support a straight "free market" capitalist system. I like that they have state owned enterprises. I do not support the Hong Kong terrorists and really no one in the international left does.
I understand I didn't phrase that in the best way but parent's comment is exactly the kind of misinformation and misdirection that is endemic among discussions on things like Uighur oppression, Hong Kong, foreign property speculation and wealth parking distorting housing markets on the West Coast US and Canada, the Great Firewall, and others. One feels compelled to stand up to these things -- especially when I have friends who have been personally affected negatively by the points I posted above. The Chinese governments' deputizing of its expats to control foreign perceptions of it is something that needs to be called out.
edit- I see that you are aware of parent's tactics via replies to parent and comments, and I wrote this post before seeing that. I still stand by this argument even if its context is somewhat misinformed.
Your account has been using HN primarily for nationalistic and political battle. That's not allowed here, because it destroys the curiosity this site is supposed to be for. We ban accounts that keep doing this, so please don't keep doing this.
There was a post that sat on the front page for a very long time that was anti-china pro-us nationalistic political battle. It was some programmer's blog post. This post being allowed on the front page /was/ political battle which i was responding to. This thread less so but someone commented on Uyghurs so i responded. There has been an uptick in demonization of China by the Western press and that has been reflected on HN. Westerners did not show anti-china sentiment until recently. The people here do not seem curious about truly understanding China, i am just trying to spark some curiousity. If i post specific examples of why they are wrong is that a problem? The Uyghurs in Xinjiang do overwhelmingly support peaceful deradicalization so i don't understand how that is a problem, that is just information.
Why is it a problem what i "primarily" do? The only posts that really spur me to comment are these nationalistic one-sided pro-us anti-anyone-other posts and comments. The rest of the (computer) posts on HN I just read and study. There is nothing in the guidelines about what you "primarily" do.
Isn't ideological battle good for the curious? I'm confused. Are we allowed to be curious except when it comes to questioning liberal democracy? This seems like censorship of people who question liberal democracy, and i thought we were supposed to be curious here.
I think i can probably see some things in my posts that could be much better and offer more supporting information, but i think if you are going to act on what people 'primarily' do it should be based on their reading activity as well, as i am rarely driven to comment on posts that are not political.
Beyond the merits of "don't do business with anyone in China because of the actions of its government", I think that YC has not been known to take such strong ethical stands in the past.
The simpler explanation is probably that the business climate is super risky if you're the foreign partner in any sort of JV with China, and they thought they could work through it through ... charisma and sweat and tears. And it turns out that in fact it is hard even if you're some techy VC or w/e.
I think few question what the gov't is doing, but the question is more whether YC in particular was affected by actions in the past year that caused them to reverse course.
That would be like a company withdrawing from the US because of its killing of a million people in Iraq, global kidnapping and torture program, or instigation of coups in Latin America. It's not a likely reason.
I think you might be misinterpreting the parent. Nothing is controversial about the move itself, the elephant in the room is why they're doing it. They mention a change of strategy, but don't really spell out why.
It's pretty obvious why; everyone would be in China in a huge way if it wasn't for their trade abuse and/or human rights abuses.
Wouldn't it be an abandonment of their duty of care to portfolio companies for them to poke the bear, though?
I get that if PG tweeted something like, "We're pulling out of China because they're violently repressing pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong and they run a re-education gulag archipelago for millions of Uighurs and they murder political prisoners so they can sell their organs through their state-administered transplant market", it would be satisfying to read -- but I'm not a YC alum. I don't run a company that could get screwed if YC lands on Beijing's shit list. Sure, that's probably a small slice of the portfolio, but this is still the right call from a business perspective.
Actions speak louder than words, and this decision was pretty clear.
>I don't run a company that could get screwed if YC lands on Beijing's shit list
The fact that not being on an oppressive country's "shit list" is at all a priority is exactly the problem here. If your company relies on making money from these places, you deserve to fail.
If a leader in the field were to say something like "we are withdrawing due to our revulsion at the atrocities commited by the PRC against the Uyghur people" it at least has the potential to start a preference cascade and a mass movement.
By that logic, they should withdraw funding for any US companies as US has committed the maximum number of war crimes and human rights abuses as compared to any other country.
Business won't be the one to push the change on this attitude. It has to be people, or at best government. Most companies are morally agnostic, they only follow the money, you can judge them for it either way, but it's the truth.
What do you think makes companies do what they do? Companies consist of people. There are still people making these decisions. Many companies have taken ethical stances wrt China. Many more have not. Companies don't just get let of the hook because they're companies.
In a sense, yes, but someone, somewhere had to be the one to say "we could be courageous, but let's softpedal this and come up with a lame excuse". They also (perhaps with others) had to build a culture where people know they can't speak up on it.
Of course, there's a question of causality. Are businesses "morally agnostic" because they choose to be, or because the ones that aren't don't survive? Companies that say "we don't do business with places that harvest organs from prisoners" will struggle against ones that say "we were able to cut the price of our phone 50% by doing business with (said regime)"
This would actually be a good reason to impose import duties on those places - to make goods from ethical regimes more competitive.
It has to be people pushing companies to do it. Which is why it is exactly counter-productive to post "Of course companies won't do anything" when a person is demanding a company do better.
I'd say "only following the money" isn't moral agnostiscism, but very much a moral choice. It's a choice made by people collectively, and either way it doesn't exist outside of morality, or consequences.
> It’s understandable it’s a touchy subject. Why piss off China if you don’t have to? Only something to lose and nothing to gain.
Same sentiment for Saudi investors? Same for Israeli?
People have different lines and I'm sure soon founders will be doing a great more DD in this new age of outwardly conscious capitalism.
I'm patiently waiting for the tweet thread/medium article of a successful founder pointing out all the dirty cash they didn't take. Unfortunately, as of yet it is still a great deal of money that builds companies. Not unwaivering morals... One day.
You act like that doesn’t happen here...I just read a story in the LA times on how organs are being harvested from the recently deceased before a proper investigation can take place
The organs of members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prison camps are being forcefully harvested — sometimes when patients are still alive, an international tribunal sitting in London has concluded.
they execute people solely to harvest their organs systematically, just because situations where organ harvesting happening before a proper death investigation takes place in the USA have occurred (and are likely illegal and irregular), does not in any way make them comparable.
What tells you there is nothing to gain? I was probably the only one to consider Google a degree above other GAFA companies because for a long time it resisted Chinese censorship and refused to give away access to the gmail account of Chinese activists.
In a world where so many companies' valuation is tied to the number of users willing to give you their personal data, reputation is a precious thing.
It’s most likely due to the changing climate for companies (especially American and Canadian) operating in China. Check out this article: “how to survive an increasing difficult China”
I think it's reasonable to stick with what YC knows best: Startups in the US. Perhaps this will be an opportunity to use the capital that would've been directed to China for American startups.
I am also encouraged they are still funding Chinese companies and have a nuanced approach to China in this highly politically charged environment that reminds me of McCarthyism.
Oppositions to China's human rights violations does not equal to a blanket opposition to cooperation or involvement with all things Chinese. Doing so only highlights a biased view that is highly prevalent in our government today that is precisely reminiscent of McCarthyism.
Indeed one does not need to look far for such sentiments:
"The Chinese aren’t smarter than we are. They don’t work harder than we do.
"At one point during the dinner, Trump noted of an unnamed country that the attendee said was clearly China, “almost every student that comes over to this country is a spy.” " -Donald Trump
That’s not a great definition of Mccarthythism. Here’s one off the top of my head:
”A political movement reaches great enough support that it can paint its minority opposition as persona non grata. Then they make even mere association with opposition into a crime against the State and force employers, housing authorities, and other institutions to block such ”sympathizers” access to their work, homes, and assets.”
You appear to have copy-pasted this definition from a blog article, and then added bullet points between the syllables to make it look more official. Yikes!
A real dictionary will show you that McCarthy-esque allegations are specifically treasonous.
Wikipedia pretty much defines it the same way: "McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence."
> specifically treasonous
Treason is one small dimension, use as a rhetorical device to make the real villain stand out - accusations without evidence.
> Perfect example is the ridiculous spying bullshit that SuperMicro was accused of earlier this year.
Everyone, from the general public, to corporate America, to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, raked Bloomberg over the coals for that story. If anything, I think that's a sign that McCarthyism is hardly in play here.
I think that those who oppose companies doing business with China do not do so because they believe that the Chinese people themselves or Chinese culture (by which I mean their history, language, religion, art, etc. as divorced from the government) are bad.
Instead I think that they believe that doing business in China implicitly supports the Chinese government by failing to make a statement and by making the government more successful economically. That is basically the same idea behind a government implementing economic sanctions.
There is also the issue that in some cases doing business in China means actively supporting the actions of the Chinese government; e.g. by engaging in censorship.
Finally, I think that there is a perception that Chinese industry "cheats". This could include stealing intellectual property, requiring foreign corporations to partner with Chinese corporations, and asymmetry in the ability for foreigners to integrate into and be accepted by the culture. In the same way that working as a scab at a company with unfair labor practices could be good for the scab but bad for workers as a whole, a corporation doing business in China despite these issues could be viewed as prioritizing individual profit over the common good.
I'm not necessarily saying that I agree with all of these points in all situations. I'm just trying to show that people do have legitimate points that don't boil down to McCarthyism.
> It also would be reasonable to come out and say they've changed their minds due to political climate or some other risks.
This is no different then when HR calls you in before you're terminated. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you so no point in saying anything.
If (when?) they decide to take another crack at things it'd be helpful to not be on the record about anything.
Why do you think it's political climate that changed YC's mind? With or without political climate being an issue, doing business in China is different and relies on of relationship building that takes a long time to nurture. It might just be hard!
Maybe GP actually referred to business cultural practices, which are indeed different in China. Have you considered this? Not everything related to China is black/white as you seem to portray it. There's more to it than a reductionist approach of thinking "they're mean communists and everything follows from that".
* I dislike the tendency of some people to prohibits others from looking at things in a nuanced manner.
Cultural differences might make business in China difficult for internationals; political differences are what make it both ethically and strategically untenable. There's no comparison.
I didn't say otherwise. But not everyone's reason for leaving the market is going to be because of evil governance. Always simplifying interactions with China and the people and businesses there to a black/white scenario is counterproductive and intellectually disingenuous.
