I find it funny how YC is focusing only on places where the majority of the world won’t or can’t easily work (US visa policy is atrocious and getting worse every year + raising xenophobia in recent times) and China isn’t an easy country to navigate if you don’t speak Mandarin, let alone succeed in as a foreigner (for a variety of reasons).
Asia and Europe are big places as are Canada and Australia. Time to think broader than just US+China!
1. It's not about empowering everyone on the planet, it's about creating companies which become billion dollar unicorns
2. The probability of Unicornism is directly related to the size of the market you can access. US is the biggest single market on the planet.
3. Accessibility of markets: While EU is the second largest single market [0] US companies have entered european markets just fine. On the other hand, to operate in china, it's best to be a chinese company. Hence, to fund growth on a global scale going native in china is an obvious move.
By which measure? China has nearly five times as many inhabitants, the biggest economic growth over the past three decades of any country, and out-produces the US by over nine thousand. If it's not yet the biggest market on the planet yet, it soon will be.
It will be, sure, but it's not there. Also the markets are very different - the Chinese government is much more likely to take an active role in the governing of large companies.
China is a lot bigger market than the US. EU is slightly bigger. US is third. Maybe with extended markets (e.g. Central America and Canada for US, Eastern Europe for EU, Belt and Road area for China, US is number two). You need to consider several factors, like number of people, as well.
A big problem for the US is that it is a litle off, while most other social/cultural areas are closely connected. For instance, China and Russia might be almost as close allies as the pre-Trump US and Europe. But because Russia and Europe are so close, in fact the business dependencies between both are quite high as well. So a lot of business happens in that exchange, with high values due to the political risks. Since the US lacks such interdependencies with close neighbors it can survive better in a time like WW2 but it is harder in a long peace time like we currently have.
I woud assume it's not a term like "revenue" but more a general word. It's also not smart for your own analysis to assume a single value for it. If you write a business case for instance, it's quite smart to summarize how you size the market for your product/service as well.
"China and Russia might be almost as close allies as the pre-Trump US and Europe. "
That completely underestimates the cultural ties US and 'Europe' has and overestimates the co-operation between parties who co-operate pragmatically from time to time but really can't trust or understand each other.
" US lacks such interdependencies with close neighbors it can survive better in a time like WW2 but it is harder in a long peace time like we currently have."
Are you sure nominal GDP is the right metric to be using to compare market size? By adjusted (PPP) GDP it's China, EU and then the US. Those billions can go a lot further in China and the EU than they can in the US.
As a complete economist noob this is my understanding: When discussing huge investements, the cost of goods and services does not really matter, but what matters is that what is the expected profit margin from the investment and at what risk.
From this point of view dollars do equal the estimated size, not how much commodities or services you can buy with it.
Someone with more experience can comment hopefully on this.
You want money in nominal terms, so PPP doesn't matter. EU is not really a single market, they have unified regulations, which is helpful, but at the very least language differences mean you're doing custom work for every country.
> EU is not really a single market, they have unified regulations, which is helpful
The EU doesn't really have unified regulations. I mean, regulations passed at the EU level are unified, but countries have a great degree of country-specific regulations themselves.
Now, technically states within the US have the ability to regulate things at the state level, but due to various aspects of Constitutional law (the Commerce Clause, and case law such as the Sherman Antitrust Act, etc.), there are far fewer state-specific regulations that companies have to worry about for interstate commerce within the US than international commerce within the EU. Unless you're dealing with very specific regulated industries (money transmission, health insurance, etc.), you generally don't have to worry about a lot for basic interstate commerce in the US.
Mandarin isn't strictly necessary to live in China. Plenty of my laowai colleagues only knew a few words and got along just fine in a tier one Beijing, which admittedly is a bit behind Shanghai and Shenzhen.
The only thing that really drove us out was the pollution (a huge problem in Beijing that is supposedly finally getting better).
Given the US visa policy, as bad as it is, still attracts far more many foreigners than China, at least. More than most countries actually even by per capita measures.
> Mandarin isn't strictly necessary to live in China
Basic question: what do you do in China for browsing, emails and maps? I suppose Google doesn't work there and all the local services would be in Mandarin, no? When I travel I use Google search, emails, maps extensively but I have no clue what would I do in China. Also FB and Twitter also likely won't be accessible. So how do I even keep touch with folks outside China, especially if I don't know Mandarin?
Many foreigners have VPNs, but many do not. They aren't the easiest thing to set up, and they often close shop a few weeks after you pay a yearly subscription fee.
Email: I use outlook.com, but I shut my gmail account long before gmail was blocked. I'm weird.
maps: Apple Maps on an iphone works well enough. Not sure if gmaps on Android works or not. Many Google services still work even if a few are blocked.
Browsing: many websites work in China, but I also had full internet access at work for when I needed it, so Facebooking family was easy enough, I just didn't use it at night when I was at home...I didn't miss it.
Its definitely isolating, but not incredibly so. If you are addicted to social media, this can even help you become unaddicted, weird therapy for sure :)
Apple maps works perfectly fine in China. I’m not sure what it’s like for android users.
It includes transit, at least for Beijing, see https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/. I always took a taxi though so that wasn’t very important to me, so I used mostly the didi dache app.
For crying out loud, even using github based services like 'go get' or homebrew without proxies is a real pain in the arse, stop defending your 'it's not that bad' view cos it is.
Get a SIM card from Project Fi (by Google), which auto-VPN's for you, and you can use everything (FB, Twitter, etc.) you're used to using. Bring a Chromebook and use your phone to provide Internet for your Chromebook.
Install Didi so you can hail a ride. Install WeChat and some of the mini apps so that you can order Starbucks without waiting in line. Since you probably don't have a Chinese bank account, find a local (possibly even a hotel concierge) who is willing to take cash from you and send you some RMB into your WeChat account so you can pay vendors, including restaurant bills, train tickets, farmer's markets, and the guy on the street corner selling oranges.
I spent a couple hours setting up an OpenVPN server on AWS EC2 nano instance so it's going to be completely free for the first year. Speed is not great but enough to watch HD youtube videos, etc. I know have unrestricted internet on both my phone and macbook.
For a long while shadowsocks/shadowsocksr (the latter being more actively developed) has been preferred way to bypass the GFW although what works is constantly changing. This was an interesting write up passed a couple years ago where a dev tries out various methods for bypass on a China trip: http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great-firewal...
I'm moving to China in a week for graduate school and have been asking myself many of these questions :)
In past trips to China, VPN services--specially Express VPN--allowed me to easily bypass the Great Firewall. That unlocks Twitter, FB, Google services, etc.
That being said, many services don't have a great experience in China. For example, Google Maps doesn't offer public transit or driving instructions. In these cases, using the chinese-based app (Du Maps) is just far better.
Even that depends. A (young educated) Chinese can speak better English than a Laowai could probably ever speak Chinese. Plenty of foreigners work exec positions in Chinese companies with only very basic mandarin.
Anyone can learn how to say 你好are you? But seriously, getting basic taxi cab mandarin down in 6 months is pretty easy. Heck, when I did it it was much harder since real beijingers back then had thick 儿 accents.
You definitely don't need 大山-level mandarin to do business in china these days.
Yeah but it's still not honest to say you don't need to learn Chinese at all. I would say that you will need atleast 6 months to be able to live normally, 12 months to get respect in business meetings, 3-4 years to be understood and make it a comp. advantage.And I'm not talking about 上海。
I'm always shocked when I visit shanghai and the taxi drivers can actually speak English. Nothing like that ever happens in Beijing.
Plenty of foreigners work in China having much less than 6 months of Chinese. Most of them weren't even at my level. They still got by. Business meetings held with foreigners are usually in English anyways, it is only the old guard (Xi's generation) that can't English very well. And those people aren't so common in tech.
My winning combination for China: Google Fi (unrestricted access to real Internet), Google Translate, Didi. Most places have pictures for food so I just play the pointing game, but it would be difficult if you were a picky eater.
After seeing Mark Zuckerberg's "Chinese ability" I have less respect for him than before. I don't think 12 months cuts it. Maybe gives you a cute factor, yes. I would think respect is independent of language ability, unless you are taking language ability as your main selling point as a person. I'm sure Bill Gates is both respected in China, and effective, whether he speaks any Chinese or not. It all depends on the circumstances.
Considering that there are over 300 million, yes million, people in China who do not speak Mandarin, I'd say yes one could get by. I'd even venture to say many of these 300 million people also do business in China. But yeah, I know what you meant.
> Considering that there are over 300 million, yes million, people in China who do not speak Mandarin
I don't think your numbers are right. Tibet has 4 million population. Xinjiang has 20 million, among which 50% are Han. Those are only 2 provinces where I can think of that doesn't require Mandarin to get by in certain area.
The rest of China, at least, could understand Mandarin without problems.
