I had to dig up one of my old comments about YC China, because I specifically recall this one. I think the issue isn't one elephant in the room, it is elephants.
My comment from August 15, 2018:
"I would like to see a statement that YC China will not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation and more importantly will not support startups which create technology which make doing so easier."
China, as most other communist countries, implemented gender workplace equality much earlier than the West. Furthermore, China has probably the most aggressive affirmative action programs in the world. Yes, China is bad on human rights in some aspects, but these blatant misrepresentations need to stop. They only serve the massive propaganda campaign the US started in recent years.
it’s not just about gender equality. The west is significantly ahead in supporting LGBTQ both culturally and structurally. sure we have a long way to go but hell “trans positive” is now a selling point even Amazon fulfillment is touting and marriage is legal in many western countries. The same can’t be said about China or Chinese companies
Affirmative action programs like rounding up Uighur Muslims and making them more Han Chinese?
You’re right about China (and other communist countries) being first on gender equality at least in some respects, but... so what? In the West it’s good enough at a macro scale.
Saying China is bad on human rights in some respects is a gross understatement.
Native Chinese here. Some Minorities get automatic extra points and special admission category at college entrance examination. You don’t know how big a deal it is to normal Chineses
Gotta start somewhere. There wouldn't be as strong a push for equality in the workspace nowadays if it wasn't for (amongst others) YC backed companies pushing for it.
They probably have a significant investment from Chinese LPs. It could put those investors in a very awkward situation if YC was more explicit with their statement -- we've all seen how childishly defensive the Chinese government can get.
That money isn't that important. History isn't going to look back and think that YCombinator should have done more to look out for the wealth Chinese investors.
Business won't be the one to push the change on this attitude. It has to be people, or at best government. Most companies are morally agnostic, they only follow the money, you can judge them for it either way, but it's the truth.
What do you think makes companies do what they do? Companies consist of people. There are still people making these decisions. Many companies have taken ethical stances wrt China. Many more have not. Companies don't just get let of the hook because they're companies.
It has to be people pushing companies to do it. Which is why it is exactly counter-productive to post "Of course companies won't do anything" when a person is demanding a company do better.
In a sense, yes, but someone, somewhere had to be the one to say "we could be courageous, but let's softpedal this and come up with a lame excuse". They also (perhaps with others) had to build a culture where people know they can't speak up on it.
Of course, there's a question of causality. Are businesses "morally agnostic" because they choose to be, or because the ones that aren't don't survive? Companies that say "we don't do business with places that harvest organs from prisoners" will struggle against ones that say "we were able to cut the price of our phone 50% by doing business with (said regime)"
This would actually be a good reason to impose import duties on those places - to make goods from ethical regimes more competitive.
I'd say "only following the money" isn't moral agnostiscism, but very much a moral choice. It's a choice made by people collectively, and either way it doesn't exist outside of morality, or consequences.
You act like that doesn’t happen here...I just read a story in the LA times on how organs are being harvested from the recently deceased before a proper investigation can take place
The organs of members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prison camps are being forcefully harvested — sometimes when patients are still alive, an international tribunal sitting in London has concluded.
they execute people solely to harvest their organs systematically, just because situations where organ harvesting happening before a proper death investigation takes place in the USA have occurred (and are likely illegal and irregular), does not in any way make them comparable.
What tells you there is nothing to gain? I was probably the only one to consider Google a degree above other GAFA companies because for a long time it resisted Chinese censorship and refused to give away access to the gmail account of Chinese activists.
In a world where so many companies' valuation is tied to the number of users willing to give you their personal data, reputation is a precious thing.
If a leader in the field were to say something like "we are withdrawing due to our revulsion at the atrocities commited by the PRC against the Uyghur people" it at least has the potential to start a preference cascade and a mass movement.
> It’s understandable it’s a touchy subject. Why piss off China if you don’t have to? Only something to lose and nothing to gain.
