I'm disappointed to know that YC has drank the cool-aid on China. Once you invest significantly in China, you quickly find yourselves beholden to the whims of the CCP. And for what? Such privileges as building their dystopian techno-autocracy for them? I don't see any signs in this statement that you are going into this with your eyes open to either the difficulties this will cause down the line, nor the morally "questionable" things you will all be a part of building now. Of course, none of that will be in there, because you all already know that to say anything untoward on the matter would break the ice right out from under your feet.
And of course, that's all if you're actually "successful", unlikely given the CCP will prefer something more malleable than even the likes of Zuckerberg are willing to be. I foresee a rapid demise to this project, indeed, I pray for it, as the alternative, you guys actually succeeding, would be painful to watch given what it will involve.
Agreed, investing in China is the "invading Russia" of the tech world. Yes, China is a huge market and a rapidly growing economy, which makes investing there an extremely appetizing prospect. However, it seems very difficult for non-chinese to be able to hold onto their investments in China without their business being ripped off (e.g. having the business model copied by a more Chinese company that gets favorable government treatment and takes over the nascent market), not to mention the political uncertainty of having to deal with / win the favor of arbitrary officials in the Chinese government that may have interests conflicting with your own.
And even if you are successful, you have to consider the ethics of what you're enabling - suppose you create a wildly successful and helpful service for Chinese people that involves users' geographic data, private messages between individuals, or financial transactions. You won't get a say in turning over that data to authorities for any and every reason that they have for wanting it. Are you willing to actively participate in corruption and the quashing of political dissent for money?
> you have to consider the ethics of what you're enabling
Keep in mind, YC took money from Yuri Milner in 2011 even though people knew at the time that there were connections to Russian oligarchs [1] and funded startups that promulgated junkware installers [2] among other things. On the "doing the right thing" vs "making more money" spectrum, YC is firmly on the side of "making more money", ethics be damned.
> Agreed, investing in China is the "invading Russia" of the tech world.
I'd go even one step further, it is more like partnering with Germany, except in this version of the story Germany might be successful in its quest to take over the world, because make no mistake, China is coming for your market, it's only a matter of time.
It is encouraging that more and more people are finally starting to put the pieces of this puzzle together, shame it is far too little and far too late.
The vast fear and ignorance in this thread is amusing but the comparison of China to Nazi Germany is perhaps a new low, even for Hacker News?
It's interesting though how people develop such warped perceptions of the world. It's exactly how the greatest disaster of the 21st century, the absolutely unprovoked and absolutely senseless American invasion of Iraq which killed a million people and directly led to the rise of Isis and even more extreme suffering, come to pass. And so what you have here is a bunch of silly people, few of which have likely even been to China let alone done any serious investigation of Chinese culture or politics, utterly trapped in a paranoid fantasy in which -- believe it or not -- China is the aggressor coming for their markets. Nevermind the US's military bases all over the world or the TPP, an initiative started by the US with the explicit goal of denying and containing Chinese expansion.
This sort of delusion is just breath taking. I guess all one can do is hope it doesn't lead to war but I strongly suspect it is. Americans will never face reality as this thread shows. They will gladly and firmly embrace the delusion and blame all their problems on somebody else even if it leads to absolute catastrophe. Absolutely nothing has changed since the Iraq War.
It always amazes me the mental gymnastics involved from people who support Chinas censorship regime. Freedom of information and the open Internet is one of the most important and valuable things thats happened to humanity but hey man, you just don't respect their way of doing things. Sorry, a country that censors Google and Wikipedia, brainwashes its people with propaganda and runs a social credit score system isn't a country any intellectual worth his or her salt should be participating in.
I'd love to see a defense of Chinese policy that doesn't fall back upon whataboutism. America's shortcomings have nothing to do with my ability to criticism China's human rights abuses and appalling lack of individual liberty.
There are plenty of people in China who are happy to discuss the pros and cons of their government, especially as compared to America. You could even read Chinese newspapers and forums (some are in English or you could even learn Mandarin!) where this stuff is hashed out all the time. But it would require courage and integrity and a real willingness to learn. It's much easier to parrot what you hear second-hand from the media, isn't it?
The real issue here isn't Chinese policy. Frankly, I doubt you're actually interested in Chinese policy or even the welfare of the Chinese people. The real issue here is the power of ignorance and fear. Reactions like above are a monument to it.
