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Comment by throwawayecchai | Hacker News Reader

Would love for the down voters to explain why.

You described Chinese people organizing and attending an open technical conference with permission, and offer the unproven statement that several speakers would have refused to speak if they had known just how "Chinese" it was going to be ahead of time.

I'm not sure how those speakers couldn't just cancel, sure they'd lose any speaking fees but I've never heard of lock-in speaking contracts for conferences. Or if they care so much they could just modify their speeches to not supply anything of value. Or perhaps they should have done their homework ahead of time.

In any case I'd hardly call it a "nefarious trick" regardless of who was doing it. I'm hesitant to throw out "racist", but you seem to be leaning that way...

Fair enough, but I have never ever seen a conference change it's title overnight, two days before the actual event, to such an extent.

Nefarious or not, it does seem a bait and switch - won't you agree.

I had signed up to attend, initially, now I'm not so sure.

If their goal was a bait-and-switch then why change the title? If you're trying to con someone out of information why make the victim aware of your intentions right before the con? It is possible that they thought "US China AI Summit" would be a little alienating so to get some initial sign-ups they put out something softer, but that just seems like a marketing decision. When I hear "Building Across Borders" my first thought is "Oh, it's an international conference. Let's see which countries will be there! Oh look it's a ton of Chinese people...", not really concealing anything beyond the superficial.

I have no love of the Chinese government, but this is a free exchange of ideas that is open to the public (for a $40 ticket). Given the actions of the Chinese government to date, if this is how they plan to get more technical data going into the future I'm hoping they do more of this and less hacking of proprietary/classified info. :P

English language makes it hard to separate Anti-Chinese government (Nationalism?) from Anti-Chinese people (Racism) .

I think most of these comments are referring to the former, a dislike/distrust for the PRC government, not Chinese people.