Same sentiment for Saudi investors? Same for Israeli?
People have different lines and I'm sure soon founders will be doing a great more DD in this new age of outwardly conscious capitalism.
I'm patiently waiting for the tweet thread/medium article of a successful founder pointing out all the dirty cash they didn't take. Unfortunately, as of yet it is still a great deal of money that builds companies. Not unwaivering morals... One day.
Wouldn't it be an abandonment of their duty of care to portfolio companies for them to poke the bear, though?
I get that if PG tweeted something like, "We're pulling out of China because they're violently repressing pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong and they run a re-education gulag archipelago for millions of Uighurs and they murder political prisoners so they can sell their organs through their state-administered transplant market", it would be satisfying to read -- but I'm not a YC alum. I don't run a company that could get screwed if YC lands on Beijing's shit list. Sure, that's probably a small slice of the portfolio, but this is still the right call from a business perspective.
Actions speak louder than words, and this decision was pretty clear.
>I don't run a company that could get screwed if YC lands on Beijing's shit list
The fact that not being on an oppressive country's "shit list" is at all a priority is exactly the problem here. If your company relies on making money from these places, you deserve to fail.
It’s most likely due to the changing climate for companies (especially American and Canadian) operating in China. Check out this article: “how to survive an increasing difficult China”
Why do you think it's political climate that changed YC's mind? With or without political climate being an issue, doing business in China is different and relies on of relationship building that takes a long time to nurture. It might just be hard!
Maybe GP actually referred to business cultural practices, which are indeed different in China. Have you considered this? Not everything related to China is black/white as you seem to portray it. There's more to it than a reductionist approach of thinking "they're mean communists and everything follows from that".
* I dislike the tendency of some people to prohibits others from looking at things in a nuanced manner.
Cultural differences might make business in China difficult for internationals; political differences are what make it both ethically and strategically untenable. There's no comparison.
I didn't say otherwise. But not everyone's reason for leaving the market is going to be because of evil governance. Always simplifying interactions with China and the people and businesses there to a black/white scenario is counterproductive and intellectually disingenuous.
I don't think there are ownership restrictions in this economic sector, and the Chinese government hasn't seized Alibaba, Tencent or Huawei. It sounds like you're talking more out of preconceived biases than actual knowledge of how business works in China.
They haven't seized them outright maybe, but they are owned by Chinese citizens and carefully managed by the government,
The CEO and founder of Huawei is a member of the communist party, the government also requires a large staff of military intelligence workers.
Do not assume the strong distinction in the west between private entities and the government exists in China.
In China if you are of any real size whatsoever as a company, the government is either taking a role in things directly, or you are going to be forced out.
Of course they're owned by Chinese citizens. That's why I chose them as examples, rather than other big companies with a large presence in China, such as Volkswagen or Apple.
> carefully managed by the government
That's not true. They make business decisions based on the profit motive.
> The CEO and founder of Huawei is a member of the communist party
That's not very meaningful. There are a lot of people who are members of the party.
> Do not assume the strong distinction in the west between private entities and the government exists in China.
I think that a lot of people in this forum (and other fora in the West) do not understand the basic economic reforms that China has gone through. There is a huge difference between how a private company like Tencent operates and how a state-owned enterprise operates. It has been government policy over the past few decades to allow the private economy to grow, and to allow it to operate according to profit considerations.
Companies and people in China do not have the same sorts of protections should the government decide to go after them, but it's not as if the government controls the decision-making of private companies.
> In China if you are of any real size whatsoever as a company, the government is either taking a role in things directly, or you are going to be forced out.
This simply isn't true. The Chinese government does not run Alibaba, and doing so would actually go against the direction of Chinese economic reforms over the past few decades.
I never stated that these types of "private" enterprise aren't different than traditional Chinese state owned enterprise, they absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt are.
The Chinese government does not operate them directly, but it has a direct hand in how they are run in a way that simply does not have a parallel in the west.