I'm genuinely interested in hearing pros and cons on the Chinese government from Chinese who are currently living in mainland China. Particularly on the topics that are the biggest flash points on HN - government censorship/great firewall/surveillance/social credit scores, etc. Do you have any English-language resources for this? Or decently translated sources? No snark or sarcasm - I've searched before, but either find nothing or hit a language barrier.
Typically someone will very quickly chime in and say these are "propaganda" and you should completely ignore them. If you ask these people if the facts stated in the video are true or false, they will not answer the question. Watch with a skeptical mind, compare to facts you read in other sources, and judge for yourself. A big difference between these YouTubers (well, China Uncensored is biased to be fair) and what you'll read in the mainstream media is, these people live there, they are reporting the truth far more accurately than you'll get from other sources (on the topics they cover - they don't really get into macroeconomics for example.)
Is it possible to criticize China without it being classified as "ignorance and fear"? Seriously, what "ignorance" are you referring to? Is it perhaps your mind interpreting specific criticisms as claims of pure evil?
> The vast fear and ignorance in this thread is amusing but the comparison of China to Nazi Germany is perhaps a new low, even for Hacker News?. It's interesting though how people develop such warped perceptions of the world.
It's amazing how you can deduce what I believe without me having said it. How long have you been able to read minds?
It is this hyper-anti-racism aspect of modern western culture that is enabling China to walk in and take over the world, and get the people from whom they're taking market share help them out in their endeavor.
"And even if you are successful, you have to consider the ethics of what you're enabling..."
This is the thing I don't understand. Ten years ago, you could make a case that simply by making stuff people want, the world would become more connected, all sorts of goodness will happen.
You can no longer make that case. People are not idiots. They see both the good and bad that tech has brought.
Technology companies are ethically responsible for what their tools end up doing. And if they can't be bothered to develop their own ethics, the rest of us are going to have to develop some for them.
I must be missing something. YC is a really smart bunch of guys. Certainly they know what the hell they're getting into.
> The most amazing thing about Silicon Valley is that they all think they are on the left side of the political spectrum, while it is totally unquestioned that the venture capital firms should make every single decision on how human activity is organized.
The political spectrum is more like a political plane, with one axis being economic and the other being social, and with a 2 party system we've conveniently collapsed it into a line.
It's probably more accurate to say that silicon valley runs libertarian, especially those in the startup game, and especially YC and folks.
>I must be missing something. YC is a really smart bunch of guys. Certainly they know what the hell they're getting into.
It seems so very much. From my impression, SV people in China are not to run a new business, rather than to secure connections. See, they did not pair with a university with a genuine tech cred, nor they hold this school anywhere close to a tech hub, but in Beijing, and a university that is second after the central committee party school. The list of invited people I've heard also suggest that.
Wait is the implication here that tsinghua uni has no tech cred?
I agree that parts of tsinghua are pretty chummy with the party, but trying to claim it has no tech cred seems a bit of a stretch. It's arguably in like the top 10 eng/comp sci unis in the entire world. Both QS and ARWU put it in top 10. (THE puts it in top 20)
Tsinghua Uni is big in everything, not only tech as "the official no. 1 university in the country by decree" must be. Not to say that it is also freaking wealthy, as much alike Yale Uni is in USA (through Tsinghua University Group Holding.)
No denial from me that that they do pump out high profile publications in amount enough to bruteforce themselves into ratings.
Think of them as a Moscow State Uni back in USSR times.
The few universities Chinese tech scene gives cred, are virtually unknown in the West, you will not find them on any rating list, but that does not preclude their students be "booked" years in advance by the industry.
Could you name those few unknown universities with tech cred? I'm genuinely curious, in case I decide to study computer science in China in the future. I thought Tsinghua was the one to aim for.
HUST (Huazhong University of Science and Technology), HIT Shenzhen (Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen campus). These are ones I can name right away. If you add "another China," it will also be NTUST, NTU for semiconductor engineering (this is the one and only way to get a TSMC internship.)
I'm trying to remember others. I do remember that some well regarded ones are not even universities per se, but vocational colleges with 2 year diplomas.
I'll add Harbin Engineering Uni and Shenyang Uni for actual engineering studies. Heavy industry, aerospace, do shop here. Both have near nil prominence on research, but it is their undergraduate papers people are for.
