Start-ups: Would you take money from China? $1.2 trillion in cash | Hacker News Reader

Start-ups: Would you take money from China? $1.2 trillion in cash

2 pointsgyro_robo9 comments

As reported by CNN, China is planning to launch the world's largest investment fund. Sergey Brin said kowtowing to China's censorship demands was a mistake. Yahoo was sued in the U.S. when they turned over the identity of a political dissident to the Chinese government, for posts he had made on a Yahoo group. China has an abominable human rights record and virtually no worker rights or environmental controls. No freedom of speech.

Would you accept an investment you knew was from this investment fund?

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100024842/index.htm?section=money_topstories

No.

There's lots of money running around waiting to be invested; I wouldn't need to go to China to get some.

It doesn't matter; a fund like this is not likely to be investing in startups. Only a small fraction of investment funds are VC funds.

A trillion dollars can trickle down into quite a few crevices.

I think it's a given that China will want to invest in technology, including start-ups of many sorts. They might dispatch a roving horde of state-appointed VCs to tip the scale. With that kind of money, all bets are off.

They might also toss some billions into existing VC funds, so it expands the pool.

I love China's capitalism/communism hybrid. One of the ways they manage to pull it off by having free companies that are part owned by the Chinese government. Did you know that Lenovo is 35% owned by the Chinese government? It was originally a spin-off of a government think tank, so they still own it...

The thing that works about the Chinese hybrid is that it's a step more capitalist than what they had before. They could repeat that step and have more, and broader, success still.

The Chinese government (and people) look towards Russia's economic collapse as what happens when you move towards democracy too quickly. They are getting there but it is a slow process. China could not stay united without an authoritarian government. The Communist party will always rule China but maybe in 30 or 40 years the president will resign and announce his successor will be elected.

What does democracy have to do with capitalism? China (and hell, Dubai) is proof that there is no necessary link.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com