An analogy might be an American company appointing high ranking government people (who are still active in government) to their board of directors, accepting special government run departments, and working closely with the government on goals and policy.
That sort of thing is entirely unheard of, outside of perhaps defense contractors in the USA, but even there, there is clear division between private and public interests.
> An analogy might be an American company appointing high ranking government people (who are still active in government)
It's not at all uncommon for high-ranking government and military officials in the US to sit on corporate boards right after they leave government. There's a well known revolving door.
American companies are also subject to very significant pressure from the government. See, for example, how the US government informally (and successfully) pressured all the major payment processors to cut off WikiLeaks in 2010, or how social media companies are now under significant pressure to censor content.
This sort of pressure, which exists to varying degrees in every country, is not the same as the government directly running a company or dictating its business plans. That is not, by and large, how things operate in China either in the private sector. I see the claim made all the time (for example in the first post I responded to) that all businesses in China are basically run by the government. I think the people making those comments don't know what they are talking about, and are basically advancing a paranoia about China which has become ever more intense in the US over the past few months.
However the key difference is the amount of coercion, you aren't going to be shut out of the country, or business if you refuse to appoint government people in the USA, or do the government other favors.
The US government and private interests do indeed co-opt each other a lot, but its nowhere near the (implicit) threat of being run out of business (or worse) that it is in china.
There's the threat of significant regulation. I think there's a reason why Zuckerberg feel the need to go in front of Congress, rather than telling them to go bark up a tree. It's also quite amazing how quickly all the payment processors shut off WikiLeaks, based on pressure from US senators.
Companies can, however, be banned from the US for overtly political reasons. See Huawei and ZTE.
I agree that Chinese CEOs walk on thinner ice personally, and that they can be thrown in prison or worse much more easily. That's a general problem in China. However, the easy way in which Americans claim Chinese companies are run by the government is not true. It's also true that large US companies are thoroughly embedded in the government and vice versa (the massive defense sector, parts of the tech sector).
Also recent developments of TikTok's business in US is also a red alert. If indeed the regulation extends to capital markets, then YC's US investors will put themselves against greater uncertainty of guarding their investments.
If the Corp US are smart and watching, they need to reduce/spin off/get rid of their Chinese ties as soon as possible, because they might have to endure long term consequences if the conflict in between two countries get worse.
> It also would be reasonable to come out and say they've changed their minds due to political climate or some other risks.
This is no different then when HR calls you in before you're terminated. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you so no point in saying anything.
If (when?) they decide to take another crack at things it'd be helpful to not be on the record about anything.
What elephant? Can you be more specific about what's controversial about this? Expansion into China would at least be a coherent basis for this stuff; then, sure, you'd want to know what compromises YC might be forced to make to stay in the good graces of their new host. This is YC withdrawing from China.
Beyond the merits of "don't do business with anyone in China because of the actions of its government", I think that YC has not been known to take such strong ethical stands in the past.
The simpler explanation is probably that the business climate is super risky if you're the foreign partner in any sort of JV with China, and they thought they could work through it through ... charisma and sweat and tears. And it turns out that in fact it is hard even if you're some techy VC or w/e.
I think few question what the gov't is doing, but the question is more whether YC in particular was affected by actions in the past year that caused them to reverse course.
That would be like a company withdrawing from the US because of its killing of a million people in Iraq, global kidnapping and torture program, or instigation of coups in Latin America. It's not a likely reason.
Your account has been using HN primarily for nationalistic and political battle. That's not allowed here, because it destroys the curiosity this site is supposed to be for. We ban accounts that keep doing this, so please don't keep doing this.