You're just going by intuition, which can be misleading.
Guangdong province alone is 100 million people. Some of whom are Mandarin speakers (1st or 2nd or 2nd+ language). But many are not, not even as 2nd or 2nd+ language speakers. And their predominant language is Cantonese. Many people grew up before mandatory Mandarin education was instituted. There's a similar situation in other huge provinces all around China, especially southern China.
I would say assuming people from Guangdong province, and majority of them don't speak Mandarin is an exaggeration to great extent. Of course they do, it is imperfect with heavy accent. But I won't go that far claiming they don't speak Mandarin, as if saying all English speakers in India don't count, that is just hilarious.
It is definitely your claim about the 300 million Chinese that they don't speak Mandarin, that is why the whole conversation happens. Otherwise, it won't add up, even assume majority of Guangdong province don't speak Mandarin at all.
If you mean that these 300 million do not have Chinese as the first language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China then it would be correct. But every kid growing up in China has to learn Chinese in school (plus TV etc).
Wrong. A lot of people grew up before this started. And no, I removed the Mandarin-as-an-additional-language people from the number already. (Mandarin 1st + Mandarin as a 2nd or 3rd languages speakers) = 1.1 billion. Population of China, 1.4 billion. 1.4 billion minus 1.1 billion is 300 million.
We fund startups all around the world! In the rare cases where a founder is unable to get a US visa for the duration of our program, we are open to doing something remote. We offer a lot of help figuring out the US visa system, which is in my opinion extremely sub-optimal. I believe talent is equally distributed in the world, and the US should want as many talented founders to come create businesses here as possible.
China is an especially interesting market to us given the quality of companies and entrepreneurs we see there.
It should be easy to see, China and US are where money are. There is advantage to have a local branch there. YC is a venture capital, don't pretend it is something else.
I think YC China would mainly help local tech talents to launch startups with a focus on China's markets first. If you look at how many tech startups are located in Beijing (some of them are tier-one companies: Tusimple, uisee, bytedance, mobvoi, megvii, just to name a few), you would know that they have made the right choice.
The political concerns are real. It's too cynical to say that YC just cares about money, though. There would be better ways to create an incubator than to do it like this, if that were the case. One obvious question that hasn't been raised is: "Why not base it in Taiwan?" It's still "China" (for some definition of China), you can still get access to the talent that you want (you just have to try a little harder), and you could still get access to the market you're targeting.
It's not going to be easy, but it would better address the political and humanitarian issues raised.
It's definitely an area where we will have to tread carefully, and the concerns are for sure real. It was important to us to find an extremely ethically aligned leader.
However, I think it's easy to fall into a trap of assuming that everything about China (or any other culture) is worse just because it's different. My experience in China, and talking to Chinese people about their experiences in China, has been very different than what I assumed it would be.
Taiwan is not "China" for reasonable and informed definitions of China. Independent of that, to the best of my understanding:
(1) The talent pools in Taiwan and China are different
(2) The markets in Taiwan and China are very different
Right now the Chinese market is more important than the Chinese talent pool, but both are important. Basing an accelerator in Taiwan would be good for Taiwan, but it would not meaningfully engage with the Chinese market or talent pool. It's too late in the game for that.
Even if YC's ultimately goal were political and humanitarian it would still be more effective to base the accelerator in China and use the additional leverage gained from being in China to better pursue those goals.
Disclosure: I am an American currently living in Taiwan.
(edits: grammar)
The PRC says that Formosa (i.e Taiwan) is part of China. That's why I added the caveat (for some definition of China). There are political definitions, cultural definitions, linguistic/anthropological definitions. So, my statement still stands that Taiwan is a kind of China, depending on how you understand that word.
It's clear that you're speaking from a political perspective, but even that gets a bit grey.
Since you don't live in China, you should know that there are hundreds of different versions of China within China itself. You could live in Shanghai and never know the reality of the China that the people of Xinjiang experience. So I would say to your points that:
1) The markets all over China are very different.
2) The talent pools all over China are very different.
If YC wants to call it YC Shangjing, (because they're primarily targeting those two markets), that would be fair. But considering China just to be Shanghai and Beijing is a bit myopic, which is why I suggested Taiwan in the first place.
Disclosure: I am a Chinese-American currently living in Northwest China, which is VERY different than Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Linxia, Shenyang, etc. all of which I've visited.
> Taiwan is not "China" for reasonable and informed definitions of China.
Taiwan is literally the Republic of China. The leadership is descended from the same people who overcame the Japanese. Pretending the Communist Party has a monopoly on the word 'China' is uninformed and unreasonable.
Off topic, a better compromise would have been Hong Kong, inside the PRC with some degree of democracy, though less than originally promised in 1997.
You are not wrong that Taiwan is part of China according to official definition (from both PRC and Taiwanese gov).
However, "Taiwan is literally the Republic of China." is disingenuous considering that their government is not the one that sits in the United Nations.
I don't want to get involved in politics. But I have to point out "Taiwan is literally the Republic of China." is 100% correct. The official name of Taiwan is Republic of China (ROC). On the cover of Taiwan passport, you can only see Republic of China. The interesting thing is the claimed territory of Republic of China includes the China mainland and Mongolia, not just Taiwan island. The official name of China mainland is People's Republic of China (PRC), literally same to Republic of China (ROC). It's too complex for western people to understand. Just refer them as China and Taiwan.
I am from China mainland, having friends and colleagues from Taiwan. Don't want to see wars happen between PRC and ROC.
When people refer to China, they are referring to mainland China which is about the same size as the continental US, and not a small island about the size of Vermont. They are two different things because Taiwan based businesses do not have the same access to mainland China vs businesses based on the mainland. China's domestic market is pretty much a closed one.
"China" is the name of a country. For historical reasons the "Republic of China" is one of the names of a different country, but having "China" in its name doesn't make it (a part of) China.
Most people call China "China" simply because China's current territory is closest to the China that existed before the Nationalist/Communist split. It's not a political statement. Two different countries needs two different names. Taiwan is for all intents and purposes a country but it can't declare itself one now because of military threat from China.
Yes, there are Taiwanese who want Taiwan to subjugate itself and become part of China. But all the young people I have talked to, excluding blindly patriotic Chinese, see Taiwan as Taiwan and China as China-- as two separate countries with their own economies, histories, cultures, and languages.
> "Why not base it in Taiwan?" It's still "China" (for some definition of China), you can still get access to the talent that you want (you just have to try a little harder), and you could still get access to the market you're targeting.
Native Chinese here. I don't think this is the case. It's not even close to ideal to base in Taiwan given the political environment between the straits nowadays. The policies are very unfriendly. Recruitment and market delivery is even more complicated than between foreign countries actually.
Adding onto this, in China you also have to deal with the Great Firewall as well
The apps used in Taiwan and China are significantly different. In China, its anything owned by tencent, baidu, or alibaba.
The app market in Taiwan uses mostly English offerings (google, facebook, instagram) with a combination of Asianic/Non-china based apps including Line, which is similar to Whatsapp or Wechat.
> Adding onto this, in China you also have to deal with the Great Firewall as well
Not you don't. For most of the Chinese entrepreneurs create startups inside China - their local market is big enough to not to have to worry about internationalization. The big three you named there, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, didn't worry about that at all for many years sine their establishments.
> In China, its anything owned by tencent, baidu, or alibaba.
There are certain truth to it, but there are exceptions too. I.E. Douyin/Tik Tok(social vlogging) and Pinduoduo (e-commerce) have been immensely popular and successful in recent years and weren't owned (or significantly owned) by the big three.
I agree with you. But I'm not suggesting that people develop business based on the location of YCombinator. YCombinator accepts applicants from all over the world who want to focus on specific issues that their home markets exhibit. Just the other day someone was promoting FinTech for South America.
In my OP I said it would be work. It would be more of a challenge for Mainland Chinese applicants to launch their businesses while not being in the Mainland, but if that was their biggest problem then they're prepped for success!
> and you could still get access to the market you're targeting.
This is not true. Taiwanese investment in China is considered 'external'. And Taiwan's talent reserve is no way to be considered as on par against mainland China. But that is not the point either, I think YC just wants an entity in China, not for the talents, but for the market. Under the risk of being downvoted, I have to say China has created some world class startups in the past decade, only second to US.
China has startups, they are definitely many high in quality, but they aren’t really world class in terms of talent used (almost completely Chinese) and markets targeted (ditto). China will have trouble getting its tech companies to compete abroad when they have closed off their own market so much. Likewise, until China embraces immigration rather than emigration, talent is unlikely to flock to China in any significant numbers.
Worldclass valuation maybe? Might be more controversial to say, but when it comes to internet, there is China and the rest of world, those are 2 disconnected system, quite literally. So I don't think YC China is priortized to create companies for the whole world, probably just companies that would operate mainly in China, built and run by the locals.