I don't think there are ownership restrictions in this economic sector, and the Chinese government hasn't seized Alibaba, Tencent or Huawei. It sounds like you're talking more out of preconceived biases than actual knowledge of how business works in China.
They haven't seized them outright maybe, but they are owned by Chinese citizens and carefully managed by the government,
The CEO and founder of Huawei is a member of the communist party, the government also requires a large staff of military intelligence workers.
Do not assume the strong distinction in the west between private entities and the government exists in China.
In China if you are of any real size whatsoever as a company, the government is either taking a role in things directly, or you are going to be forced out.
Of course they're owned by Chinese citizens. That's why I chose them as examples, rather than other big companies with a large presence in China, such as Volkswagen or Apple.
> carefully managed by the government
That's not true. They make business decisions based on the profit motive.
> The CEO and founder of Huawei is a member of the communist party
That's not very meaningful. There are a lot of people who are members of the party.
> Do not assume the strong distinction in the west between private entities and the government exists in China.
I think that a lot of people in this forum (and other fora in the West) do not understand the basic economic reforms that China has gone through. There is a huge difference between how a private company like Tencent operates and how a state-owned enterprise operates. It has been government policy over the past few decades to allow the private economy to grow, and to allow it to operate according to profit considerations.
Companies and people in China do not have the same sorts of protections should the government decide to go after them, but it's not as if the government controls the decision-making of private companies.
> In China if you are of any real size whatsoever as a company, the government is either taking a role in things directly, or you are going to be forced out.
This simply isn't true. The Chinese government does not run Alibaba, and doing so would actually go against the direction of Chinese economic reforms over the past few decades.
I never stated that these types of "private" enterprise aren't different than traditional Chinese state owned enterprise, they absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt are.
The Chinese government does not operate them directly, but it has a direct hand in how they are run in a way that simply does not have a parallel in the west.
An analogy might be an American company appointing high ranking government people (who are still active in government) to their board of directors, accepting special government run departments, and working closely with the government on goals and policy.
That sort of thing is entirely unheard of, outside of perhaps defense contractors in the USA, but even there, there is clear division between private and public interests.
> An analogy might be an American company appointing high ranking government people (who are still active in government)
It's not at all uncommon for high-ranking government and military officials in the US to sit on corporate boards right after they leave government. There's a well known revolving door.
American companies are also subject to very significant pressure from the government. See, for example, how the US government informally (and successfully) pressured all the major payment processors to cut off WikiLeaks in 2010, or how social media companies are now under significant pressure to censor content.
This sort of pressure, which exists to varying degrees in every country, is not the same as the government directly running a company or dictating its business plans. That is not, by and large, how things operate in China either in the private sector. I see the claim made all the time (for example in the first post I responded to) that all businesses in China are basically run by the government. I think the people making those comments don't know what they are talking about, and are basically advancing a paranoia about China which has become ever more intense in the US over the past few months.
However the key difference is the amount of coercion, you aren't going to be shut out of the country, or business if you refuse to appoint government people in the USA, or do the government other favors.
The US government and private interests do indeed co-opt each other a lot, but its nowhere near the (implicit) threat of being run out of business (or worse) that it is in china.
There's the threat of significant regulation. I think there's a reason why Zuckerberg feel the need to go in front of Congress, rather than telling them to go bark up a tree. It's also quite amazing how quickly all the payment processors shut off WikiLeaks, based on pressure from US senators.
Companies can, however, be banned from the US for overtly political reasons. See Huawei and ZTE.
I agree that Chinese CEOs walk on thinner ice personally, and that they can be thrown in prison or worse much more easily. That's a general problem in China. However, the easy way in which Americans claim Chinese companies are run by the government is not true. It's also true that large US companies are thoroughly embedded in the government and vice versa (the massive defense sector, parts of the tech sector).
Also recent developments of TikTok's business in US is also a red alert. If indeed the regulation extends to capital markets, then YC's US investors will put themselves against greater uncertainty of guarding their investments.
If the Corp US are smart and watching, they need to reduce/spin off/get rid of their Chinese ties as soon as possible, because they might have to endure long term consequences if the conflict in between two countries get worse.
I had to dig up one of my old comments about YC China, because I specifically recall this one. I think the issue isn't one elephant in the room, it is elephants.
My comment from August 15, 2018:
"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."
Gotta start somewhere. There wouldn't be as strong a push for equality in the workspace nowadays if it wasn't for (amongst others) YC backed companies pushing for it.
China, as most other communist countries, implemented gender workplace equality much earlier than the West. Furthermore, China has probably the most aggressive affirmative action programs in the world. Yes, China is bad on human rights in some aspects, but these blatant misrepresentations need to stop. They only serve the massive propaganda campaign the US started in recent years.
Native Chinese here. Some Minorities get automatic extra points and special admission category at college entrance examination. You don’t know how big a deal it is to normal Chineses
Affirmative action programs like rounding up Uighur Muslims and making them more Han Chinese?
You’re right about China (and other communist countries) being first on gender equality at least in some respects, but... so what? In the West it’s good enough at a macro scale.
Saying China is bad on human rights in some respects is a gross understatement.
it’s not just about gender equality. The west is significantly ahead in supporting LGBTQ both culturally and structurally. sure we have a long way to go but hell “trans positive” is now a selling point even Amazon fulfillment is touting and marriage is legal in many western countries. The same can’t be said about China or Chinese companies
Where do you see this statement? I see, "change in leadership" and "now is not the right time".
I translate that to, new leadership (and likely those who put him there) think now is not the right time. That could be for any reason internal or external.
Its a half truth divided by two, with the other two fourth’s being convenience of Qi’s own transition, we all know what we were expected to read and didnt which is the final quarter
Just have a little chuckle at what they chose to say and get out of a hairy situation
0. Violence-for-violence's sake and property destruction, harming the pro-democracy cause and carrying water for PRC, whereas nonviolent disobedience would maintain political capital
1. HK police incidents of excessive force: shootings, blindings, beatings and more
2. Pro-PRC gangs beating people at random and HK police condoning it
No need. Even as a hongkonger. Support thanks but normal business sense — that comes the point. I find all these world venture is a bit naive. It is not going to pay in the long term. If want to, why not Russia. At least you are aware and have alarm bell rang.
I'm really glad YC is taking a clear stand against China.
I also understand why they are not further ruffling any feathers by phrasing their "update" as such.
It is also a bit disappointing from a patriotic standpoint that the general public reaction to this update is that people are _sad_ YC is withdrawing. Given how much we have all benefited from our nation's world-class innovation economy here, we should at least pay the piper.
GM, Tesla and Apple are making tons of money in China now. Even Google and Facebook are making over hundreds of millions of ads money each year from China. Yes, Google and Facebook still have branches in China and make a lot of money.
Unlike GM, Tesla and Apple, Facebook is not making money by operating in the Chinese market. Facebook is making money from Chinese advertisers via resellers. It's Chinese capital being exported to Facebook outside of the country, for a service operating entirely outside of China.
Equivalent to an advertiser in China going through a local ad broker that works with the NY Times, to place an ad in the NY Times in a paper sold in NYC.
I imagined this was going to happen. Lately PG has been more vocal on twitter regarding Human Rights issues in China.
I understand this is a very difficult decision. I'm not sure if its right or wrong. From the perspective of Human Rights its probably right, but from the perspective of investment its difficult considering China's growth prospects.
I'm torn on the China issue and I personally hope our two countries can work out their differences in a constructive way.
>I understand this is a very difficult decision. I'm not sure if its right or wrong. From the perspective of Human Rights its probably right, but from the perspective of investment its difficult considering China's growth prospects.
I can't believe a human being would actually write this. The level of cognitive dissonance would be off the charts.
Lets not bash on one person when the worlds largest companies have been fine doing business with china for decades, knowing the HR situation. There was always the hope that growth would help improving the HR situation ( which may be what OP is referring to) , but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards with Xi
Here's an attempt at interpretting it graciously: if China's economy grows, more Chinese people may be lifted out of poverty. This is obviously beneficial to their lives directly, but could also result in political shifts as the rising middle class becomes more of a stakeholder in society. More developed countries can also afford to have more environmentally friendly laws. There are a bunch of potential benefits to China and the rest of the world that could result from continued growth. Sacrificing these benefits to bring attention to human rights might actually be harmful in the long run by a wide range of metrics, and whether it's desirable to do so might depend on which metrics you value more and how you typically respond to trolley problems.
A noble view but giving China too much credit. The more that US invests in China, the more the US is supporting the atrocities in Chinese concentration camps, mass surveillance and censorship, and military expansion into international territories. This is not at all just an economic issue. China is acting without impunity and it is up to world leaders to step up and put a stop to their aggressive tactics.
I think most people would be sold on decoupling from China or at least entertaining the idea of enacting punitive actions on China the moment they realize that more than 1 million Chinese citizens are being detained against their will and having their organs ripped out from them while still being half-conscious. All the while, their family gravesites are bulldozed [1] and the CCP sends Chinese men to sleep with their wives [2]. Unfortunately, the insane amount of influence through bribery, censorship, and propaganda exported from China has made people completely unaware of Holocaust-level atrocities.
I'm not actually arguing that this is the most desirable course of action, I'm arguing that OP's original comment can be interpretted in a manner that isn't putting personal gain above human rights. I felt like there were a lot of angry voices piling on over a potential misinterpretation.
No it can't. You believe an acceptable response to Schrodingers Cat is that even if the cats alive maybe killing it is ok if it means you can sell the box. You then justify it by saying a lot of good things could come from the money we might get if we can sell the box.
None of those potentials are sacrificed, they just as much both exist and do not exist as they did before a hypothetical intervention based on human rights abuses.
You have missed as the original posting about china not care about universal x. China do. We do. Always. We have enforced our harmony way to our labour for several thousands years now. We would.
At least I quite the Open source founder has used the chinese way of colonialism to describe open source. Look at how the top leader talk in international forum on things like internet.
China will impose its view. And if you are not civilised per china view you are barbarian to be crushed. It is in our gene.
They will play nice then when not colonised you will be see.
*
Still I believe it does not make commerical senses. China does not allow others to make money unless they can’t replace you. Learning and turn ... The nasty part will come.
Our whole place is an example. And we are chinese according to them. Still ... hence good luck.