It may be surprising that North-East of China other than Beijing gets engineering cred, but this is where the original Chinese industrial and arms manufacturing complex were. If you look up on the list of Chinese arms manufacturers, and in each city having a big plant, you have an accompanying "feeder" university.
Nanyang Tech has cred in mainland, but it seems that it only has a very small grad school detachment there.
South China University of Technology - simply because it is big, and is in the heart of the industrial agglomeration.
A general mid-tier option are central universities of peripheral provinces. Not they are prominent in a research domain, but companies shopping grads there look for people who genuinely got admission with good exam marks, but did not have money to go to top tier universities (read, they are cheap brain).
Fudan Uni Zhangjiang campus - probably the only uni in China that feeds domestic semiconductor industry with high-to-mid-tier cadres, well it was opened with this as its main mandate.
One last thing to note - China was and is scooping Eastern European and Indian grads by tonnes, being a foreigner from a Chinese uni does not give you much of a hand on a job market just for that alone.
I think the song was about rising out poverty and that the Wu-tang did it music instead of gangbanging, killing, and drug dealing. They use their own experiences to show young men living in poverty that the can find other means to obtain respect and lots of money that is healthy for themselves and their communities.
Quite the opposite. The songs is about them selling drugs: “Catchin' keys from 'cross seas, Rollin' in MPV's, Every week we made forty G's”
The basic premise is money rules everything so if I want power/influence/success I have to either play the game or accept defeat.
“Method Man is not glorifying money and excess; rather, he’s saying that money holds power, and is a factor of major decisions made in the world he lives in. Those who have it, have power and those who don’t, won’t get up anywhere; sort of a way of saying “Money is the root of all evil”, if you will.”
China is the future though. As scary as that is, it’s still reasonable to invest in Chinese tech, at least if your plan is to make money.
I don’t think westerners in general realize how advanced China is becoming. Being from Europe, visiting China is like stepping into a sci-fI novel. Not a happy one, mind you, but it’s becoming impossible to ignore.
> China is the future though. As scary as that is, it’s still reasonable to invest in Chinese tech, at least if your plan is to make money.
I don't have a lot of examples of successful western companies operating in China, they all seems to be blocked of at some point because of ""regulations"".
I'm curious what will happen to China's economy after another major economic crisis. Especially if it happens in say 10 years, by then robot manufacturing should be much more advanced and many western companies may opt to quit China and go the robot route.
Make no mistake. YC will slowly but surely come under pressure to give the CCP influence over content as well as access to private user data, first their own and then that they wield influence over.
Don't forget the malware-ridden Chinese Skype client, LinkedIn's willingness to censor global content on China's behalf, or Yahoo's capitulation of dissident information that lead to executions.
HN will likely start suppressing any factual discussion on Taiwan or the nine dash line as "flamewar bait" while allowing increasingly nationalistic Chinese propaganda to pass unchecked. It won't be today or tomorrow but money and influence wear down almost any organization eventually.
This is a sad day, and it only marks the beginning what is to come.
I noticed that Airbnb operates in China currently. Perhaps there are other YC investments as well, but it seems this isn't the beginning of YC's investment into China.
I had begun writing up a tin-foil hat theory on why YC would open this Startup School there, until I realized Airbnb, one of YC's flagship investments is already there.
I've become rather disturbed by the amount of pro-autocratic sentiment I've encountered in tech circles. It comes in both the "right" (and "alt-right") and "left" varieties, as well as a few other weirder forms, but it's there.
I guess hackers are no different from anyone else. Dangle money in front of people and they do tend to toss their morals out the window more often than not. I am not claiming that I am superior either. If someone offered me a shitload of money to do something I considered unethical, I can't say with 100% certainty that I'd never take it... to claim so would be the fallacy of self-exclusion. "I might be a coward I've just never been tested." - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones / The Impression That I Get
I've also anecdotally observed that people with high IQs are often autocrats. They're prone to imagining that there are straightforward solutions to all the worlds problems and that all these problems could be solved if only things were run by smart people like them. They haven't yet been humbled by attempting to solve a really brutal multi-objective optimization problem or tame a complex system full of paradoxical effects and feedback loops. Attempting to govern a complex society is both of these things.