That's not 100% true. Amazon and (previously) ebay operate in china without problem but don't get a chance facing alibaba. Microsoft also do things fine. Uber was also there. The market that's really closed off are mostly limited to companies that don't support censorship.
Also speaking of world class, have you heard of DJI?
I did work for MS China for almost 10 years, and Microsoft does sell shrink wrap software in China, but they don't really do services there, they've tried and even though they are on the government's good side, it just never worked out for them. Microsoft is a good example of my claim.
Not trying to move the goalpost, but DJI is more of a hardware company, it isn't really an internet one. Any company that can operate outside of a services model will do just fine in China, since they are just shipping product for export.
How is MS a perfect example of your claim? It's proves even US company without much friction operating in China might not succeed. It had nothing to do with China closing off the market. Except the one really banned (google & fb etc), others just don't have a competitive product suitable for chinese market.
Also aren't we talking about tech company? Not internet company alone?
Or do you consider a market closed off if no foreign internet service company is doing well? In that standard US is also closed off because I can't think of a single successful non US internet company here.
China's internet market is closed off, not its hardware product one, so Intel still sells a lot of CPUs in China, while DJI sells plenty of drones outside of China and Xiaomi and Huawei even sell phones abroad like Apple can sell phones in China. If you count those as success and proof China is open, then that is definitely your prerogative.
But take the typical YC startup business models, most of those aren't going to be in those safe categories.
>Likewise, until China embraces immigration rather than emigration, talent is unlikely to flock to China in any significant numbers.
Isn't it the case already? In our company, the preference to host an overseas talent always goes to China's office for simplicity of immigration process. Secondary to that, I have to admit, is the significantly reduced chance of hostile talent poaching.
What was the reason you left China?
BTW. Ever crosses paths with Shanghai Bill of Slashdot fame?
This assumes that your talent pool is only local. If Chinese (i.e. 大陆) parents would be willing to send their kids all over the world for a university education, do you think it would be a big deal that a Shanghai team moved to Taiwan?
Some of my Taiwanese friends would choose to base their companies at either silicon valley or mainland China, while a lot of my bay area Chinese friends (and friends who received US grad school education) would choose to base their companies in mainland China. Taiwan doesn't really have the ideal startup environment.
> It's too cynical to say that YC just cares about money, though.
YC is not a NFP, it is a VC firm. It does indeed just care about money. Thinking otherwise is naive.
Sure, YC wouldn't feed babies to lions to make money, but short of direct-- and that is the key word-- contribution to inhuman acts, everything else is fair game for Venture Capitalism.
I don't think it is too cynical to say that YC just cares about money, as it is not too cynical to say that all VCs and Wall St. financial firms just care about money - unless the VCs charter has some other purpose like social good clearly defined.
Moreover, here, it would have been OK if the political climate in China was improving, but it's not. In fact with Xi getting supreme power, it's worsening. So, with that in mind this does not send the proper message.
Having said that, YC is a private business, and from where I stand this is not PG/SL's YC, and I have no business projecting my ethics and morality on YC.
But, anyone supporting YC in here, should also not be critical of Google or any other company when they do business in China, nor should they be surprised when they hear of atrocities in Tibet, Uighur, Chinese police state etc.
As a Canadian looking from the side lines, I have to add that the US isn't doing much better with Donald Trump. I definitely feel that the US is the instigator for the current political cooldown.
I don't think it's too cynical given this move at this point. They have willingly entered into a market where corporations are sponsored for their loyalty to the state, which has done horrendous humanitarian crimes, without which they could have succeeded economically just as well. Seems to me any semblance of a soul has been lost here in favor of pure VC profits.
Freedom house is a US government funded agency that gives better press to countries allied to the US. A better index is the Democracy Index by the Economist [1].
China's actions seem horrendous from our perspective, but at least they are only operating within their own borders. How do you feel about the decades of war and destruction wreaked worldwide by our own government, including the bombing of schoolchildren just this week?
Taiwan was land that was forcibly colonized by the Han Chinese. The original inhabitants are Austronesian people [1]
I think a better move would be to move YC China to Vancouver, given the high density of rich Chinese expats in Vancouver, and its status of being in a liberal, western democracy. [2]
His point is that there is basically no country on the planet that does not have some history of conquest attached to it.
Railing against it just because it's recent is just kind of arguing to a particular status quo. What makes the Chinese takeover of Taiwan any more or less legitimate than the PRC takeover of the mainland?
It's not, because you mention directly that YC China should move to Vancouver, and the commenter said that the same issue you have with Taiwan happened in Canada.
The United States was land that was forcibly colonized by the British, French, Spanish, and Dutch. The original inhabitants are Native American people [1].
It has nothing to do with nationalism. The PRC is a dictatorship that currently has millions of people in concentration camps undergoing reeducation, suppresses freedom of expression for its citizens, and crushes minority cultures.
Dismissing or condemning an entire country like you did, besides being unsubstantive, certainly qualifies as nationalistic flamebait in the sense that we use the term here. Please don't post like this to HN.
I have nothing against the people of China but the PRC government and Chinese business is so intertwined that I don't think it's possible to do business with China and not interact or enable the PRC in any way.
The trouble with this is that when people bring such grandiose and generic rhetoric onto this site, the only place the discussion can go is into flamewar, as others get even more grandiose and generic (or personal).
You're not adding any information when you post like this. It's just a big opinion with a strong feeling attached. When someone else with the opposite opinion comes along and blasts their opposite strong feeling, is any information going to be exchanged? No it is not. Therefore it's off topic for thoughtful conversation, which is what we're trying for here.
HN threads thrive on curiosity and specifics, wither on the gruel of grandiosity, and burn under scorching rhetoric.
Complaining somebody "godwinned" a thread (which is a total misrepresentation of godwins law, and even the person that coined it said this kind of interpretation of it is stupid) is an unbelievably lazy dismissal of a situation that is quite literally directly comparable to some of the worst actions the nazis took.
If we aren't allowed to talk about and compare what the nazis did, how will we learn from it?
If this comparison is not permitted in this situation, when will it ever be?
Really quite disappointed in your stance on this one.
And please, spare us the condescending attitude that we don't actually care about this stuff. If we are going to veer off into "unstated positions and assumptions" territory there is a white hot glaringly obvious apparent conflict of interest with HN moderation shutting down discussion of human rights abuses right as YC china launches, dont you think?
On the internet, basically no one is "talking about and comparing what the Nazis did" for the purpose of learning. It's a rhetorical device, the cheapest, most sensational, lowest-information one around.
We actually moderate HN threads less, not more, when YC is the topic—this is a longstanding principle on HN. But that doesn't mean we don't moderate them at all. You only need to read a small sample of the moderation comments we post to this site to see how consistent we are on these questions.
Without a doubt the worst bullshit I've ever seen from dang.
So tell us, Dan, how would one criticize the Chinese government for imprisoning dissidents and genocide, while staying within your guidelines? How must one couch it to pass the Great Firewall of Hacker News? Serious question.
To the extent that people are fulminating rather than saying anything substantive, and reacting ideologically or tribally rather than thoughtfully, they're crossing outside the scope of what this site is for. Heated rhetoric, grandiose generalization, and angry name-calling are the kind of thing that mark this distinction. Your comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17764244 is an example of the kind of thing that clearly moves the needle into the red.
The root comment didn't reference that or anything else.
The problem with bringing such links into arguments like this is that no one does so for reasons of intellectual interest. For example, in this case, people aren't actually interested in the plight of the Uighurs. Rather, it's convenient ammunition for justifying pre-existing political and national feelings. Such a move is not part of thoughtful conversation at all; it's just ideology and tribal loyalty, which explains why the discussions are so utterly repetitive—and therefore off topic for HN.
This "intellectual interest" garbage is a farce. People like us, who live in a free country, have the luxury of bantering about intellectual interests. How easy it is for you to sit comfortably and pooh-pooh criticism of your employer as not intellectual enough, and too emotionally motivated.
Of course, this is what Marxism does: fight for the oppressed--when it's convenient. The rest of the time, they are fodder.
It's not flamebait to discuss the very real, very troubling human rights issues that exist in China. It's certainly not just an "opinion." I'm seriously concerned by your calling out the parent comments like this, and even more concerned that you're doubling down in other comments. I don't think it's the best look to shut down criticism of a government like China's (no one is talking about the Chinese people here) that routinely, demonstrably commits human rights abuses. They are documented and real. The Chinese government commits murder, torture, theft...
I'm not sure what to say if HN's position is that it's too controversial (or is it that "all denunciations are the same"? They are not) to call out such actions. These discussions are clearly related to the topic at hand.
Maybe those of us criticizing the Chinese government aren't saying anything new, but that doesn't lessen the need to speak out. It's neither "rhetoric" nor "grandiosity" to point out that it's morally wrong for a government to act the way China's does.