There was a post that sat on the front page for a very long time that was anti-china pro-us nationalistic political battle. It was some programmer's blog post. This post being allowed on the front page /was/ political battle which i was responding to. This thread less so but someone commented on Uyghurs so i responded. There has been an uptick in demonization of China by the Western press and that has been reflected on HN. Westerners did not show anti-china sentiment until recently. The people here do not seem curious about truly understanding China, i am just trying to spark some curiousity. If i post specific examples of why they are wrong is that a problem? The Uyghurs in Xinjiang do overwhelmingly support peaceful deradicalization so i don't understand how that is a problem, that is just information.
Why is it a problem what i "primarily" do? The only posts that really spur me to comment are these nationalistic one-sided pro-us anti-anyone-other posts and comments. The rest of the (computer) posts on HN I just read and study. There is nothing in the guidelines about what you "primarily" do.
Isn't ideological battle good for the curious? I'm confused. Are we allowed to be curious except when it comes to questioning liberal democracy? This seems like censorship of people who question liberal democracy, and i thought we were supposed to be curious here.
I think i can probably see some things in my posts that could be much better and offer more supporting information, but i think if you are going to act on what people 'primarily' do it should be based on their reading activity as well, as i am rarely driven to comment on posts that are not political.
There is so much misinformation regarding China. China helps all sorts of countries against western aggression. I support socialist projects like China and do not support a straight "free market" capitalist system. I like that they have state owned enterprises. I do not support the Hong Kong terrorists and really no one in the international left does.
They made a mistake of going into China. The abhorrent behavior of the Chinese government was highlighted in recent events, so YC decided to pull the plug. Perhaps change in leadership also played a role in this. There is definitely an up-tick in public outrange in the West vis-a-vis China.
If they overtly offend China this would negatively impact YC current portfolio companies, discourage current/future LP, and other make their business more difficult. So they went with an intermediate approach.
I agree with you. It's a tragedy of the commons, no one want to be "the one" who offends China if all their competitors do not. It's the same thing that drove the mad rush for Chinese market share.
However, despite realizing this problem, it is not clear what to do about it. Clearly, YC did not choose to become leaders on the issue.
>Yeah, no, I've read a newspaper in the last year.
Did you read one prior to Summer 2018? Because when YC decided to go into China, there were people in internment camps then too. This stuff didn't start last year:
I think you might be misinterpreting the parent. Nothing is controversial about the move itself, the elephant in the room is why they're doing it. They mention a change of strategy, but don't really spell out why.
It's pretty obvious why; everyone would be in China in a huge way if it wasn't for their trade abuse and/or human rights abuses.
Its a half truth divided by two, with the other two fourth’s being convenience of Qi’s own transition, we all know what we were expected to read and didnt which is the final quarter
Just have a little chuckle at what they chose to say and get out of a hairy situation
I think it's reasonable to stick with what YC knows best: Startups in the US. Perhaps this will be an opportunity to use the capital that would've been directed to China for American startups.
I am also encouraged they are still funding Chinese companies and have a nuanced approach to China in this highly politically charged environment that reminds me of McCarthyism.
Oppositions to China's human rights violations does not equal to a blanket opposition to cooperation or involvement with all things Chinese. Doing so only highlights a biased view that is highly prevalent in our government today that is precisely reminiscent of McCarthyism.
Indeed one does not need to look far for such sentiments:
"The Chinese aren’t smarter than we are. They don’t work harder than we do.
"At one point during the dinner, Trump noted of an unnamed country that the attendee said was clearly China, “almost every student that comes over to this country is a spy.” " -Donald Trump
I think that those who oppose companies doing business with China do not do so because they believe that the Chinese people themselves or Chinese culture (by which I mean their history, language, religion, art, etc. as divorced from the government) are bad.
Instead I think that they believe that doing business in China implicitly supports the Chinese government by failing to make a statement and by making the government more successful economically. That is basically the same idea behind a government implementing economic sanctions.
There is also the issue that in some cases doing business in China means actively supporting the actions of the Chinese government; e.g. by engaging in censorship.