I don't really appreciate that. I would argue I'm pretty well informed on China. I've traveled to China, I've worked with the Chinese for over a decade across various roles, my grandfather helped industrialize China, and I've read many great books on China. Personally I retweeted Hillary Clinton's support of Hong Kong protestors while I was in Beijing, so I put myself at personal risk in doing this.
But lets address your comment directly: "The level of cognitive dissonance would be off the charts." Is it?
One book I recommend is Graham Allison "Destined for War".
One question that specifically stands out from his book - is that the West believes in Universal Human Rights. China obviously does not. This is a point of conflict and we have some very difficult questions to address in the future. Suppose China attacks Taiwan. What if China has a second Tiananmen in Hong Kong? Do we sanction China? What if China responds with more violence? What do we do? Do we go to war? This is an obvious point of conflict. And these are questions that we will have to work out in the future.
From the perspective of an investor, these are also difficult decisions. We can see this in how the NBA has responded, and how South Park has responded - each differently. Is it really wise to Balkanize the world if our goal is to encourage China to adopt Human Rights? How would a second cold war help?
Obviously I don't have the answers. But I can recognize the conflict from the perspective of a VC whose goal is to make money.
> ...the West believes in Universal Human Rights. China obviously does not.
This is probably a case where more precision is warranted. The CCP and the nearly synonymous PRC government obviously do not believe in Universal Human Rights [1]. However "China" can be interpreted as the Chinese nation/people, and many of them do believe in human rights [see Hong Kong] or have been deliberately kept ignorant of the concepts. It's not like rejection of human rights is part of the national character, or anything.
> Is it really wise to Balkanize the world if our goal is to encourage China to adopt Human Rights? How would a second cold war help?
The Cold War was basically about containment, and it's an acknowledgment that no good options are available. Recent history has shown that trade and investment don't necessarily lead to liberalization, and military attacks are out of the question. Besides containment, the only option left is acceptance/appeasement.
> One question that specifically stands out from his book - is that the West believes in Universal Human Rights. China obviously does not. This is a point of conflict and we have some very difficult questions to address in the future. Suppose China attacks Taiwan. What if China has a second Tiananmen in Hong Kong? Do we sanction China? What if China responds with more violence? What do we do? Do we go to war? This is an obvious point of conflict. And these are questions that we will have to work out in the future.
We don't need to go to war with them but we also don't need to invest in their suppression.
I read the GP's "from the perspective of investment" more like a sort of "corporations, despite being made of humans, are inhuman paperclip-maximizers" attitude. You can't convince a corporation to "do what's right", because caring about "what's right" requires a human definition of "right"†, and corporations don't have that, instead having other conceptual preferences in its place, that you have to appeal to instead.
You can't convince a paperclip-maximizer to preserve human life because "it's right"; you have to convince it that doing so will somehow get it more paperclips. You can't convince an investment firm to stay out of China because "it's right"; you have to convince it that doing so will somehow make it more money.
If he pulled out over China's human rights issues, I have a newfound respect for PG. Very few leaders today are willing to support basic rights of fellow human beings over personal profits.
What would you think of a VC who was investing with a thesis that enlarging+enriching the Chinese bourgeoisie (i.e. entrepreneurs) would give Chinese citizens as a whole more power relative to the Chinese state, and thus likely accelerate the shift toward more democratic forms of government that seems to inevitably come to "developed nations" once they have enough people who've "got theirs" and now want to signal their care for the working man, rather than rising on their backs?
Maybe people in the 90s assumed "prosperity" in general would be a panacea; but the hypothesis here isn't really to do with GDP more generally (because that can all be generated and captured by the state, as in middle-eastern oil-producing countries) but rather to do with a certain inevitable demographic shift.
China has already started on a shift called industrialization: a massive demographic shift from poverty-class subsistence farmers, to middle-class industrial workers (e.g. construction workers.)
The next shift after industrialization is a mass promotion out of the working-class and into the middle-class (a.k.a. the bourgeoisie: small-business owners/entrepreneurs), where industrial jobs dry up, people mostly live in cities, and everyone goes into business for themselves to serve a specialized role in a city. Accompanying this is, also inevitably, a massive rise in political consciousness, because you need to study the political climate to effectively run a business.
Now, that second shift is far from happening in China yet. Their industrialization phase only just started 10 years ago, with a construction boom analogous to the one that the US went through in the late 1800s. It'll likely be decades more before there are no more Chinese public-infrastructure projects; before the average Chinese citizen is rich enough that everyone turns their nose up at working in the trades; before the average Chinese citizen's life-goal is to be a vlogger or whatever kids in developed countries want to do now.
But, despite that phase being a ways away, it's also seemingly inevitable. We've never seen a country get stuck in the industrialization phase once it's truly begun. It's finite by definition—the same forces that create this phase of growth, push a country through and past it.
The only deciding factor on how long it takes a state to become democratized, in this theory, is how long it takes to reach the industrialization phase. It took China a long, long time (probably because Communism put them at a standstill in accruing the necessary resources and talent to begin having a working class at all; they had to relent and do some top-down state capitalism just to get anywhere at all.)
And many states are stuck lower down the development path, where they'll likely never reach industrialization without outside help. That "help" usually coming in the form of the world deciding to target them as the newest cheap labor outsourcer. (Luckily, once China is post-industrial, it too will be a labor outsourcer, not a labor supplier.)
But China are still making construction workers into nuveau-riche at a prodigious rate. They're creating the proto-Rockefellers and proto-Carnegies of China, right now. Those people, and especially their children (who would become the actual Rockefellers and Carnegies of China), are going to have some impact. China might "manage" (i.e. suppress) that impact, but a large bourgeoisie class is uniquely powerful in terms of its ability to throw money around to influence foreign politics as a knife against the throat of the local state.
Consider: the Napoleonic Wars weren't a consequence of the French Revolution; they were the second phase of the French Revolution. Sometimes the best thing to do to get your government in better shape, is to convince every other major power that your state is the bad guy and needs its ass kicked.
Right now, China is (barely) keeping a lid on global unrest against them—but a big part of that is that right now, Chinese citizens are still mostly positive and patriotic about their homeland, as you'd expect of people who just went through an industrialization boom. Take that coefficient and flip the sign the other way, though...
You are 1) assuming the majority Chinese people want democracy and 2) underestimating the strength of the CCP to crack down on freedom seeking peoples. I get that you are being optimistic and I would like to believe the same but the current state of reality proves otherwise. If we were observing the earth in a computer simulation, I would love to give infinite time to see if democracy arises in China. However, in the real world, China does not live in a vacuum and it is actively undermining democracies by exporting its crackpot communist worldview to free countries all around the world. We cannot just sit there and wait for them to erode our freedoms. It's as simple as that.
Please stop using HN for nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for. We've already had to ask you this, and ban accounts that won't stop, so please stop.
Understood the first time but am I being singled out here? I see lots of comments spewing unsubstantiated nationalistic hate and I don't see them getting flagged/banned. Those comments are getting left up and leaving the argument totally unbalanced. At least when I comment I make an attempt to link to (legit mainstream) sources and explain in a rational way.
I know it inevitably feels like bias to get moderated like that, but we are careful not to single users out because of their views, and indeed there's a child comment to yours which expressed an opposite view in an unacceptable way, and we moderated it.
If you see a glaring case where the rules weren't enforced, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. You are welcome to alert us to such cases, by flagging them (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html for how to flag comments), or by emailing hn@ycombinator.com about egregious ones.
That's one of the more odd assessments of China that I've heard. These proto-Carnegies and their children you speak of are a well defined class. Specifically, the children are the "princling" class, Xi is one of them. They have been raised to understand the source of their wealth is the state. They are quite happy with the status quo and greatly value the power of the state as an instrument of suppression.
> But, despite that phase being a ways away, it's also seemingly inevitable. We've never seen a country get stuck in the industrialization phase once it's truly begun. It's finite by definition—the same forces that create this phase of growth, push a country through and past it.
No, no, no, each and every country that deindustrialised, did so for their own, individual reasons.
And you have Japan, Germany, and Switzerland — all developed countries with substantial industry.
Most countries that did deindustrialise, did so because they lost industrial competition. Their industries were too uncompetitive to stick around for anything else, but cost. This is how US lost its steel, in which it once was a global leader.
They’re delusional and insane—the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That model is exactly what the last 30 years of cooperation with China was meant to be, but all it has done is strengthened a kleptocratic, increasingly paranoid, bloody dictatorship.
I would say that VC is naive and doesn't understand the lengths that the CCP goes to prevent a free democracy. The current regime understood what happened during the fall of the Soviet Union and are extremely keen on not allowing that to happen again. We have already given China many decades to free their markets and their people based on the principle that "free markets lead to wealth and wealth leads to democratization" and look where we ended up. Furthering this line only emboldens the CCP.
Launching in China was a stupid, shamelessly greedy and ultimately embarrassing decision to begin with, but it's good that they've changed course.
To those who have been living under a rock for the past thirty years: The PRC is a genocidal, expansionist ethnostate that tortures and kills those it deems enemies, which is everybody who isn't ethnically Han and supportive of the leader of the Communist Party. YC knew this when it opened an office there.
My real question is - now that you've invited them in and shown them around, will they create a state-owned YCombinator of their own? It'll be interesting to see how elite state-owned venture capital will work.
Personally I was really disappointed when YC opened up shop in China - to me it really revealed a Profits over People approach and was pretty brazen at the time.
Happy to see (for whatever reason) that they're recommitting to communities that (at least on the surface) don't support fascist overtures.
The nazi regime is very much comparable to the Chinese communist party in methods and death toll, about the only thing they don't measure up on is overt military aggression.
Why do you dismiss any comparisons with the Nazis out of hand? Seems like an exceptionally poor way to learn from history.
Because they're generally silly hyperbole, just like this example. If you put China in the same tier as Nazi Germany, you're missing the forest for the trees.
Echoing another poster, people and individuals who are Chinese are not their government. You shouldn't equate working with Chinese individuals and talent as a tacit support of their government.
I really have no idea how "doing business in China" works. I thought I understood it but I still don't...
An interesting thread last year suggested that in some cases companies spent many years "doing business in China" as a form of ... de-escalation to avoid nuclear war, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17004546
You don't do business in China without supporting the government, and them supporting you, period.
Plenty of Chinese people call the communist party "The organization" because as far as they are concerned, its the only power structure that exists in China.