I would expect the PRC to put a lid on this sort of criticism, not Hacker News. It's bordering on complicity.
> For example, in this case, people aren't actually interested in the plight of the Uighurs.
What an awful sentiment. Please don't profess to know my own moral compass. I am deeply concerned and sickened; we all should be. These people are being forcibly relocated and tortured by their own government.
Doing business with the Chinese government is unethical. Doing business with Chinese entrepreneurs and providing services to the Chinese people is a humanitarian imperative.
Without going to far into the political weeds, the US has never delivered freedom effectively at the end of a gun, but rather through McDonalds and Coca Cola.
Yes. With the astronomical level of clout that Elon Musk has, I'm willing to call him immoral, unethical, and a bad person for doing business with KSA. A vanishingly small number of people are as influential as Musk, and his actions inspire and are emulated worldwide. Saudi Arabia is currently trying to rehabilitate its image (while maintaining its vicious corporal punishments, extremist views, support of terrorism, and legalized misogyny) and shouldn't have help from anyone who claims to care about anything other than profit.
Probably the biggest single thing you guys could do to make this thread even worse is turn it into yet another comic book feud about Elon Musk. Enough with that, please.
More generally, please don't practice the online shaming culture of denunciation on Hacker News. It makes for lousy, predictable discussion, regardless of how right you are or feel. From an intellectual curiosity point of view—which is the main value of this site—all denunciations are the same.
We make concessions every day regarding human rights in the United States (abusing immigrant/migrant labor under the table, our prison population). I am most definitely not saying it's right, but you have to look inward first when you're making such bold claims.
On one hand I'm curious to see the responses to the idea that corporations that were founded and bloomed in liberal countries can suddenly just become "global" companies and not be held to those same liberal standards.
On the other, I look at countries like China and Russia and wonder how much mileage this "liberal world order" has left in the gas tank.
If we look at history we can see that when liberalism first encountered china it wasn't John Locke and human rights that opened up trade, but a naval blockade that forced china to capitulate (and create hong kong too, which is the most liberal country in asia).
Do we as the west have the ability or the willpower to pull a move like that again? Because if we don't then i don't see how we can overcome china other than writing more bloomberg articles on how their ghost cities are going to crash their economy any day now.
All Chinese businesses are subordinate to the PRC. It is my personal opinion that we have reached a point of technological progress where totalitarian control of massive states such as China is simply possible when it wasn't a few decades prior to the advent of modern computing.
I do not have any faith that any amount of trade with China will cause the government to reform in any meaningful way and I'm confident that China will remain a dictatorship a thousand years from now.
Given the sensitive nature of this topic, I propose HackerNews be given the authority of drafting the Code of Ethics for YC China in order to ensure democratic accountability. Posters could nominate particular statues/principles they like and the community at large can vote on them.
The HackerNews crowd isn't even allowed to make comments on YC seeded company job postings, I wouldn't hold your breath on being able to craft a sister company's code of ethics.
Nice move YC. I know Qi is highly regarded by Chinese students. He seems like a corporate vs startup guy though, so while I trust he has great access to talent and connections in industry and Govt, I'm not sure he's the best person to mentor a scrappy startup. Hope he has a good support cast.
The traditional startup also doesn't really work out in China due to the government wanting to be involved. It's much more suit driven over there and not possible just with t-shirts.
Given the previous information, he's a capable person [0], and more importantly, "honest and dedicated to work" (Originally: 自去年一月陆奇加入百度以来，公司发生了很多积极向上的变化。我和广大同学一样，都对他正直的人品、忘我的工作精神和在技术及商业领域的敏锐洞察力印象深刻……) [1].
So I guess I'm not join the team of doubt this time for now.
(Before you click, grab yourself a translator first)
YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.
> I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.
Especially since the PRC government is getting much more aggressive in forcing Western companies to kowtow to their political stances even in their operations outside of China. Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologize for posting a Dalai Lama quote on Instagram [1], and a Marriott employee was fired after he "liked" a post about Tibetan independence [2]. This happened despite both websites being blocked in China.
The implications for companies with new Chinese operations that also operate an open web forum is left as an exercise for the reader.
I'm pretty sure Marriott and Benz stand up firsthand to their owners and in their list of priorities access to chinese markets is more important than human rights.
Given our worship of capital I'm amazed global emancipation of slavery ever happened. But I suppose that was only because new financial markets and industrialization created lots of better opportunities for capital investment than slave labour force - hence the market for slaves dwindled.
> I'm pretty sure Marriott and Benz stand up firsthand to their owners and in their list of priorities access to chinese markets is more important than human rights.
I think this is a very American perspective; I'm American as well. It is very easy for us to forget our own human rights abuses, like bombing children in the Middle East, torture in Abu Ghraib, etc. etc. and focus on other countries as the "bad guys". America's leadership has made mistakes, China's leadership has made mistakes, but to use those mistakes to promote isolationism divides us as a global people. China runs their country differently. If YC can promote new startups in China, perhaps one day those startups will be the driving cause of unifying the world. Most citizens only loosely affiliate with their country. Many Chinese, like Americans, want to make their home and the world a better place. To remix from Richard Dawkins, A child is not an American child, not a Chinese child, but a child of American parents or a child of Chinese parents.
And what I'm saying is, my government doesn't respect human rights, but I as a citizen do. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater arguing private US business shouldn't work with anyone in China because they must all be human rights abusers. /s
You seriously think this is about making the world a better place?
It's about money. Private businesses don't care about Chinese citizens. They care about cold hard cash.
Now, am I saying private US businesses shouldn't work with anyone in China? Not really. All I'm sayng is: at the end of the day, technology can only do so much. Eventually, policy must change also and this is valid for any country, including the US.
I don't mean to be blunt, but YC, as an institution, doesn't really care about anything besides money. They're venture capitalists. That the CCP is putting Muslims in high-tech concentration camps is of little concern compared to how much they think they can make in the Chinese market.
There was also something about "Muslims in concentration camps" - but there's another link in this very thread talking about how Uyghurs are being put in camps by the PRC, so I'm not sure either how speaking truth to power got flagged.
Markets have already given the Chinese regime enormous economic power, its easy to ignore the gross human rights violations if you have a cheap iphone and your own dignity isn't impaired. Beware the new colonial power.
Every one wants to be part of the next Chinese startups, an incubator has less risk than other big corporations. Qi Lu knows technology and knows how to navigate his way with the Chinese government. Hopefully they can be part of the startup ecosystem in China.
Exactly. I am not sure what Sam Altman is up to here, but this may be something that Silicon Valley companies and the free world will regret deeply in the future. He mentions
> to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity.
Yes, but technologies at the hands of a dictatorship is dangerous. This morning, there was just a thread about Chinese surveillance/censorship technologies being sold to other countries. Lord help us if the Chinese government somehow gets its hands on a superior weapons tech, or smarter AI.
He also says
> Qi will also take over as the Head of YC Research, YC’s non-profit research lab.
We've heard several prominent lawsuits in recent months on how Chinese nationals stolen and transfered US techs into Chinese companies (possibly government involvement). Qi Lu literally said "The Chinese government understands what AI can do, and they show a lot of commitment for sustained and long-term investment...AI is part of China’s national five-year plan, and just a few months ago, the Chinese government published a comprehensive white paper to call out a systematic investment in AI." https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/09/baidu-coo-says-chinas-gov.... We're literally handing the Chinese government some of the Western world's greatest knowledge and inventions.
This is scary scary thing. I am not sure what YC is thinking, allowing Sam Altman to do this.
You've been using HN exclusively for political argument about China since you created this account. That's not a legit use of the site, as the guidelines explain: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is a place for curiosity-driven discussion on a wide range of things, not prosecuting a political or national agenda.
Edit: it looks like you've been creating tons of accounts just to argue about China. That's clearly abusive, so we've banned this one. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.
> Lord help us if the Chinese government somehow gets its hands on a superior weapons tech, or smarter AI.
Why wouldn't they get their hands on that? With companies like HPE existing as now defacto chinese companies I just don't see how anyone can see this as a if rather than a when.
> We're literally handing the Chinese government some of the Western world's greatest knowledge and inventions.
Isn't this great though? More innovation spread amongst the world. This is what liberalism tells us, that there is no distinction between people living under different nations.
If we can make the lives of chinese citizens better like we use AI to make ours better, why should minor issues like government "stealing knowledge" (whatever that is) be some big issue?
> why should minor issues like government "stealing knowledge" (whatever that is) be some big issue?
Because that's not at all the only issue; the ruling party actively suppresses dissent, stifles speech, and allows little to no disagreement. Minorities and dissenters are locked away with no trial. Censorship is rampant. There's a lot more to worry about than just IP theft or corporate espionage.