This is jingoism masquerading as concern for autocracy. If people really cared about things like surveillance or dystopias in any serious way they would be on the streets about the extensively documented activities of the NSA, rubber stamp courts, secret orders, searching through personal effects at borders and campaigning for Snowden and other whistle blowers to be brought back with honors.
But on the ground these laws are renewed without protest, whistle blowers are hounded and demonized with little to no push back and dissenters like Snowden and Assange continue to be stranded for years on end.
If no one seems to care enough about these issues in our own countries or our own dissenters how can concern for others countries be authentic. Don't use fabricated concerns to demonize others.
It seems very fashionable to pull out moral equivalency every time China's autocracy and misbehavior is mentioned.
Simple experiment:
1. Walk down Pennsylvania Avenue with a sign that says "Trump is a pussy grabber who should be impeached".
2. Go to Tiananmen Square and hold up a poster-sized picture from the 1989 massacre.
See how equivalent the governments are then.
(As an aside... if I was employed by the Chinese government to spread propaganda in other countries, your comment is roughly what I'd write).
You can make an exact comparison. Not too terribly long ago I saw protests holding up poster sized pictures of prisoner abuse from Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay, which is roughly like holding up a poster-sized picture from the 1989 massacre. Nothing happened to these people in spite of the fact that these pictures are deeply embarrassing to the US government and intensely inflammatory in regions of the world where we don't want to be inflammatory.
As much as I give Snowden credit for exposing what can be dangerous autocratic programs, I also must point out that Snowden was not just some random protester. Snowden violated a government secrecy oath that he signed, which is a crime and this fact is printed rather boldly on the contract. Nobody forces you to sign these oaths. You can always say "I'm sorry, I can't sign this, I quit" and walk out and get another job.
That's part of what "the rule of law" actually means. In a nation with the rule of law, the law applies objectively to everyone: crooks, politicians, and yes even do-gooders. If the law is wrong you can vote for representatives to change it, but until then what's written is the law. If the law says it's illegal to hop on a pogo stick, then anyone hopping on a pogo stick gets arrested even if they're on their way to feed starving orphans.
(Secret courts are another matter, and I think those are un-American and should be shut down. But they are used far less in America than in China, and when they are used and the fact becomes known there's generally quite an uproar.)
Also-- personally I find the NSA and CIA less alarming than Facebook and Google. Three-letter agencies operate with at least some democratic oversight and the intel they gather does tend to be used primarily for legitimate intelligence and national security purposes. Unfortunately we do not live on planet fluffy bunny hugs and we need an intelligence service and a military. Facebook and Google operate with zero oversight whatsoever and sell their surveillance services to the highest bidder. Private surveillance operations are completely lawless.
Would you do something truly immoral, because "rule of law"? An example: Every new born child with Apgar score below 8 should be killed. Would you really do it? Would you stick to the rule of law?
> Snowden violated a government secrecy oath that he signed, which is a crime and this fact is printed rather boldly on the contract.
He broke the contract, but you can make a case that the contract was in violation of constitution.
If I were ordered to do something that deeply immoral by the state I might pretend I was going to comply, but only long enough to pack a "go bag" and get myself and my family out of the country. You picked an incredibly extreme example. Not only would I run out of unwillingness to do what was asked but also because living in a country that does that kind of thing is fundamentally unsafe.
I agree that what Snowden did was generally positive and important, but I also agree that he broke the law as written. If I were Snowden's lawyer I would argue exactly what you've argued-- that he acted to expose programs contrary to the US constitution and that therefore his security contract was not valid since a contract to engage in illegal activity is not enforceable. It's likely that the case would make it to the Supreme Court.
No nation is perfect and no system is perfect. I was responding to claims of moral equivalency between the USA and China. In the USA Snowden-like cases are rare. In China you have private citizens who have not signed secrecy oaths being arrested all the time for mere political activism.
> If I were ordered to do something that deeply immoral by the state I might pretend I was going to comply, but only long enough to pack a "go bag" and get myself and my family out of the country.
explain these to those killed in Vietnam or Iraq. Immoral? You mean paying your tax to fund those wars started purely based on a lie, e.g. WMD in Iraq? That is pretty immoral to me. oh, btw, last time when I checked, your tax is still being used to keep the Guantanamo Bay open, immoral or not?
First of all, exactly zero people pay taxes to fund the GWOT. When the wars started, taxes were lowered, not raised. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been funded by debt, not funded by taxes like they should have been.