Is it like that? I’m sure it’s true in some cases, but I have the feeling Chinese people are often much more their government than otherwise similar people in other countries.
Of course, all that’s based on hearsay, so who knows what the reality is.
>>"recommitting to communities that (at least on the surface) don't support fascist overtures"
Sorry, but what you said is quite different from my conclusion from comparing a country which starts wars all around the world, with a country which build infrastructures all around the world.
Did some people in the comments forget what happens to Blizzard? It would be better not having a branch in China unless they are 100% sure they can be free from any political issues around China, and we actually don't need to hear "why" from YC.
It suprises me that intelligent, reasonable people like Andrew Ng and Sam Altman were willing to help develop and invest in the Chinese Communist Party's AI/ML capabilities helping to create an authoritarian surveillance state used to repress minorities (Uighers, Tibetans, Falun Gong) on a scale not seen since Adolf Hitler.
The CCP and private companies are hand-in-glove. The risks of working with state-owned enterprises are clear. The risks of working with private companies are are also great with "party cells" officially embedded into at least half of private companies.
Fortunately for the free world, China faces massive structural issues to growth over the next 40 years, which the CCP is unable or unwilling to deal with. I highly recommend [1] and [2] to understand the future of the brutal Chinese dictatorship.
Perhaps it is the enormous cognitive dissonance. Western companies also take military funding and their surveillance systems were always better and more invasive.
The US is using statutes for national security interests to ban Chinese companies for contributing to alledged human rights abuses. Meanwhile we have documented human rights abuses in the West, and a US that does not shy away to cover a trade war and skewed commercial motives with anti-China propaganda.
US companies and agencies surveil outside the US. Capitalism-commercialization gave our rights to the likes of Zuckerberg and Amazon, who will turn your door bell into a police camera.
The Godwin was also a tad unnecessary. Perhaps you are a bit caught up in the heat of the moment. The propaganda machine is definately turning up the heat, so I do not blame you. Try to pose your argument without claiming the moral highground of the "free world". It is never fortunate that an entire country and its people struggles.
Accusing Ng and Altman of helping build a fascist surveillance state is a nasty accusation, which I feel you are not allowed to make.
Remember when the US had concentration camps for Japanese-Americans? Countries can change even without pressure or backlash (the US did not face any). Can you think of a modern group of people in the US being secluded from participation, facing state racism, and being locked away in ghettos, with no hope of social movement? Would China be justified in boycotting or sanctioning US companies for contributing to ICE, Guantanamo bay, or police violence, or Flynt's water, or Trump's racism?
Freedom of religion gave the US scientology and TV pastors and schools preaching creationism. It gave Europe extremist Salafism and terrorist attacks and people using the Bible to go after immigrants. You have to see China in that context: they see religion as a dangerous memetic virus to indoctronate youthful people into believing something not of their own choice. Countries have a right to make their own laws and their own tactics for improvement and combating extremism.
Edit: you may also receive downvotes from people who hate to hear negative stuff on China, or are paid 50 cents to do so.
Comparing Uigher concentration camps to Nazi Germany is valid and accurate, not a frivolous example of Godwin's law.
Your comment has a lot of whataboutism that isn't relevant to the discussion. I'll mention that US presidents have formally apologized several times for Japanese-American internment (which was 75 years ago), and that I would encourage anybody (and any government) to boycott and sanction companies contributing to human rights abuse.
Doing business with a fascist state or in a fascist state is deplorable. The message should be loud and clear. China today shares many parallels with Germany in the 1930s. There needs to be open frank opposition because embarrassing them is the only way to stop them until the US is willing to park an aircraft carrier group in HK waters.
Causing PRC to lose face is the only way to stop them outside a war which nobody wants. If American companies started cutting ties and explicitly calling out their behavior it would make a real difference.
Yeah, about step 2b: Note that part of the reasoning behind the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was the US's sanctions on Japan for their actions in China.
That might work for a smaller country like South Africa, but China too big for that. China could probably make everything it needs itself, or learn in a decade or two. So it sounds to me like a new iron curtain, leaving both sides poorer and the people caught in the middle suffering from the separation. (And good luck fighting global warming.)
But though there's a lot of pressure to choose your side, I doubt every country will do so. If forced they might choose China?
>That might work for a smaller country like South Africa, but China too big for that. China could probably make everything it needs itself, or learn in a decade or two. So it sounds to me like a new iron curtain, leaving both sides poorer and the people caught in the middle suffering from the separation. (And good luck fighting global warming.)
The majority of the US and Soviet population was better off with the iron curtain than without in real terms. The US median hourly wage only surpassed that of 1968 in the last 3 years.
I don't think that is correct. In fact 1) China is massive with huge labor class, 2) China is heavily export driven, 3) current generation in China has been affluent.
So, even moderate global sanctions will have a massive impact with both affluent class and the labor class revolting.
However, remember, oil embargo drove Japan to WW-2, I'm sure China will react similarly unless that internal revolt happens first. Too difficult to predict.
In my observation, for what it's worth, current China regime does not react well to losing face. They just dig in further. Not sure if it's a cultural artifact. We have seen that time and time again.
However, China will react to economic loss. As such pulling out of China, surely and quietly, is the best approach.
You can't say you're an apolitical organization when you work with China given the way running a business in China works.
The message is obvious that companies are afraid of angering the Chinese government by speaking ill of it as they commit increasing atrocities because that could potentially eat into their profit margins. Profit over people.
In my opinion, one party California is a fascist state. Hey, SF just elected a Chavist as a DA: that person actually went and helped Hugo Chavez administration. By that yardstick, doing business in California is also immortal.
I don’t expect anything less from a brainwashed Chinese national (who is most likely living in California and still pledges alliegiance to the dictator xi bao zi) who thinks his whataboutism will work on hacker news
user may be Chinese national, but name calling ("brainwashed") probably isn't the best way to encourage the sorts of open dialogue that will be necessary to change their views
brainwashing (n.)
"attempt to alter or control the thoughts and beliefs of another person against his will by psychological techniques," 1950, a literal translation of Chinese xi nao. A term from the Korean War.
Yeah, California is exactly the same as a state that throws hundreds of thousands to millions of people in concentration camps, prohibits freedom of speech and religion, murders and steals the organs of political prisoners, and actively monitors everything you do.
How is modern one-party California fascist? Specifically, how does California advance an ethnostate under a conservative populist tradtionalist movement oriented at revitalizing a long-dead culture? I'm not sure that California does this.
Meanwhile, China operates death camps.
Good try, good hustle, glad you're here learning English, but you need to learn more about your culture's history and the nature of fascism.
Virtue signaling doesn't work in business. Should yc do any business in the US which is mired in illegal wars and regime change operation all over the world? What about Saudi arabia? Should silicon valley and traditional media give up the billions in Saudi investment? Every major economic player is evil in some form or another. And the parallel with china isn't nazi Germany. It's with 19th century US.
No, the majority were ~innocent people. Although, as in any invasion, the distinction was blurry.
While the invasion was sold on the basis of terrorism and WMD, that was mostly bullshit. I mean, the US originally supported Saddam Hussein because he opposed communists supported by Russia. And it used Iraq in a proxy war against Iran, is also supported by Russia.
Basically, the US invaded Iraq because it had to invade somewhere after the 9/11 attacks. Saudi Arabia was the obvious suspect, given their funding of fundamentalist Islam generally, and Al-Qaeda specifically. Plus the fact that most of the attackers were Saudi.
But that was unworkable, for many reasons. Afghanistan was the other obvious target, but everyone knew that it would be a morass. Given Russia's experience, for example. Or Britain's, back in the day. Plus the fact that most of it had already been pounded into sand.
So Iraq was the perfect target. With lots of juicy stuff to destroy. And an ineffectual military.
Another goal was demonstrating US military hardware. Advertising, to increase sales.
I guess you're implying that certain bad things are happening in China. Do you really live in China and see those things happen, or just hear about them from the media?
And is it possible that some of the media in US are inhonest? Just as there're inhonest media in China.
I'm not fighting you on this topic; just don't understand why there's so much hatred towards our country.
There is plenty of non US media reporting on the camps in Xinjiang.
Why don't you travel to Xinjiang and do some investigating. If the camps there are really fabricated by the US media, surely the government won't mind you traveling around and filming the suspected sites?
>just don't understand why there's so much hatred towards our country.
I don't hate you or the other people of your country. I'd love to visit someday and relearn some of the Mandarin I learned in college. However, I do hate what your government is doing to the people of Xinjiang. Why wouldn't I be upset about this?
There're serious security issues that need to be addressed in Xinjiang. Don't assume it's related to racism.
Also, when you use the word `camp` it automatically reminds people of Nazi camps during WWII. They are not the same, on multiple levels.
“The Tribunal’s members are certain - unanimously, and sure
beyond reasonable doubt - that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.”
Brits, Americans, an Iranian, a Malaysian. Are these people making it up?
You have to choose your battles. China is literally building concentration camps. Comparing Xi to Hitler is not exaggeration.
Virtue signaling absolutely works with China. "Losing face" is a big part of their culture and if important business partners start dropping off like flies and calling out their atrocities, they will take notice. Just look at how much of a fuss that NBA manager's tweet made.
>What about Saudi arabia? Should silicon valley and traditional media give up the billions in Saudi investment?
>...until the US is willing to park an aircraft carrier group in HK waters.
I'm afraid a single carrier battle group wouldn't be much of a deterrent these days. The US no longer has naval overmatch in that region. Barring any gross incompetence on PLA-N's part, or the US having highly classified tricks up its sleeve, USN would need several fleets to achieve anything but a pyrrhic victory in such a conflict.[0]
I otherwise completely agree with your sentiments, and living in a world where what amounts to essentially a fascist state having military supremacy—even if only limited in scope and regional for now—is quite chilling.
In the US, as I go through the airport, I am physically violated routinely for my 'security'.
All of the data I transmit are recorded, for the agencies to go through them, if not now, then later, when they figured out how.
People who don't obey the leftist narrative are cancelled, have their jobs terminated, and so on.
China has always been independent. They pride themselves on that. Taking away investment money isn't going to influence them.
If you want to influence somebody, first you understand them, then you build a friendship and rapport with them, and then you influence them. Turning off the phone does the opposite.