Large companies have vastly more influence on governments than regular people. It's unethical to just turn a blind eye to "those actions." Companies have leverage and should use it.
Are you seriously willing to work for anyone, their politics and actions be damned? Have you heard about the concept of the "Good German"?
They wouldn't because most of the western democratic countries are now actively preventing China from stealing their technologies. US with the empowered CFIUS, with the latest defense bill. Germany just prevented 2 key companies from being taken over by China. France drafted anti-takeover measures (aimed at China) amid foreign investment boom. EU is actively seeking to put up united front against Chinese investment by end of year. And yet Sam Altman is just going to give China free knowhow/technologies.
> make the lives of chinese citizens better
Are you not aware of the sesame credit enacted by the Chinese government? Facial recognition in cameras installed everywhere? Millions of muslims in reeducation camps in Xinjiang? Are you proposing we give this government even more power and innovation??
If anything, the Chinese government can take over a private startup quickly, and use the tech against Silicon Valley companies.
> They wouldn't because most of the western democratic countries are now actively preventing China from stealing their technologies.
Thats all kind of small considering the kind of information that has already been dropshiped out with no real punishments to the chinese government itself.
All these efforts are is trying to plug the holes, not realizing the holes aren't just company buyouts but mostly espionage via chinese citizens. Even if you lock them up, they still sent the data, nothing was really prevented.
> And yet Sam Altman is just going to give China free knowhow/technologies.
Yea? Because that's all government and politics. This is markets and profits.
> Are you not aware of the sesame credit enacted by the Chinese government? Facial recognition in cameras installed everywhere?
Yea alot of people actually like it, being able to get benefits for being an upstanding system. I've heard it described as a system of karma.
Besides, we have the same things anyway, credit scores and CCTV, we just have a different cultural view of it.
> Millions of muslims in reeducation camps in Xinjiang?
And we don't put muslims in jail at higher rates than the native populations? See this just all seems like reflecting the fact that all countries have these issues.
> If anything, the Chinese government can take over a private startup quickly, and use the tech against Silicon Valley companies.
Maybe, but that's the business risk you take. If they think that's the best way to run their country, what right do we have to tell them they are wrong? Especially when we aren't exactly innocent.
This sort of whataboutism isn't helpful. We have the right to call out human rights abuses; further, I think we have an obligation to use that right lest we lose it. Are you aware that the average citizen in China simply cannot tell their government that it's wrong? It doesn't matter what abuses the US or other Western nations have or haven't done - the PRC is still in the wrong.
Ill just leave it here by saying that to even label something in another culture as "wrong" you first have to understand that the word "wrong" is deeply entrenched in western culture and can't simply just be thrown around at other cultures who have constructed entirely different systems of morality and language to express them.
> Thats all kind of small considering the kind of information that has already been dropshiped out with no real punishments to the chinese government itself.
The western world IS punishing the Chinese government right now. $50B in tariffs and investment restrictions. And it is having an effect on China. Chinese leadership is panicking. Its stock market keeps dropping, its currency weakening, its factories leaving. Wait until the tariffs go up higher and higher.
And you make it sound like China has already got all the techs - no it doesn't. Its military at least 2-3 generations behind. It is still far behind in semiconductor technologies, aircraft, engine, hardware, software, operating system, AI, robotics, etc.
> we have the same things anyway, credit scores and CCTV
The world isn't black and white; it's shades of grey. credit score is not as sesame credit. One can travel/leave the country and one cannot. CCTV is not the same as surveilance/arrest without court of law.
> See this just all seems like reflecting the fact that all countries have these issues.
Do you seriously not understand the difference between concentration camps for people that have not violated laws, vs prisons?
I suspect Altman is a staunch supporter of globalization (his twitter is pretty lefty). Meanwhile there is a large cross section of Americans who aren't as positive and some downright against globalization (myself one of them).
Indeed, given the recent news in East Uyghurstan. I had to double check my calendar to see that it was not April 1st. Limits to human rights by a government is intolerable in the modern epoch. Anyone that uses a Chinese product is complicit in cultural genocide. If HN doesn't speak truth to power, who else will?
First they make money in China, then they'll copy what made them money to India, then to the western world. Sounds like a slippery slope to me. I saw a couple of sci-fi movies that showed this doesn't turn out well. [1]
Not to mention their policies of stealing intellectual property and dumping steel and aluminum. Thankfully and as I expected the US tariffs have really hurt their stock market, meanwhile the US stock market is at near all time highs.
Ah, this is the same Qi Lu who was basically responsible for the creation of Bing, then got Office and AI in a reorg, and then somehow got pushed out by Satya and went on to be CTO of Baidu for awhile.
The YCR connection makes sense, since he has a lot of experience in AI where much of YCR is now at, but it will be interesting to see how he will interact with Bret Victor's group. Are they going to start a YC-like incubator in China? It will be interesting to see how this compares to Kai Fu's Innovation Works.
>Qi Lu who was basically responsible for the creation of Bing
Qi Lu is not responsible for the creation of Bing. MSN Search project was well underway in 2005, then it was re-branded as Live Search, then as Bing. Qi Lu is joined in 2008.
Bing really is a pile of garbage though (perhaps a little better these days but no where near as good as Google). I'm surprised he wasn't fired sooner. Was he friends with Ballmer?
Qi was actually one of the better SVPs at Microsoft, I think he was even on the list for the CEO spot that Satya got.
He was given an almost impossible task in competing with Google basically from scratch. Ya, he didn't completely succeed, but that isn't very surprising.
What happened at the end, I'm not really sure. I was pretty surprised when I heard he was gone with Harry Shum taking over most of what he was in charge of.
It was a strange departure. He apparently got in some kind of cycling accident and took medical leave from Microsoft for recovery, but then just a few months later he was a senior executive at Baidu. Not sure what was up with that.
But contra the GP, the general opinion both during and after Lu's tenure was that he did a good job. It took a while, but Bing is profitable now, and he did a lot to get that in motion. I imagine it can't be psychologically easy to run an unprofitable department for years with the eye on long-term strategy, especially in the Ballmer era, but he pulled it off. Bing is not the disaster money pit that a lot of HN assumes it to be.
I use Bing as my primary search engine while in China. It isn't blocked, has excellent search results, and is a general drop in replacement for Google/DDG. Baidu is a bit harder to navigate as a foreigner. I don't even try with Baidu Maps.
How is Bing a pile of garbage? It takes some effort to come up with a search for which it or ddg are markedly worse than google. FWIW I still use google.
This is completely ignorant, given the massive advantages that Google has. To be fair, on the backend ranking algorithm side of things Bing and MSR did a lot of very innovative work. Google just has a massive, insurmountable data advantage that any newcomer cannot overcome.
Hahaha people talking about ethics are silly ... This is business in a market, potentially, at least 3x bigger than the current biggest market! Are you nuts? Everybody's gonna do business in China! Everybody! In some form or shape.
That's not what I am saying ... It's silly to think that 'investors' will ignore such a giant opportunity just because there's human rights issues. It's just naive!
Yes but this is not just some random investor. This taints the brand that is YC.
The statement they are making is “we don’t care about oppressive governments and ethics. As long as we’re churning out billion dollar unicorns, we’ll invest in anything”.
I have a lot of respect for China, I also know China may be the most likely to use AI against their citizens to suppress them. Do YC funded companies really want to enable that?
Yeah this is YC as you're saying ... They're not gonna be left behind. Hurting their brand might be a risk that they can mitigate but not investing in China is not going to bring it democracy.
Expecting capitalists (the economic class, not the ideological faction) to put human rights over returns on capital is, if not silly, at least naively optimistic.
That's why we speak out (like this!) and force them to do the right thing. As I've said elsewhere, there are things more important than profit. Companies that disagree ought to be boycotted.
Maybe that's naive. It's still the right thing to do. No amount of money can shift what's right and wrong.
If you want to make it in China then yea, you probably shouldn't be too hung up on human rights. It's not some universal concept that has applied throughout the world for our existence so it's quite rude to pretend like China has to bow to these systems of human rights we developed without china's input.
It is hard to argue that detaining 1 million people for their beliefs[0] and then torturing them[1] is justifiable by cultural relativism. Or massacring people for that matter[2]. At that point you could argue for any atrocity.
It’s not rude it’s basic humanity. It’s not just completely reasonable to ask a government in charge of more than a billion people to please exercise basic humane standards, it’s morally atrocious to suggest otherwise. The Chinese government deserves all they criticism they get for what they have done and continue to do, and it’s arguable that we in the west deserve criticism for enabling them.
Most Americans just don't care. In a few years it will be as unpopular to talk about China's exploits as it is talking about Israel-Palestine. You can argue that Europeans don't care either, but at least the work culture and society is different enough from China to make the latter unappealing. Much less so for Americans.
A lot of americans don't approve of many things the government does but we don't call them a dictatorship oppressing the people.