Finally, I think that there is a perception that Chinese industry "cheats". This could include stealing intellectual property, requiring foreign corporations to partner with Chinese corporations, and asymmetry in the ability for foreigners to integrate into and be accepted by the culture. In the same way that working as a scab at a company with unfair labor practices could be good for the scab but bad for workers as a whole, a corporation doing business in China despite these issues could be viewed as prioritizing individual profit over the common good.
I'm not necessarily saying that I agree with all of these points in all situations. I'm just trying to show that people do have legitimate points that don't boil down to McCarthyism.
That’s not a great definition of Mccarthythism. Here’s one off the top of my head:
”A political movement reaches great enough support that it can paint its minority opposition as persona non grata. Then they make even mere association with opposition into a crime against the State and force employers, housing authorities, and other institutions to block such ”sympathizers” access to their work, homes, and assets.”
> Perfect example is the ridiculous spying bullshit that SuperMicro was accused of earlier this year.
Everyone, from the general public, to corporate America, to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, raked Bloomberg over the coals for that story. If anything, I think that's a sign that McCarthyism is hardly in play here.
You appear to have copy-pasted this definition from a blog article, and then added bullet points between the syllables to make it look more official. Yikes!
A real dictionary will show you that McCarthy-esque allegations are specifically treasonous.
Wikipedia pretty much defines it the same way: "McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence."
> specifically treasonous
Treason is one small dimension, use as a rhetorical device to make the real villain stand out - accusations without evidence.
Where do you see this statement? I see, "change in leadership" and "now is not the right time".
I translate that to, new leadership (and likely those who put him there) think now is not the right time. That could be for any reason internal or external.
The international community barely cares about what India is similarly doing in Kashmir, despite India being a democracy. In effect the most fundamental right in a democracy, the right to habeas corpus is suspended there.
There is much politically informed anti-China coverage in the MSM, so it is hard to take reports on China from them without much skepticism. Even in Hong Kong it is on display that the police are largely acting with restraint similar to what a western police force might behave, it is the protesters who have been violent.
The international community as HNers know is just part of whole international community, all western countries. There is another part ignored by English media audience. I would speculate that most HNers see the other part as naive , bribed by China , or evil while Western countries are the owner of final truth and stand on the high moral ground. Totally exclude other possibilities.
My speculation about YC is that there are always something beyond our understanding so they choose not to make judgement for time being. If that's the case I applaud their altitude. Modern human have serious cognitive defects in my view.
Quote
"...
Those that signed the first letter, criticizing China, include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
Signing the second letter, in defense of China’s policies, were: Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Gabon, Kuwait, Laos, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.
That line just proves how much of an echo chamber this place really is when it comes to international affairs.
I live in India. I just had lunch with my colleague who is a Kashmiri native. His parents recently arrived from that state, and his father has returned back to run his medical shop. Though the situation is not ideal, it is a far cry away from being a breach of democracy or humanitarian concerns. The government has evoked constitutional law to maintain peace and order, largely as preventive measures against extremist operations and organisation. This has certainly affected the lives of daily citizens, no doubt, but the way western media blows it out of proportion one can just wonder whether it is genuinely clueless journalism or ideologically motivated smear campaign.
How is that different from the US having fuck knows how many migrants (and children) in concentration camps, or "terrorists" in concentration camps, or slaves in overcrowded prisons, etc etc etc.
I mean not specifically you, but why are people in these comments all moral policing a country halfway across the world while their own is just as bad?
The migrants, while in a terrible plight, are technically coming into a foreign country without following the proper process. They're suffering a (deeply problematic) government response to that action, essentially a poorly done catch and deport process.
China is systematically doing this to its own citizens, and intentionally harvesting body parts from them.
I know my comment will be downvoted for sure because it isn't a popular idea, but I'm still gonna comment on this.
Reading news about any foreign country, including China, only from US MSM, is inherently biased (sampling bias). Maybe consider reading news from Chinese outlets in this case?