I think YC has to be reserved because they are linked to all of these companies they have invested in. A bad statement could potentially harm some of their portfolio companies.
The US can't take military action in Hong Kong, because its handover to China was completely legal. You can thank the British for their short-sightnedness on this one, but nothing the rest of the world can do, at least overtly. I see this fact repeatedly forgotten or overlooked in the brewhaha over HK.
That's not necessary legally, since the legal handover is already sufficient to justify non-intervention.
But of course the way Hong Kong was originally acquired at the point of a gun bolsters the moral/ethical case for both the legal handover and non-intervention.
Naive perspective: Is it possible that this language prevents YC from being blocked by the Great Firewall?
I'm not sure I'd advocate it, but I see the potential argument: It's better to let users see YC's independent decision to not conduct business in China, even with vague reasoning, as there's no realistic narrative that would put China in a great light.
The alternative is to be completely censored. If the intent is to spread a message within, I would think an uncensored message is better than no message at all.
>What is your incentive in supporting an invasion?
Isolationism and appeasement post-WWI leading to the next, disastrous world war which could have been avoided or significantly diminished with early intervention.
By provoking people, threatening to send aircraft carriers?
The fact is this is just a leverage US is holding on to to win the trade war.
Human rights have been the excuse the US used to wage war against multiple middle east countries in the past 30 years, eventually for its own benefit, and causing huge sufferings to people in these countries.
No one can say no to 'supporting human rights', but you'd be naive to think the US cares about human rights more than it does about benefiting itself and inflicting suffering on other countries.
Also, maybe it's turning out that building the wall is not that profitable after all.
Seriously, mind your own stuff. How would you feel if some other country parks an aircraft carrier group in US waters, because the US
- has a racial discrimination problem?
- invades citizen's privacy through wire tapping?
- the presidential election is just a funny show?
...
As others have noted, the announcement does not reveal the thinking that went into this decision. But certainly pg and other principals are aware of what's happening in the People's Republic of China under the Xi regime. pg retweeted the following news items about China recently:
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1195728248040087552The New York Times @nytimes Nov 16
China has detained up to a million Muslims, a campaign it calls a benevolent and routine effort against the pull of extremism. But 403 pages of Communist Party documents we obtained reveal how officials plotted to carry out a ruthless, coercive clampdown.
https://twitter.com/CoveringDelta/status/1196491222765965314Demetri Kofinas @CoveringDelta Nov 18
We've known for years that governments are interested in developing bioweapons that target specific populations. What I didn't know until this week's episode are the lengths to which the CCP has reportedly gone to obtain the genomic data needed to do it.
https://twitter.com/nathanattrill/status/1192670115017310208Nathan Attrill 周雷森 @nathanattrill Nov 8
In China, it’s possible to pre-book an organ transplant, something that would be impossible under a voluntary donor system – raising suspicions of widespread organ harvesting.
The response to this is unfortunate. Consider the run-on effects it will have on other companies that the primary response to YC pulling out of China is negativity. Requiring companies to stake everything on an action like this only serves to discourage any of them from acting.
YC did the right thing here, the comments should reflect that.
402 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 285 ms ] threadYC is generally Bay Area-only, and after consideration they decided to stick with that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Edit: maybe I should add that we do moderate posts that are just political, i.e. don't have an intellectually curious angle, as well as threads that depart from the path of curious discussion and sink into flames.
The default answer is simply "no"/"not right now"; not a ton of explanation required.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19969490
Maybe because politics was not involved and it was purely an operational capacity decision? I know it's not as fun as silly conspiracy theories.
/s
There is no question China presents an opportunity to generate capital returns on a scale that YC can no longer achieve in the more mature US venture capital market. They also present many risks that are hard to put in an equation.
Whoever the next Chinese government is, they probably won’t look kindly upon those who collaborated with the CCP.
If YC truly saw no chance for YC-China in the future, then I don't doubt they would come out and say so. However, that's a pretty strong statement, and I don't think anyone can make such a prediction. There is always a chance for a more serendipitous time in the future.
YC China was a bet at doing something different. With that gone—and idk if it should have stayed or gone.. sometimes experiments fail—what is YCs plan?
Invite 200, 300, 500, 20,000 companies to SF? maybe it is the best option, but also maybe not the best thing to do. YC Seems stuck in an innovator's dilemma. Reminds me of Apple under Tim Cook. Keeping a good thing going, but nothing innovative.
* Supporting more hardware specific companies.
* Supporting more biomed device tech companies.
* Scaling online with startup school.
* Trying to scale the number of companies who get accepted into the program.
There is still a lot to figure out in the 'nurture small/young companies' space. That said, each country has its own unique challenges.
How could you possibly know it's only 50%? Please, HN, stop with all of the ridiculous guessing of motives with nothing to back it up.
Again, there's no way you can know that and you're making complete assumptions.
I could see them hitting some roadblocks and wanting to try again to get into China, but that would be a reasonable thing to come out and say.
It also would be reasonable to come out and say they've changed their minds due to political climate or some other risks.
Instead its... the new guy is busy?
Not so strange to me. Don't companies usually come up with inoffensive BS for public statements like this?
> Instead its... the new guy is busy?
Maybe he wanted to spend more time with his family, too.
/s
I’d have thought YC, given their history, wouldn’t have any trouble raising money.
..but your feat of childish defensiveness applies either way.
U.S. tariffs?
Honk Kong unrest?
IP violations?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/ch...
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/cosleeping-103120191...
https://www.pop.org/the-plight-of-the-uyghur-people-2/
edit: wow... 2001
EDIT: I posted this as a bit of an experiment. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21601613 I link to a TV program criticising the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs. Here I criticize blatant propaganda published by an organization funded by the US government for precisely that purpose. Almost an hour later, this comment is at -4 while the other is at +6. Agreement-based voting at it's finest, but I'm not going to let propaganda slide just because it pushes a viewpoint I agree with.
The Chinese government sent government workers to take time off their normals jobs and live in the homes of Uighur Muslims suspected of disloyalty to the Chinese government. More than a million Uighur households had monitors sleeping in their rooms and watching their lives for troublesome signs like the children not using patriotic greetings or the parents wanting to keep Muslim dietary guidelines.
In this article "relatives" refers to Han Chinese government monitors and "little brothers" and "little sisters" refers to the Muslims they watched.
> The relatives were given written guidelines on how to conduct themselves. Based on reports from Uighur contacts in Urumqi and Khotan, such manuals provided guidelines and forms that needed to be filled out and then digitized for security databases. In a manual that was used in Kashgar prefecture, relatives were given specific instructions on how to get their little brothers and sisters to “let down their guard.” The manual, which was posted on the internet but taken down just as this story was going to press, advises relatives to show “warmth.” “Don’t lecture right away,” it suggests, and show concern regarding their families and bring candy for the children. It provides a checklist that included questions such as: “When entering the household, do family members appear flustered and use evasive language?” “Do they not watch TV programs at home and instead only watch VCD discs?” “Are there any religious items still hanging on the walls of the house?”
> The manual instructs the relatives to tell their little brothers and sisters that they have been monitoring all internet and cell-phone communication that is coming from the family, so they should not even think about lying when it comes to their knowledge of Islam and religious extremism.
> The manual also instructs them to help the villagers alleviate their poverty by giving them business advice and helping out around the household. They were told to report any resistance to “poverty alleviation activities.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/26/china-nightmare-homesta...
Here is Deutsche Welle (Germany): https://www.dw.com/en/how-china-intimidates-uighurs-abroad-b...
Here is Japan Times (Japan): https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/08/08/national/social...
I could get more internationally sourced coverage if you really need. More or less the only MSM not covering the Uighur concentration camps are the Chinese MSM.
Reading news about any foreign country, including China, only from US MSM, is inherently biased (sampling bias). Maybe consider reading news from Chinese outlets in this case?
I know people will start arguing that Chinese outlets are mainly propagandas because they are controlled by governments and they are not independent...
But, but are we sure that Deutsche Welle or Japan Times are unbiased?
For example, Deutsche Welle is funded by German government. [1], and the editors of the Japan Times were appointed by their government [2].
Yes, German and Japanese governments are more trustworthy than the Chinese government, but every country has its own foreign policy and political agenda. Are we sure that we are not being "brainwashed" by those media outlets?
This is happening within the US as well. Think conservative news outlets vs liberal outlets.
Citations: [1] https://www.dw.com/en/what-kind-of-company-is-deutsche-welle... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110716064544/http://www.fccj.o...
Seriously. Show me one major corporation that cited this as a reason for pulling out of China. I’m not justifying the actions—I’m saying western industries don’t care about genocide. Because they don’t.
But major businesses aren’t the whole economy. Just a part.
There is much politically informed anti-China coverage in the MSM, so it is hard to take reports on China from them without much skepticism. Even in Hong Kong it is on display that the police are largely acting with restraint similar to what a western police force might behave, it is the protesters who have been violent.
That line just proves how much of an echo chamber this place really is when it comes to international affairs.
I live in India. I just had lunch with my colleague who is a Kashmiri native. His parents recently arrived from that state, and his father has returned back to run his medical shop. Though the situation is not ideal, it is a far cry away from being a breach of democracy or humanitarian concerns. The government has evoked constitutional law to maintain peace and order, largely as preventive measures against extremist operations and organisation. This has certainly affected the lives of daily citizens, no doubt, but the way western media blows it out of proportion one can just wonder whether it is genuinely clueless journalism or ideologically motivated smear campaign.
My speculation about YC is that there are always something beyond our understanding so they choose not to make judgement for time being. If that's the case I applaud their altitude. Modern human have serious cognitive defects in my view.
ref: https://thediplomat.com/2019/07/which-countries-are-for-or-a...
Quote "... Those that signed the first letter, criticizing China, include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
Signing the second letter, in defense of China’s policies, were: Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Gabon, Kuwait, Laos, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.
..."
It's Western capitalism + allies vs Eastern communism + allies?
I mean not specifically you, but why are people in these comments all moral policing a country halfway across the world while their own is just as bad?
> fuck knows how many
~38,000 [1]
> migrants (and children) in concentration camps
People who violated immigration law. (Also, many are free to leave, via voluntary departure.)
> "terrorists" in concentration camps
People who violated international law.
> slaves in overcrowded prisons
People who violated federal or state law.
---
In particular, those laws do not prohibit religious faith or speech.