Plenty of western countries are involved in censorship on a smaller scale but that's not considered evil and suppressing the true views of the public.
One easy example being mega projects, here in the west we seem to wax poetic constantly about returning to the good old days where a nation could undertake mega-projects and yet china just keeps doing them faster than we can keep track.
I'm sure many westerners and chinese both want to see these things happen and yet they are doing it and we aren't? Is that some proof that we are suppressed citizens? Or maybe its a bit more nuanced.
>A lot of americans don't approve of many things the government does but we don't call them a dictatorship oppressing the people.
Because the government doesn't block you from saying those things. It's concerning to me that you don't appear to know what the definition of 'oppression' or 'dictatorship' is.
>One easy example being mega projects, here in the west we seem to wax poetic constantly about returning to the good old days where a nation could undertake mega-projects and yet china just keeps doing them faster than we can keep track.
When you throw enough suffering and death at a project, you can build quickly. Nobody with a brain is suggesting we do projects the same way we did the hoover dam that resulted in silicosis.
> but we don't call them a dictatorship oppressing the people.
That's because there's an actual definition of dictatorship. China is a dictatorship, the US is not.
> Plenty of western countries are involved in censorship on a smaller scale but that's not considered evil and suppressing the true views of the public.
It's not some universal concept that has applied throughout the world for our existence so it's quite rude to pretend like China has to bow to these systems of human rights we developed without china's input.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights[1] was signed by China and Dr. Peng-chun Chang (who was Chinese) took part in its drafting[2].
Which part of it do you think China doesn't officially agree with?
I assume that most of the people that commented on this article live in the U.S. The majority of the world sees the U.S. as the world's biggest threat to world peace, yet I don't see anybody on Hacker News claiming companies shouldn't do business with the U.S. Since the war in Iraq, can we think of something that the Chinese government has done that is worse? I disagree strongly with the notion that the Chinese government's influence on the world is somehow worse than the influence of the U.S. I do think there is something to be said about boycotting governments that abuse human rights, but I think it is hypocritical to think that somehow that doesn't apply to the U.S.
USA is fairly variant in its own chaos, no president gets more than 8 years, internet censorship by the state is looked down by all parties; people who oppose the wars it goes can complain without fearing for their lives; a big chunk of this behavior and similar ones is because the US is made from people of a lot of races including Asians and Asia-descendants.
On the other hand China just recently confirmed a "president for life", that's always a bad idea, remember the last "president for life" China had? Yeah... So despite U.S. being more likely to start wars its open to change from the inside; China is a solid big time bomb with little to no space for change and once they decide to enter a war it will likely be the last one.
I agree that the U.S. is way more democratic than China. My argument is that the wars that the U.S. has started have been way more damaging to the world and, as a consequence, moral objections to doing business with China without having those same objections when doing business with the U.S. just seems hypocritical to me.
The chance that in a couple decades the US is part of no big war is existent; the chance that China is gonna become a democracy in a couple of decades is null; so yeah, doesn't seem that hypocritical to me.
This is not a game of chance. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. Let's base our principles based on what actually happens. I think it's ridiculous to give the U.S. a pass because the killing might stop in a few decades.
Well... you are using a website created by silicon valley millionaires in the heart of America using a technology called internet created mostly by a military organization (DARPA) to check news about american startups and american technologies so that probably puts you a bit on the hypocritical side of things...
You got me there. It's just that almost all of the current comments talk about how YC shouldn't do business in China, while they're already doing business in the U.S. I just don't see how it is worse, when the U.S. has a far more violent recent past.
There are many comments that don’t say that, however.
The USA is still a great place to do business if you want to make money. My only arguments against China is that the system is more rigged against foreigners from making money there.
The moral arguments are a distraction, though they are mostly true. Yes, China has third world problems, yes the USA has first world problems. Whatever, the world is an imperfect place.
I don't think the moral arguments are a distraction if they are reasonable. Any intelligent person can see that both the US and China have problems and wouldn't want to contribute to those problems. And to not do that one has to look at ones intentions, motivations and actions.
Most individuals just don't have a lot of pull and we can compensate, at least somewhat, through other means. People visiting, buying products from or to some extent working in these countries isn't the problem. Most people aren't qualified to make an assessment, can't really be expected to go out of their way and won't, hopefully, engage in propaganda.
What YC is doing is just incredibly high on that scale. If you start a company in the US chances are you don't know better, since the US has a much better reputation, or you have to be there, since you were born or just very aware of it. You can treat your employees well, protest the US government and you can sue companies, people or the government itself.
YC should not only know better but will be able to do very little of those things in China. And it will be a huge win for China in general. This makes their actual step into China much worse. You can't really come back in five years and criticize them for working with the government and their investments doing objectionable things. Well you can, but it isn't very practical.
Why do we even insist on justice? Most of us can just mind our own business and do fine. It is of course on behalf the people who get mistreated. Their condition is the actual cost of our actions. Most of us can, sort of, live with that we largely unintentional enable mistreatment of many people in the developing world. But for a small entity with a lot of impact those actions becomes a lot costlier. So such decision are and should therefor be much harder to justify.
> YC has been very successful in the world by believing that hackers – not businesspeople – can build the biggest companies.
Virtually every non-technologist businessperson who becomes a manager in the IT industry will present themselves as a technologist. They will usually have some real technical people at their beck and call to help with the stuff they can't fake.
Interesting! Unfortunately it doesn't seem to say where YC China would be based.
Some interesting snippets (G Translated):
Lu Qi: YC China's new business will include
1) business incubation,
2) talent training,
3) research and
4) public welfare.
These are all in a way that Lu Qi's plan will operate in an unprecedented way. He wants more than just new technology. Technology is only an ability to change society. He wants to establish a new ecological support for new technology to change the society. That is the correct way to open the new world in his mind.
[...]
Q: How will YC China start?
Lu Qi: Among the four businesses, the first to start is the incubator. Incubation camps are the first attempt at YC localization, but at the same time it draws on the core of YC:
1. The methodology of the incubator process and training content established by Paul Graham;
2. A network of YC alumni with more than 4,000 people. Alumni will help later entrepreneurs, and for Chinese entrepreneurs, alumni networks around the world can set up channels for offshore companies;
3. The YC brand, which is incubated by YC, is equivalent to being recognized and endorsed, and is more likely to be favored by investment institutions.
In other respects, YC China may develop its own entrepreneurship curriculum and expect to reverse the influence of American entrepreneurs because I believe that globalization is the best way to innovate. YC China's research institute will be established under the YC Global Research Institute and will establish cooperation with Chinese research institutions. Finally, the charity business is hoping to focus on solving the impact of new technologies on people's employment.
However, it is now the first day of the launch of YC China, and everything is still very early. I only have one person now. The most important thing at the moment is recruiting people.
[...]
Lu Qi: Because we need to build a new innovation ecosystem, so many players with different roles can participate.
The first is Chinese investors. Because YC China will be closer to the early projects, it hopes to establish good interaction with Chinese middle and late investors. Also, YC China will also raise funds independently, and I hope to get support from China LP.
Second, we and the big companies will also have a lot of cooperation. YC China's investment projects may be acquired, acquired, or serviced by large companies in the later stages.
YC China Research Institute will also establish contacts with government or research institutions within the enterprise, and hopes to become China's support for the country to become a big country in innovation.
[...]
Sam has said on many occasions that 10 companies will reach Google in the next decade, three to four of them will be born in China, and more than 20 years of professional experience tells me that these three or four companies must be Believe in long-term companies.
Is this going to follow the same investment structure as YC “Classic” or will that be changing as well? The amount of cash thrown at a YC company could go a long way in China.
Will YC be taking a stand on China’s rampant theft of intellectual property or tacitly encouraging it as part of “being a start up”?
It’s troubling that this statement is so overtly unserious. Has YC and its surrounding culture become so insulated that they cannot see the obviously self-defeating through-line in this statement?
“Our mission at YC is to enable more innovation than any other company in the world, and to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity.”
Do you really think it’s possible to ensure that the benefits of innovation are spread fairly while simultaneously partnering with an oppressive, cruel government in order to create vast pools of wealth controlled by a tiny subset of individuals allied with that government?
I can understand why someone would try to get as rich as possible and would turn a blind eye toward obvious moral compromise. I can also understand the utilitarian impulse to “ensure that the benefits of [innovation] are fairly spread throughout humanity.” But I can’t understand ignorance of the wild contradictions between those two “missions.”
If you want to spread innovation equally, you should be working to support dissident voices in China and you should be putting 95% of you and your associates’ vast personal wealth behind the political project of reversing Republican-engineered inequality here at home.
Helping people in China who you deem most likely to succeed (working in harmony with the government, of course) to become even more successful is not, in fact, helping to make the distribution of benefits among humanity more fair.