Second, the whole "WMD is a lie" is largely a matter of semantics. Under federal law, any bomb is a WMD; any grenade is a WMD; any rocket with > 4oz propellant is a WMD; any missile with an explosive charge > 0.25oz is a WMD; any mine is a WMD; any large caliber firearm with a bore > 0.5" in diameter (except shotguns) is a WMD. Of course, chemical, pathogenic, and radioactive weapons are also considered WMDs. 18 U.S.C. §§ 2332a, 921(a)(4).
What evidence do you have that the Iraqi army under Saddam didn't possess grenades?
Certainly, a grenade isn't what most people thought President G. W. Bush meant. I won't dispute that there's a lot of spin involved.
But there's a big difference between spin and a lie.
> That's part of what "the rule of law" actually means. In a nation with the rule of law, the law applies objectively to everyone: crooks, politicians, and yes even do-gooders.
Ironic you claim to stand up for dissent in China but so quickly insinuate 'propaganda' when it comes dissent here. Doesn't seem democratic.
Speaking of misbehavior Iraq, Libya and Syria have been destroyed, hundreds of thousands killed and the countries set back decades if not centuries on completely made up premises. This is not just misbehavior, these are crimes against humanity that are happening right now. Yet some seem more concerned about Tienanmen square.
Please explain how Chelsea Manning is a more appropriate example.
GP is literally comparing EXACT same thing. Protest against the president at a popular location in each country. I fail to see how this is an unfair comparison.
Drawing this kind of lazy equivalence does not produce insight. The two powers have substantial differences that influence how you would deal with either.
America's respect for individual liberty and the rule of law has eroded over the years, but it is still considerably stronger than what's found in China. You see some of the same corruption and autocratic tendencies on both sides of the Pacific but there is a substantial difference in degree and pervasiveness. We are not the best in the world (several EU countries are better) but claiming the USA is equivalent to the PRC just lowers the bar.
In China many of the kinds of open anti-state discussions that happen regularly here would get people arrested, not to mention criticism of leadership. Try talking openly about Xi Jinpeng the way lots of Americans talk about Donald Trump (or talked about Barack Obama). I was driving around Irvine, CA the other day and saw an anti-anti-immigration protest with signs comparing Trump to a chimpanzee and Hitler. Do that in China in an affluent section of Beijing. Dare you.
Edit: you can also buy Donald Trump Piñatas in Santa Ana, a heavily Hispanic area of LA/OC metro. Try selling a Xi Jinpeng piñata in Beijing.
Pointing out that America is just as bad would be a fair point (not whataboutism) because YC does so much business in America. So criticizing YC for dealing with a government just like America but is not America is not an invalid point. However I agree with others that China's tyranny is on a different level.
> America's respect for individual liberty and the rule of law has eroded over the years, but it is still considerably stronger than what's found in China.
individual liberty such as those mass shootings protected by the constitution?
if you do believe there is real democracy in your country, maybe you can talk to your democratically elected local representatives and make some _real changes_ in that aspect first? talk is cheap, show me your democracy.
A lot of people believe that private ownership of guns is an important individual right - a majority in some areas. This is democracy, even when it produces outcomes I disagree with.
China and the US have different histories. World affairs are not simplistic binaries of good and bad. Political systems take time to evolve. Western Europe evolved from feudalism over 300 years.
China has 1.3 billion people to take care of. This is not a joke. Let them manage and make the transition their way without sanctimonious judgement from others.
The USA is effectively two party state with both parties propping up oligarchies and special interests with a media who have long ceased to function as a free and independent press and have reduced themselves to mouthpieces for entrenched interests.
The ability to stand on a street and criticize your leader is not the only sign of democracy, the ability to effect change and have a government responsive to peoples needs is. Studies have shown and people can see how the US political establishment are far more responsive to special interests and the rich than the general public. So what is democracy?
Perhaps things are not simplistic or black and white, and continuing to affect a moral high ground inspite of alarming deterioration betrays not only a lack of fundamental concern for any articulated values but also its abuse as a mere political tool to beat others with without any context of global history and world affairs.
And of course, that's all if you're actually "successful", unlikely given the CCP will prefer something more malleable than even the likes of Zuckerberg are willing to be. I foresee a rapid demise to this project, indeed, I pray for it, as the alternative, you guys actually succeeding, would be painful to watch given what it will involve.