I'd suggest a closer analogy to the Muslim re-education centers would be Japanese internment facilities in the U.S during the 1940s.
--
[1] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/immigration-detention-in-t...
China is systematically doing this to its own citizens, and intentionally harvesting body parts from them.
Those are, in fact, quite different.
China is
Don't you see that this mentality is exactly the problem? Some of these comments are really surprising.
However, despite realizing this problem, it is not clear what to do about it. Clearly, YC did not choose to become leaders on the issue.
Did you read one prior to Summer 2018? Because when YC decided to go into China, there were people in internment camps then too. This stuff didn't start last year:
https://chinatribunal.com/
As one example of deception, I've seen people claim that muslims are "forced to drink in concentration camps", it's silly and not true.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/angry-over-campus-speec...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/world/australia/hong-kong...
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/hong-kong-protests...
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/this-student-attende...
https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/09/19/australian-univers...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/03/skirmishes-hong-...
edit- I see that you are aware of parent's tactics via replies to parent and comments, and I wrote this post before seeing that. I still stand by this argument even if its context is somewhat misinformed.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
As for "dogs"...please be better than that here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Why is it a problem what i "primarily" do? The only posts that really spur me to comment are these nationalistic one-sided pro-us anti-anyone-other posts and comments. The rest of the (computer) posts on HN I just read and study. There is nothing in the guidelines about what you "primarily" do.
Isn't ideological battle good for the curious? I'm confused. Are we allowed to be curious except when it comes to questioning liberal democracy? This seems like censorship of people who question liberal democracy, and i thought we were supposed to be curious here.
The simpler explanation is probably that the business climate is super risky if you're the foreign partner in any sort of JV with China, and they thought they could work through it through ... charisma and sweat and tears. And it turns out that in fact it is hard even if you're some techy VC or w/e.
I think few question what the gov't is doing, but the question is more whether YC in particular was affected by actions in the past year that caused them to reverse course.
It's pretty obvious why; everyone would be in China in a huge way if it wasn't for their trade abuse and/or human rights abuses.
I get that if PG tweeted something like, "We're pulling out of China because they're violently repressing pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong and they run a re-education gulag archipelago for millions of Uighurs and they murder political prisoners so they can sell their organs through their state-administered transplant market", it would be satisfying to read -- but I'm not a YC alum. I don't run a company that could get screwed if YC lands on Beijing's shit list. Sure, that's probably a small slice of the portfolio, but this is still the right call from a business perspective.
Actions speak louder than words, and this decision was pretty clear.
The fact that not being on an oppressive country's "shit list" is at all a priority is exactly the problem here. If your company relies on making money from these places, you deserve to fail.
Umm, your entire comment was pointing out how embarrassingly loud words can be, and therefore how it was better just to take a quiet action.
Also this story of a Chinese Stanford professor/investor’s “suicide” last year is quite the story. There’s a potential safety issue here too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurherman/2018/12/13/a-death...
The people of Hong Kong, and their right to live with self-determination, matter.
Because that's pushing the line further and further of what the CCP can make people accept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
> Most companies are morally agnostic
What do you think makes companies do what they do? Companies consist of people. There are still people making these decisions. Many companies have taken ethical stances wrt China. Many more have not. Companies don't just get let of the hook because they're companies.
Of course, there's a question of causality. Are businesses "morally agnostic" because they choose to be, or because the ones that aren't don't survive? Companies that say "we don't do business with places that harvest organs from prisoners" will struggle against ones that say "we were able to cut the price of our phone 50% by doing business with (said regime)"
This would actually be a good reason to impose import duties on those places - to make goods from ethical regimes more competitive.
Same sentiment for Saudi investors? Same for Israeli?
People have different lines and I'm sure soon founders will be doing a great more DD in this new age of outwardly conscious capitalism.
I'm patiently waiting for the tweet thread/medium article of a successful founder pointing out all the dirty cash they didn't take. Unfortunately, as of yet it is still a great deal of money that builds companies. Not unwaivering morals... One day.
"Yes" & "Possibly, but being open to investor' individual behaviour to supersede their country's"
See: it's not that difficult. One man's slippery slope is another's perfect hill for early morning skiing.
I know right? I mean, it's not my liver that's being harvested...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests...
Coming from Poland some of the the post-war socialism Whataboutism is a meme here (check the polish variant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes#V... )
In a world where so many companies' valuation is tied to the number of users willing to give you their personal data, reputation is a precious thing.
https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/11/how-to-survive-an-incre...
Btw if you have a smb or an European company that doesn’t think it applies to you, you are signing your company’s death sentence
I am also encouraged they are still funding Chinese companies and have a nuanced approach to China in this highly politically charged environment that reminds me of McCarthyism.
Indeed one does not need to look far for such sentiments:
"The Chinese aren’t smarter than we are. They don’t work harder than we do.
They CHEAT." -Lindsey Graham
https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/11664531583082086...
"At one point during the dinner, Trump noted of an unnamed country that the attendee said was clearly China, “almost every student that comes over to this country is a spy.” " -Donald Trump
"FBI Is 'Harassing' Some Chinese Citizens Says Academic Group" https://www.wvxu.org/post/fbi-harassing-some-chinese-citizen...
No, he's not deeply misinformed. Perfect example is the ridiculous spying bullshit that SuperMicro was accused of earlier this year.
”A political movement reaches great enough support that it can paint its minority opposition as persona non grata. Then they make even mere association with opposition into a crime against the State and force employers, housing authorities, and other institutions to block such ”sympathizers” access to their work, homes, and assets.”
But I am not a historian.
A real dictionary will show you that McCarthy-esque allegations are specifically treasonous.
Wikipedia pretty much defines it the same way: "McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence."
> specifically treasonous
Treason is one small dimension, use as a rhetorical device to make the real villain stand out - accusations without evidence.
Everyone, from the general public, to corporate America, to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, raked Bloomberg over the coals for that story. If anything, I think that's a sign that McCarthyism is hardly in play here.
Instead I think that they believe that doing business in China implicitly supports the Chinese government by failing to make a statement and by making the government more successful economically. That is basically the same idea behind a government implementing economic sanctions.
There is also the issue that in some cases doing business in China means actively supporting the actions of the Chinese government; e.g. by engaging in censorship.
Finally, I think that there is a perception that Chinese industry "cheats". This could include stealing intellectual property, requiring foreign corporations to partner with Chinese corporations, and asymmetry in the ability for foreigners to integrate into and be accepted by the culture. In the same way that working as a scab at a company with unfair labor practices could be good for the scab but bad for workers as a whole, a corporation doing business in China despite these issues could be viewed as prioritizing individual profit over the common good.
I'm not necessarily saying that I agree with all of these points in all situations. I'm just trying to show that people do have legitimate points that don't boil down to McCarthyism.
This is no different then when HR calls you in before you're terminated. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you so no point in saying anything.
If (when?) they decide to take another crack at things it'd be helpful to not be on the record about anything.
That's a strange way of saying they require a Chinese national to be part owner, and if it grows enough the party will seize it all.
* I dislike the tendency of some people to prohibits others from looking at things in a nuanced manner.
The CEO and founder of Huawei is a member of the communist party, the government also requires a large staff of military intelligence workers.
Do not assume the strong distinction in the west between private entities and the government exists in China.
In China if you are of any real size whatsoever as a company, the government is either taking a role in things directly, or you are going to be forced out.
> carefully managed by the government
That's not true. They make business decisions based on the profit motive.
> The CEO and founder of Huawei is a member of the communist party
That's not very meaningful. There are a lot of people who are members of the party.
> Do not assume the strong distinction in the west between private entities and the government exists in China.
I think that a lot of people in this forum (and other fora in the West) do not understand the basic economic reforms that China has gone through. There is a huge difference between how a private company like Tencent operates and how a state-owned enterprise operates. It has been government policy over the past few decades to allow the private economy to grow, and to allow it to operate according to profit considerations.
Companies and people in China do not have the same sorts of protections should the government decide to go after them, but it's not as if the government controls the decision-making of private companies.
> In China if you are of any real size whatsoever as a company, the government is either taking a role in things directly, or you are going to be forced out.
This simply isn't true. The Chinese government does not run Alibaba, and doing so would actually go against the direction of Chinese economic reforms over the past few decades.
The Chinese government does not operate them directly, but it has a direct hand in how they are run in a way that simply does not have a parallel in the west.
An analogy might be an American company appointing high ranking government people (who are still active in government) to their board of directors, accepting special government run departments, and working closely with the government on goals and policy.
That sort of thing is entirely unheard of, outside of perhaps defense contractors in the USA, but even there, there is clear division between private and public interests.
It's not at all uncommon for high-ranking government and military officials in the US to sit on corporate boards right after they leave government. There's a well known revolving door.
American companies are also subject to very significant pressure from the government. See, for example, how the US government informally (and successfully) pressured all the major payment processors to cut off WikiLeaks in 2010, or how social media companies are now under significant pressure to censor content.
This sort of pressure, which exists to varying degrees in every country, is not the same as the government directly running a company or dictating its business plans. That is not, by and large, how things operate in China either in the private sector. I see the claim made all the time (for example in the first post I responded to) that all businesses in China are basically run by the government. I think the people making those comments don't know what they are talking about, and are basically advancing a paranoia about China which has become ever more intense in the US over the past few months.
The US government and private interests do indeed co-opt each other a lot, but its nowhere near the (implicit) threat of being run out of business (or worse) that it is in china.
Companies can, however, be banned from the US for overtly political reasons. See Huawei and ZTE.
I agree that Chinese CEOs walk on thinner ice personally, and that they can be thrown in prison or worse much more easily. That's a general problem in China. However, the easy way in which Americans claim Chinese companies are run by the government is not true. It's also true that large US companies are thoroughly embedded in the government and vice versa (the massive defense sector, parts of the tech sector).
Funny, your examples include a company famous for the CCP removing their CEO (Ali) and the company being an arm of military intelligence (Huawei).
I don't feel the need to continue.
[citation needed]
> the company being an arm of military intelligence (Huawei)
[citation needed]
Also recent developments of TikTok's business in US is also a red alert. If indeed the regulation extends to capital markets, then YC's US investors will put themselves against greater uncertainty of guarding their investments.