TL:DR — Choose only one: fairness among humans or the accumulation of vast personal wealth by collaborating with governments that brutally oppress their own citizens.
When you help a country get richer and that country has a history of human right violations you are aiding the tyrants running the country even if you declare yourself "neutral to politics" and even if you have the best of intentions.
Every successful business deal done in concert with a given dictator entrenches that dictator's power. Some other commenter demonstrated the technique elsewhere in this discussion: "but the dictators have lifted so many Chinese people out of poverty!"
Through this deal, YC is taking an active position in support of the Chinese dictatorship and is helping them increase their grip on power.
But as I said, there is reasonable motivation to try to help the people genuinely. At least let them have better internet services; not the shitty ones from BAT...
I don't think it'll happen. If you're from New York or Canada or Europe etc, the advice is "Come to SV for the incubator, start an American company, and run it from back home in the long run if you don't/can't move here."
That doesn't work so well for China because of capital controls and because the Chinese business environment is so hostile to foreign companies.
Not sure Qi Lu is the best person for this position.
Though Qi was born in China, he almost spent his all career time in the US. Probably the time he worked in China is less than one year. You can't expect this person knows China market, Chinese young people, Chinese companies well, and has connections with people in China gov.
And he worked for big companies only (Yahoo, Microsoft, Baidu). He never worked in startups. Can he find and invest good startups? I don't know.
Anyway, YC entering China is a good thing. Hope Google search will come back to China soon.
Someone told me that a webpage with the following would get your internet access cut off in China: June 4th Tiananmen Square Massacre. Can someone translate to Mandarin please.
It used to be that if you searched for some bad things in google.cn or wikipedia you would get put in a penalty box for 5 or so minutes where your internet wouldn't work. Two things stopped this: first, everyone moved over to https so ISPs couldn't tell what you were doing anymore; and google was eventually blocked anyways.
Now, China solely relies on blocking entire websites or relying on compliance of services. So Google is blocked, while Bing will actually harmonize their search results in China (the search will still turn things up, but some results might be hidden).
Will this be located in the independent sovereign nation of Taiwan so as to have the benefit of freedom of thought, religion, the rule of law, and private property?
Nope. There’re tons of Chinese startups already with or without YC. Would US startups be required to register as Chinese companies if they receive Chinese VC money?
The US is open to arbitrary FDI so it doesn't matter. China's laws are more...complicated. For example, you can't give stock options to non-Chinese employees if your company is Chinese and not already listed, see https://www.chinalawblog.com/2018/03/china-scam-week-part-4-....
I'm not aware of any foreign funded startups in China currently. I mean, there must be some small players with private foreign funding, but it is so easy to get Chinese funding I'm not sure why anyone would even bother.
I'm betting that they will be using Chinese capital for Chinese start-ups, so there won't be any weird foreign registration requirement. It makes more sense because China still has a lot of money sloshing around looking for something to do, and YC China will look appealing in that regard, so no FDI will be needed.
But that is just a guess by an amateur, we have to wait to see how this turns out.
This is a recognition that the Chinese world is a rising superpower, both in innovation and in politics. Reminds me to study Mandarin!
I wish them all the best, and I hope that the interactions with the great qualities of YC produces an excellent step forward for China and its technologists.
Well, prior to the 1600's, it was the dominant economy on the planet, and then during the mid-later Qing Dynasty, there was the critical leadership error in not sufficiently investing in the military instead of investing everything in economic growth.
As a result, China was invaded over and over again by colonizers who levied punitive fines for losing the war. And then there were a series of revolutions. (I know, I was born in a part of Shanghai that's commonly called "the French Concession.") The Bolsheviks were the first to give a bunch of that money back ... maybe because they wanted an ally or because they had a conscience.
Oh, also the Versailles Treaty, which ended WW I, involved a clause that gave Shandong province to Japan (from German control), which caused students to take to the streets in protest against the KMT who ratified it, the political party that eventually lost popular support and went to Taiwan and prevented the international community from recognizing the CCP's government as official China because the KMT maintained that they're the official China.
> China is 3000 years years old and still considered an emerging market.
It depends on how you define "China", "3000 years years[sic] old", "still" and "emerging". China has been a "developed market" a few times throughout its history. The modern China (ROC and PRC) lagging behind the Western world in part is due to industrialization in Europe.
It's a growing recognition - a lot of the 90s commentary around China was, in my recollection, essentially mediated by genteelly stated Yellow Peril racism and fear, much like the 80s fear of Japan. Along with a fair dose of anti-Communism - reading the old Leninist & Stalinist ideas for world revolution into the CCCP.
The 2000s have allowed, in my opinion, a more mature understanding of China with less stereotypical hyperbole. I expect part of that is the commercial and cultural interchange, part of that is time, and part of that is the Internet.
I also think there's something of an ideas stagflation in the US, against which China might be considered to be a bright spot in the world.
My perspective and experience was always different. Everyone saw the Chinese manufacturing behemoth starting in the late 80's and early 90's. And as a result we saw a future superpower, at least economically. It did not have anything to do with racism, just money.
Currently there is no Social credit system implemented by government in use. Alibaba have a system but it's not gonna affect you outside of their products. Even if there is such system by government, It's not going to have any major effect. It's supposed to be used to punish illegal behaviours etc.
Beijing would make sense for political reasons, and it also has a strong software culture. Shenzhen for hardware, and maybe Tencent. Shanghai...would be the dark horse in that race, but it is the NYC of China.
I wish they would pick a western city, like Chengdu or Kunming...to become the "san francisco" of China. But there is really not much in those places to work with.
Not a word, not a breath, of concern in that press release for the ethical aspects of doing business with the Chinese Communists.
I think I'm gonna have to close my HN account. I don't even want to be this close to YC anymore.
(They practice organlegging over there. Your wait time for a new kidney is so low because there are prisoners kept as involuntary donors. Most of the prisoners are incarcerated due to practicing something called Falun-Gong. They are not violent criminals.)
this is a very interesting move by YC. I can't wait to see if the "YC methodology" will work in China's startup scene. China's startup culture is notably different from Silicon Valley.
Encourage everyone to boycott YC. I certainly won't be applying again.
It's funny to watch YC do this, the one time I was actually invited to interview with YC was when our Chinese co-founder submitted a rather fraudulent[0] application.
Angry that we wouldn't participate in his fraud he disappeared and filed a frivolous lawsuit against us (which after many years we won).
China's tech growth is built on IP theft and protection by a murderous regime.
It's a total antithesis of what made the Valley great. Big numbers put out by some people in China don't change that.
If YC plans to invest in local Mainland startups:
- ownership is going to tough, likely through dubious trickery
- these uncertain legal rights expose YC to strong political pressures, anybody that has vested interest in China knows it - if you want to have a chance at cashing out your better be in good graces with the CCP
- unethical behavior of YC pupils is inevitable, a PR nightmare in the making. "it's not the real YC, it's YC China, don't blame us!"
You've destroyed your brand, now good luck getting a dollar out of China.
And again, a necessary reminder I like to tell everyone:
China is actively imprisoning and killing thousands of people for their religious beliefs. Censorship is nothing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
Few people know it, I certainly didn't, I wish I have.
Like many I've heard something about the Falun Gong, I've seen the signs but never bothered to looked into it.
It's all real, it's big, almost Nazi scale persecution. Please share it with anybody that does business with China.
[0] because in China I guess that'd only be normal-fraudulent, right?
Sam, this exec BS doesn't look good on you. If Qi Lu is the "one of the most impressive technologiest" you have known then I would say you can be impressed pretty easily. Qi Lu is the guy who couldn't do a squat with Yahoo so he jumped ship to Microsoft. His main achievement there was to rename their product to "Bing". Finally not getting anywhere for almost a decade, he finally got pushed out and so he jumped on the Baidu train to get dip in to Chinese internet boom. Again no special achievements whatsoever at Baidu and virtually everything he touched was half assed and pure PR vaporware. You also have to remember this guy is not technologist. He doesn't write code, do design or understand modern software architecture. He is a suit which big multinationals need for a public face, sales and marketing purposes.
So let's be honest here. YC needs to tap in to Chinese market's booming startup scene. You can't do that without having native Chinese guy leading these effort. You ideally need a suit who has network and hopefully also understands the little details, you know, like code. But you got only the suit who has network. You will try to do best with what you got. That we get it.
Not sure what your sources are. It would help to cite sources, or at least come out of anonymity before blasting someone like this. That way we can at least evaluate your opinion based on your relevant background.
I don't what Lu's exact involvement was, but "Bing" was a huge improvement over the "MSN search" and "Yahoo search" that really were the same product.
The genesis of Bing is said to be the acquisition of the company PowerSet which did large-scale data extraction from DBpedia and similar sources to make a knowledge graph.