I know people will start arguing that Chinese outlets are mainly propagandas because they are controlled by governments and they are not independent...
But, but are we sure that Deutsche Welle or Japan Times are unbiased?
For example, Deutsche Welle is funded by German government. [1], and the editors of the Japan Times were appointed by their government [2].
Yes, German and Japanese governments are more trustworthy than the Chinese government, but every country has its own foreign policy and political agenda. Are we sure that we are not being "brainwashed" by those media outlets?
This is happening within the US as well. Think conservative news outlets vs liberal outlets.
Basically the entire world except for China including independent non profits is reporting on the internment camps. At this point you have to be actively trying to excuse them to believe they are fictional.
I could get more internationally sourced coverage if you really need. More or less the only MSM not covering the Uighur concentration camps are the Chinese MSM.
Sadly the tabloid-style coverage of this horrific Chinese government policy is causing people to discount the broader issue.
The Chinese government sent government workers to take time off their normals jobs and live in the homes of Uighur Muslims suspected of disloyalty to the Chinese government. More than a million Uighur households had monitors sleeping in their rooms and watching their lives for troublesome signs like the children not using patriotic greetings or the parents wanting to keep Muslim dietary guidelines.
In this article "relatives" refers to Han Chinese government monitors and "little brothers" and "little sisters" refers to the Muslims they watched.
> The relatives were given written guidelines on how to conduct themselves. Based on reports from Uighur contacts in Urumqi and Khotan, such manuals provided guidelines and forms that needed to be filled out and then digitized for security databases. In a manual that was used in Kashgar prefecture, relatives were given specific instructions on how to get their little brothers and sisters to “let down their guard.” The manual, which was posted on the internet but taken down just as this story was going to press, advises relatives to show “warmth.” “Don’t lecture right away,” it suggests, and show concern regarding their families and bring candy for the children. It provides a checklist that included questions such as: “When entering the household, do family members appear flustered and use evasive language?” “Do they not watch TV programs at home and instead only watch VCD discs?” “Are there any religious items still hanging on the walls of the house?”
> The manual instructs the relatives to tell their little brothers and sisters that they have been monitoring all internet and cell-phone communication that is coming from the family, so they should not even think about lying when it comes to their knowledge of Islam and religious extremism.
> The manual also instructs them to help the villagers alleviate their poverty by giving them business advice and helping out around the household. They were told to report any resistance to “poverty alleviation activities.”
RFA is a US propaganda operation. Leave it up to them to make "sleeping with the wives of detained Uyghur men" sound like the job description of those government agents, rather than a consequence of poor people not having free guest beds on hand, so they have to share beds with someone, potentially with the whole household. Also clever use of "sleep with" to imply sex. (I don't doubt that some will abuse their power, but I'd expect Uyghur families to think far enough ahead to have another male relative in the same room, if not the same bed.)
EDIT: I posted this as a bit of an experiment. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21601613 I link to a TV program criticising the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs. Here I criticize blatant propaganda published by an organization funded by the US government for precisely that purpose. Almost an hour later, this comment is at -4 while the other is at +6. Agreement-based voting at it's finest, but I'm not going to let propaganda slide just because it pushes a viewpoint I agree with.
I don’t think any major business in the world cares about this. They only care about things that affect their own revenue streams, and the average consumer isn’t boycotting companies for not doing anything about it.
Seriously. Show me one major corporation that cited this as a reason for pulling out of China. I’m not justifying the actions—I’m saying western industries don’t care about genocide. Because they don’t.
Loads of companies make political and social statements all the time. Whether it come to gay rights, protesting censorship, etc. None have said anything about the issues in Xinjiang.
I could see them hitting some roadblocks and wanting to try again to get into China, but that would be a reasonable thing to come out and say.
It also would be reasonable to come out and say they've changed their minds due to political climate or some other risks.
Instead its... the new guy is busy?