If the Corp US are smart and watching, they need to reduce/spin off/get rid of their Chinese ties as soon as possible, because they might have to endure long term consequences if the conflict in between two countries get worse.
The Elephant In The Room is writ large between the lines.
My comment from August 15, 2018:
"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."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17765394
* and this is not meant to exonerate US startups or hold them to another standard
Eh, one out of four ain't bad, I guess.
You’re right about China (and other communist countries) being first on gender equality at least in some respects, but... so what? In the West it’s good enough at a macro scale.
Saying China is bad on human rights in some respects is a gross understatement.
The US definitely does it...
Oh and don’t get me started about race
The workplace isn't the only area where someone can leverage technology to discriminate against a characteristic...
Where do you see this statement? I see, "change in leadership" and "now is not the right time".
I translate that to, new leadership (and likely those who put him there) think now is not the right time. That could be for any reason internal or external.
Its a half truth divided by two, with the other two fourth’s being convenience of Qi’s own transition, we all know what we were expected to read and didnt which is the final quarter
Just have a little chuckle at what they chose to say and get out of a hairy situation
0. Violence-for-violence's sake and property destruction, harming the pro-democracy cause and carrying water for PRC, whereas nonviolent disobedience would maintain political capital
1. HK police incidents of excessive force: shootings, blindings, beatings and more
2. Pro-PRC gangs beating people at random and HK police condoning it
[0] https://www.insider.com/silicon-valley-startup-incubator-y-c...
[1] https://www.sohu.com/a/351116732_550313
I also understand why they are not further ruffling any feathers by phrasing their "update" as such.
It is also a bit disappointing from a patriotic standpoint that the general public reaction to this update is that people are _sad_ YC is withdrawing. Given how much we have all benefited from our nation's world-class innovation economy here, we should at least pay the piper.
Equivalent to an advertiser in China going through a local ad broker that works with the NY Times, to place an ad in the NY Times in a paper sold in NYC.
I understand this is a very difficult decision. I'm not sure if its right or wrong. From the perspective of Human Rights its probably right, but from the perspective of investment its difficult considering China's growth prospects.
I'm torn on the China issue and I personally hope our two countries can work out their differences in a constructive way.
But how does
>investment
Versus
>Human Rights
Equal
>I'm torn on the China issue
Do your morals and conscience have a price tag?
>I understand this is a very difficult decision. I'm not sure if its right or wrong. From the perspective of Human Rights its probably right, but from the perspective of investment its difficult considering China's growth prospects.
I can't believe a human being would actually write this. The level of cognitive dissonance would be off the charts.
I think most people would be sold on decoupling from China or at least entertaining the idea of enacting punitive actions on China the moment they realize that more than 1 million Chinese citizens are being detained against their will and having their organs ripped out from them while still being half-conscious. All the while, their family gravesites are bulldozed [1] and the CCP sends Chinese men to sleep with their wives [2]. Unfortunately, the insane amount of influence through bribery, censorship, and propaganda exported from China has made people completely unaware of Holocaust-level atrocities.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/09/chinas-destruc...
[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7647865/Muslim-wive...
So we have to tolerate human rights violations so that in the future _maybe_ there are no more human rights violations?
None of those potentials are sacrificed, they just as much both exist and do not exist as they did before a hypothetical intervention based on human rights abuses.
At least I quite the Open source founder has used the chinese way of colonialism to describe open source. Look at how the top leader talk in international forum on things like internet.
China will impose its view. And if you are not civilised per china view you are barbarian to be crushed. It is in our gene.
They will play nice then when not colonised you will be see.
*
Still I believe it does not make commerical senses. China does not allow others to make money unless they can’t replace you. Learning and turn ... The nasty part will come.
Our whole place is an example. And we are chinese according to them. Still ... hence good luck.
But lets address your comment directly: "The level of cognitive dissonance would be off the charts." Is it?
One book I recommend is Graham Allison "Destined for War".
https://www.amazon.com/Destined-War-America-Escape-Thucydide...
One question that specifically stands out from his book - is that the West believes in Universal Human Rights. China obviously does not. This is a point of conflict and we have some very difficult questions to address in the future. Suppose China attacks Taiwan. What if China has a second Tiananmen in Hong Kong? Do we sanction China? What if China responds with more violence? What do we do? Do we go to war? This is an obvious point of conflict. And these are questions that we will have to work out in the future.
From the perspective of an investor, these are also difficult decisions. We can see this in how the NBA has responded, and how South Park has responded - each differently. Is it really wise to Balkanize the world if our goal is to encourage China to adopt Human Rights? How would a second cold war help?
Obviously I don't have the answers. But I can recognize the conflict from the perspective of a VC whose goal is to make money.
Pinochet, the Saudis, Saddam, but then he was a bad guy, Bin Laden, but then he was a bad guy...
When someone tells me we must take hostile action in the name of the greater good, I start to get suspicious.
This is probably a case where more precision is warranted. The CCP and the nearly synonymous PRC government obviously do not believe in Universal Human Rights [1]. However "China" can be interpreted as the Chinese nation/people, and many of them do believe in human rights [see Hong Kong] or have been deliberately kept ignorant of the concepts. It's not like rejection of human rights is part of the national character, or anything.
> Is it really wise to Balkanize the world if our goal is to encourage China to adopt Human Rights? How would a second cold war help?
The Cold War was basically about containment, and it's an acknowledgment that no good options are available. Recent history has shown that trade and investment don't necessarily lead to liberalization, and military attacks are out of the question. Besides containment, the only option left is acceptance/appeasement.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...
We don't need to go to war with them but we also don't need to invest in their suppression.
Read his comment again. It's pretty clear that's the case.
You can't convince a paperclip-maximizer to preserve human life because "it's right"; you have to convince it that doing so will somehow get it more paperclips. You can't convince an investment firm to stay out of China because "it's right"; you have to convince it that doing so will somehow make it more money.
† https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fG3g3764tSubr6xvs/the-meanin...
Everyone made this assumption in the '90s, that prosperity necessarily lead to freedom. 20 years later that assumption doesn't look so good.
China has already started on a shift called industrialization: a massive demographic shift from poverty-class subsistence farmers, to middle-class industrial workers (e.g. construction workers.)
The next shift after industrialization is a mass promotion out of the working-class and into the middle-class (a.k.a. the bourgeoisie: small-business owners/entrepreneurs), where industrial jobs dry up, people mostly live in cities, and everyone goes into business for themselves to serve a specialized role in a city. Accompanying this is, also inevitably, a massive rise in political consciousness, because you need to study the political climate to effectively run a business.
Now, that second shift is far from happening in China yet. Their industrialization phase only just started 10 years ago, with a construction boom analogous to the one that the US went through in the late 1800s. It'll likely be decades more before there are no more Chinese public-infrastructure projects; before the average Chinese citizen is rich enough that everyone turns their nose up at working in the trades; before the average Chinese citizen's life-goal is to be a vlogger or whatever kids in developed countries want to do now.
But, despite that phase being a ways away, it's also seemingly inevitable. We've never seen a country get stuck in the industrialization phase once it's truly begun. It's finite by definition—the same forces that create this phase of growth, push a country through and past it.
The only deciding factor on how long it takes a state to become democratized, in this theory, is how long it takes to reach the industrialization phase. It took China a long, long time (probably because Communism put them at a standstill in accruing the necessary resources and talent to begin having a working class at all; they had to relent and do some top-down state capitalism just to get anywhere at all.)
And many states are stuck lower down the development path, where they'll likely never reach industrialization without outside help. That "help" usually coming in the form of the world deciding to target them as the newest cheap labor outsourcer. (Luckily, once China is post-industrial, it too will be a labor outsourcer, not a labor supplier.)
But China are still making construction workers into nuveau-riche at a prodigious rate. They're creating the proto-Rockefellers and proto-Carnegies of China, right now. Those people, and especially their children (who would become the actual Rockefellers and Carnegies of China), are going to have some impact. China might "manage" (i.e. suppress) that impact, but a large bourgeoisie class is uniquely powerful in terms of its ability to throw money around to influence foreign politics as a knife against the throat of the local state.
Consider: the Napoleonic Wars weren't a consequence of the French Revolution; they were the second phase of the French Revolution. Sometimes the best thing to do to get your government in better shape, is to convince every other major power that your state is the bad guy and needs its ass kicked.
Right now, China is (barely) keeping a lid on global unrest against them—but a big part of that is that right now, Chinese citizens are still mostly positive and patriotic about their homeland, as you'd expect of people who just went through an industrialization boom. Take that coefficient and flip the sign the other way, though...
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No, no, no, each and every country that deindustrialised, did so for their own, individual reasons.
And you have Japan, Germany, and Switzerland — all developed countries with substantial industry.
Most countries that did deindustrialise, did so because they lost industrial competition. Their industries were too uncompetitive to stick around for anything else, but cost. This is how US lost its steel, in which it once was a global leader.
And it is an easy business decision, why politicizing it? See what Google had politicized its image and the harms that action had brought to it?
It will be stupid to claim this is done to any political reasons, e.g. human rights. And frankly speaking, they don't care.
150% debt : gdp... gonna hinder the growth in medium term
To those who have been living under a rock for the past thirty years: The PRC is a genocidal, expansionist ethnostate that tortures and kills those it deems enemies, which is everybody who isn't ethnically Han and supportive of the leader of the Communist Party. YC knew this when it opened an office there.
My real question is - now that you've invited them in and shown them around, will they create a state-owned YCombinator of their own? It'll be interesting to see how elite state-owned venture capital will work.
Perhaps something like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/commitment-to-small-busin...
https://arsenalgrowth.com/
https://www.welcomeurope.com/european-subsidies-sector-Innov...
Happy to see (for whatever reason) that they're recommitting to communities that (at least on the surface) don't support fascist overtures.
North Korean is also human too. So is those in nazi Germany für Ibm.
You really had to go full Godwin dehumanization on a billion people right away?
Why do you dismiss any comparisons with the Nazis out of hand? Seems like an exceptionally poor way to learn from history.
Because they're generally silly hyperbole, just like this example. If you put China in the same tier as Nazi Germany, you're missing the forest for the trees.
An interesting thread last year suggested that in some cases companies spent many years "doing business in China" as a form of ... de-escalation to avoid nuclear war, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17004546
Plenty of Chinese people call the communist party "The organization" because as far as they are concerned, its the only power structure that exists in China.