Google had ridiculed this approach before but when Microsoft came out with Bing which was comparable in quality to Google, Google was shocked and they bought Freebase and started talking about a "Google Knowledge Graph".
Anyhow you should try it. Bing and Google are comparable in search quality -- some people might prefer some SERPs from Google or Bing for certain queries, but the difference between raters is bigger than the difference between search engines.
YC needs a suit who will let them convince the PRC that they should be allowed to have a slice of the Chinese economy. They could not have chosen a better person.
Bunnie Huang would be awesome. I'm talking about the role, though. Not necessarily the titles. (Edit: That's not a diss... it's just my ignorance. I mean as far as I know Bunnie would be great for the titles too, but I just can't defend that position because I don't know enough about that level of position). I suspect the titles were just Qi Lu's ask, not a requirement for the position(s).
Admittedly Bunnie is mostly a hardware guy but I think he would also have connections and sensibilities in software and China is pretty big on hardware too.
I'm not going to comment on the rest of your comment, but I found the first 2 sentences to be pretty out of context.
"one of the most impressive technologists" is much different than "most impressive technologist". Removing the plural completely changes the meaning of that statement.
China appearing to succeed at a time when democracy is on the ropes is a dangerous trend for democracy.
When you import goods from China, you import repression.
Short-termed capitalists might think the repression applies just to workers, but China is a country with no human rights, no property rights, no rule of law. The Chinese government reserves the right to take anything you "own" there. Somehow it is a capitalist and communist hell at the same time.
I own very little Apple hardware and only because I am a software dev.
I certainly buy many things from China because it is hard to never get anything from China, but often you do have a choice.
I was at Target, for instance, and I bought a Samsung branded microwave oven from Malaysia which has a 44/100 score from Freedom House as opposed to China which has a 14/100 score.
I have also gotten into fixing old toasters and things because I've found that recent models from China are based on inferior technology. When toasters started coming from China they would burn up -- multiple times my mother and law would buy them from Wal*Mart and thought she got a deal but it lastest less than six months.
A few years later, Chinese toasters traded toasting speed for safety, then they went from two slots to four slots to make up for lost time. It doesn't help though if you are watching your carbs and want just one or two slices.
Old toasters fail in a predictable way and can be repaired easily. It might be true about new toasters but why bother.
"very little Apple hardware" still means you own more Apple hardware than 95% of the world's population, including 99% of the people who manufacture it.
but it sounds like you have rationalized this somehow, so why shouldn't everyone else?
It is absolutely not "fallacious" - if you are going to moralize, then you need back it up with action.
The OP was not "complaining about the system" - he was making a claim that by doing business with China you are "importing repression". It is completely fair that someone who claims I am willfully "importing repression" should be held to the same standard.
OR, you can just go on believing that the rest of us are immoral thugs while you are the lone enlightened paragon of virtue who would gladly rebel against the odious powers that be...if only they would stop making such pretty toys!
Another thing about this dialogue is that is assumes that everybody is an apple fan, has an infantile relationship with "their" smartphone, etc.
In many trade magazines and other commercial publications today a mention of "your smartphone" is frequently part of a hypnotic induction to get somebody thinking like a consumer.
Please don't break the HN guidelines by insinuating astroturfing or shillage without evidence. That's an internet trope that poisons everything it touches.
If you think you see evidence of abuse, let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. In this case, though, what you're seeing is evidence of the topic being divisive. It's natural for a large community of users to include opposing views.
are you really trying to say they wouldn't be lifted with different government? i tend to believe living standard of Chinese people would be higher if not for CCP, these guys can't manage basic things like overcrowded public transport, health insurance pretty much doesn't exist, schools are inaccessible etc. you would really need to try hard to be worse than them
Interesting to see YC embrace someone who went on leave at MSFT due to injuries of a bike accident... or so the news claimed. Yet popped up at Baidu/etc.
Next up YC will hire the Amazon Exec that puffed himself up and was fired before he joined Uber?
Is HackerNews accessible from mainland China? There’s been a lot of discussion here recently about Google working with the CCP’s censorship regime, kidnapped dissidents, and the interment of Muslims in Xinjiang. What impact will this move have on the featuring and discussion of these stories?
It's amazing that a company that Paul Graham co-founded is getting into bed with an authoritarian government notorious for its human rights abuses. To succeed in China you can't go against the government. So is he going to be pushing as hard for political change in China as he is in the US, or will he remain silent as his company reaps the profits?
I would like to see a statement that YC China will not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation and more importantly will not support startups which create technology which make doing so easier.
> I would like to see a statement that YC China will not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation and more importantly will not support startups which create technology which make doing so easier.
I too would like to see this, but no such statement exists for YC at large (outside China) either.
There are a billion MORE people in China than in the US. There is enormous industry and innovation there. China's government is terrible but that is their issue to resolve. All we can do is speak out, but refusing to do business hurts Chinese and American people far more than it hurts the Chinese government. Our government kills many innocent people accidentally as part of the normal course of war, but we consider it an acceptable place to do business anyway.
I think it is essentially the opposite. Speaking out does nothing since we, nor the Chinese, have any power to change the situation. All it does is makes the speaker feel good about their own situation.
The power we do have is to make our own choices. The Chinese might certainly have, what they think are, good reasons for doing what they are doing, but that doesn't mean you have to participate if you think you have better reasons for not doing so.
Chinese companies are largely forced to align with the Chinese government. US companies disagreeable behavior, including aligning themselves with the US and Chinese governments, are largely their own choosing. The reality is that Silicon Valley's moral compass is buried at the bottom of their own Superfund sites.
Suppose I'm Tim Cook and refuse to participate in the Chinese market. No iPhones for you. Who is hurt? Mostly Chinese people. They get a crappier phone with less security and privacy protection. I'm also hurt financially. There are a lot of people in China. Real people are getting hurt, and the political situation stays the same. Political change will happen in China when it does. It feels somewhat inevitable to me but one thing we can't do is force democracy on them. They have a lot of "anti-imperial" ideas in their culture due to many invasions from Japan and other western nations and for the idea of democracy and free markets to really take hold it needs to come naturally from China itself -- not through economic pressure from US companies.
> China's government is terrible but that is their issue to resolve. All we can do is speak out, but refusing to do business hurts Chinese and American people far more than it hurts the Chinese government.
No. You can't do business with China and speak out because then the Chinese government will refuse to do business with you. You have to toe their line in the West in order to get access to their market. See the recent articles regarding airline's treatment of Taiwan on their websites [1].
I'm sure that some more fully articulated and sophisticated version of what you've said forms the basis of YC's decision to continue pragmatically pursuing its goal of being big and important (and incidentally making lots of money).
That is very unlikely. When you start or own businesses in China you largely give up the right to criticize the Chinese government. Not only because you have to deal with the Chinese government, but because you won't have any credibility left at home. You can't on the one hand argue that the Chinese government is oppressive and on the other that it is practical to change peoples minds.
One accidentally breaks an egg. One doesn't "accidentally" kill innocent people because they "accidentally" launched a missile to an area where civilians are.
If he wants goverment support he probably is stealing IP from the american side and YC is either naive or knows this very well but is willing to trade IP for cashflow.
Believing in his good morals, the underlying hope might be to achieve change through subversion: If YC becomes popular in in China, people might visit news.ycombinator.com and find very sane liberal thinking and many shocking truths about their country.
Much more likely that anything negative about China will be deemed political, like many other subjects have been in the past, and flagged off the site. That is largely how the Chinese Internet works anyways.
Reddit was blocked by the Chinese firewall this month. The suspected reason is discussion of the Uyghur concentration camps. Shocking truths don’t last on the Chinese internet.
When YC is invested in China they won’t last on this website either.
Companies exist to make money. I think the tech community's biggest mistake was assuming that tech companies are moral agents. Of course tech companies ( "do no evil" ) had a hand in misleading us. But tech companies are no different than oil companies, pharma companies or movie studios. They want market share and money.
Maybe we should stop putting tech companies and tech leaders on a pedestal.
I believe Paul Graham knows better than average American about China. I appraise him, not for his move as a venture capitalist who want to make money (Many people who share your belief think he is cynical and only thinking about making money, which might be part of the reason), but quite opposite , for his moral courage against prevailed belief of Mob which is the same evil as authoritarian region's.
Politics is often compared to religion but it's actually worse: many religion believer can keep their belief private but in politics most "belief oriented people" are not aware of they don't differentiate their opinions/beliefs from facts. This can radicalize many opposite side people knowing the truth. Eventually this cognitive defect of modern human being caused conflicts all over the world. Even here in HN, I've seen quite a few radicalized HNer's beaned by dang (the moderator of HN) due to their misbehave that were (mistakenly) considered to be caused by strong nationalist views.
I would suggest all HNer's keep political view private as much as possible if totally avoidance is not piratical.