Of course, all that’s based on hearsay, so who knows what the reality is.
Sorry, but what you said is quite different from my conclusion from comparing a country which starts wars all around the world, with a country which build infrastructures all around the world.
Which they can't. There is a price to pay when doing business with/in a bloody dictatorship.
The CCP and private companies are hand-in-glove. The risks of working with state-owned enterprises are clear. The risks of working with private companies are are also great with "party cells" officially embedded into at least half of private companies.
Fortunately for the free world, China faces massive structural issues to growth over the next 40 years, which the CCP is unable or unwilling to deal with. I highly recommend [1] and [2] to understand the future of the brutal Chinese dictatorship.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/17/world/asia/ch...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvNT3vyzr0
EDIT: Instead of down voting, please articulate why you disagree.
Perhaps it is the enormous cognitive dissonance. Western companies also take military funding and their surveillance systems were always better and more invasive.
The US is using statutes for national security interests to ban Chinese companies for contributing to alledged human rights abuses. Meanwhile we have documented human rights abuses in the West, and a US that does not shy away to cover a trade war and skewed commercial motives with anti-China propaganda.
US companies and agencies surveil outside the US. Capitalism-commercialization gave our rights to the likes of Zuckerberg and Amazon, who will turn your door bell into a police camera.
The Godwin was also a tad unnecessary. Perhaps you are a bit caught up in the heat of the moment. The propaganda machine is definately turning up the heat, so I do not blame you. Try to pose your argument without claiming the moral highground of the "free world". It is never fortunate that an entire country and its people struggles.
Accusing Ng and Altman of helping build a fascist surveillance state is a nasty accusation, which I feel you are not allowed to make.
Remember when the US had concentration camps for Japanese-Americans? Countries can change even without pressure or backlash (the US did not face any). Can you think of a modern group of people in the US being secluded from participation, facing state racism, and being locked away in ghettos, with no hope of social movement? Would China be justified in boycotting or sanctioning US companies for contributing to ICE, Guantanamo bay, or police violence, or Flynt's water, or Trump's racism?
Freedom of religion gave the US scientology and TV pastors and schools preaching creationism. It gave Europe extremist Salafism and terrorist attacks and people using the Bible to go after immigrants. You have to see China in that context: they see religion as a dangerous memetic virus to indoctronate youthful people into believing something not of their own choice. Countries have a right to make their own laws and their own tactics for improvement and combating extremism.
Edit: you may also receive downvotes from people who hate to hear negative stuff on China, or are paid 50 cents to do so.
Your comment has a lot of whataboutism that isn't relevant to the discussion. I'll mention that US presidents have formally apologized several times for Japanese-American internment (which was 75 years ago), and that I would encourage anybody (and any government) to boycott and sanction companies contributing to human rights abuse.
Doing business with a fascist state or in a fascist state is deplorable. The message should be loud and clear. China today shares many parallels with Germany in the 1930s. There needs to be open frank opposition because embarrassing them is the only way to stop them until the US is willing to park an aircraft carrier group in HK waters.
The above message allows everyone to save face while getting the job done. YC doesn't need to say anything beyond this.
>While I completely agree with you, YC is a private organization and not a political
If you agree that doing business with a fascist state is deplorable, it doesn't stop being deplorable just because you're a private company.
Causing PRC to lose face is the only way to stop them outside a war which nobody wants. If American companies started cutting ties and explicitly calling out their behavior it would make a real difference.
2. ??? (Does not include war.)
3. New Chinese government takes control.
I don't think anyone knows how to do what you want. Just because a problem is important doesn't mean it has a solution.
Step 2b: hopefully we avoid WWIII
But though there's a lot of pressure to choose your side, I doubt every country will do so. If forced they might choose China?
Even the elites want out... i'm not sure the system wouldn't eat itself before then.
The majority of the US and Soviet population was better off with the iron curtain than without in real terms. The US median hourly wage only surpassed that of 1968 in the last 3 years.
So, even moderate global sanctions will have a massive impact with both affluent class and the labor class revolting.
However, remember, oil embargo drove Japan to WW-2, I'm sure China will react similarly unless that internal revolt happens first. Too difficult to predict.
However, China will react to economic loss. As such pulling out of China, surely and quietly, is the best approach.
However, I was simply noting that it is not a requirement for private organizations.
The message is obvious that companies are afraid of angering the Chinese government by speaking ill of it as they commit increasing atrocities because that could potentially eat into their profit margins. Profit over people.
brainwashing (n.) "attempt to alter or control the thoughts and beliefs of another person against his will by psychological techniques," 1950, a literal translation of Chinese xi nao. A term from the Korean War.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/brainwashing
still, namecalling these users doesn't solve anything. and i'm sure it's against the community principles.
Breaking the site guidelines will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
How is modern one-party California fascist? Specifically, how does California advance an ethnostate under a conservative populist tradtionalist movement oriented at revitalizing a long-dead culture? I'm not sure that California does this.
Meanwhile, China operates death camps.
Good try, good hustle, glad you're here learning English, but you need to learn more about your culture's history and the nature of fascism.
The motivation appears to have been different, fighting terrorism and finding WMDs versus societal control and religious intolerance.
The majority, though certainly not all, of the people killed were combatants rather than civilians.
While the invasion was sold on the basis of terrorism and WMD, that was mostly bullshit. I mean, the US originally supported Saddam Hussein because he opposed communists supported by Russia. And it used Iraq in a proxy war against Iran, is also supported by Russia.
Basically, the US invaded Iraq because it had to invade somewhere after the 9/11 attacks. Saudi Arabia was the obvious suspect, given their funding of fundamentalist Islam generally, and Al-Qaeda specifically. Plus the fact that most of the attackers were Saudi.
But that was unworkable, for many reasons. Afghanistan was the other obvious target, but everyone knew that it would be a morass. Given Russia's experience, for example. Or Britain's, back in the day. Plus the fact that most of it had already been pounded into sand.
So Iraq was the perfect target. With lots of juicy stuff to destroy. And an ineffectual military.
Another goal was demonstrating US military hardware. Advertising, to increase sales.
I guess you're implying that certain bad things are happening in China. Do you really live in China and see those things happen, or just hear about them from the media?
And is it possible that some of the media in US are inhonest? Just as there're inhonest media in China.
I'm not fighting you on this topic; just don't understand why there's so much hatred towards our country.
Why don't you travel to Xinjiang and do some investigating. If the camps there are really fabricated by the US media, surely the government won't mind you traveling around and filming the suspected sites?
>just don't understand why there's so much hatred towards our country.
I don't hate you or the other people of your country. I'd love to visit someday and relearn some of the Mandarin I learned in college. However, I do hate what your government is doing to the people of Xinjiang. Why wouldn't I be upset about this?
It's distrust of your government.
There is an enormous amount of respect and fascination with China and its history, culture and people. Your current government is wasting that.
China was going in a positive direction until Xi Jinping.
https://chinatribunal.com/who-we-are/
“The Tribunal’s members are certain - unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt - that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.”
Brits, Americans, an Iranian, a Malaysian. Are these people making it up?
Virtue signaling absolutely works with China. "Losing face" is a big part of their culture and if important business partners start dropping off like flies and calling out their atrocities, they will take notice. Just look at how much of a fuss that NBA manager's tweet made.
>What about Saudi arabia? Should silicon valley and traditional media give up the billions in Saudi investment?
Yes.
Nazi Germany is a much closer parallel for today's China than 19th century US.
I'm afraid a single carrier battle group wouldn't be much of a deterrent these days. The US no longer has naval overmatch in that region. Barring any gross incompetence on PLA-N's part, or the US having highly classified tricks up its sleeve, USN would need several fleets to achieve anything but a pyrrhic victory in such a conflict.[0]
I otherwise completely agree with your sentiments, and living in a world where what amounts to essentially a fascist state having military supremacy—even if only limited in scope and regional for now—is quite chilling.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-ar...
I’m sure they can stop some of it but eventually they’ll just run out of supplies.
I think the only way to do something like that is by going all-in.
All of the data I transmit are recorded, for the agencies to go through them, if not now, then later, when they figured out how.
People who don't obey the leftist narrative are cancelled, have their jobs terminated, and so on.
China has always been independent. They pride themselves on that. Taking away investment money isn't going to influence them.
If you want to influence somebody, first you understand them, then you build a friendship and rapport with them, and then you influence them. Turning off the phone does the opposite.
But of course the way Hong Kong was originally acquired at the point of a gun bolsters the moral/ethical case for both the legal handover and non-intervention.
I'm not sure I'd advocate it, but I see the potential argument: It's better to let users see YC's independent decision to not conduct business in China, even with vague reasoning, as there's no realistic narrative that would put China in a great light.
The alternative is to be completely censored. If the intent is to spread a message within, I would think an uncensored message is better than no message at all.
> park an aircraft carrier group in HK waters.
This is called invasion.
What is your incentive in supporting an invasion?
Isolationism and appeasement post-WWI leading to the next, disastrous world war which could have been avoided or significantly diminished with early intervention.
The fact is this is just a leverage US is holding on to to win the trade war.
Human rights have been the excuse the US used to wage war against multiple middle east countries in the past 30 years, eventually for its own benefit, and causing huge sufferings to people in these countries.
No one can say no to 'supporting human rights', but you'd be naive to think the US cares about human rights more than it does about benefiting itself and inflicting suffering on other countries.
Also, maybe it's turning out that building the wall is not that profitable after all.
Stay the f* out!
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1195728248040087552 The New York Times @nytimes Nov 16 China has detained up to a million Muslims, a campaign it calls a benevolent and routine effort against the pull of extremism. But 403 pages of Communist Party documents we obtained reveal how officials plotted to carry out a ruthless, coercive clampdown.
https://twitter.com/CoveringDelta/status/1196491222765965314 Demetri Kofinas @CoveringDelta Nov 18 We've known for years that governments are interested in developing bioweapons that target specific populations. What I didn't know until this week's episode are the lengths to which the CCP has reportedly gone to obtain the genomic data needed to do it.
https://twitter.com/nathanattrill/status/1192670115017310208 Nathan Attrill 周雷森 @nathanattrill Nov 8 In China, it’s possible to pre-book an organ transplant, something that would be impossible under a voluntary donor system – raising suspicions of widespread organ harvesting.
YC did the right thing here, the comments should reflect that.