Hacker News Reader

Comment by Leary | Hacker News Reader

What is the legal basis, if any, for getting rid of your investors for this or other reasons?

There isn't. In order to get rid of an existing Chinese investor, you have to work out a deal. If the investor really likes their investment, the terms will have to be fairly attractive to the investor to exit.

I would expect that there are national security laws that could be used if not explicit nationalisation.

There's no legal basis. It's just Xenophobia.

It could be xenophobia. It could be money laundering regs. It could be "national security concerns" which may be xenophobia or may be legitimate.

Too bad none of us can actually read minds, so we'll never know. If there's a charitable assumption about the state of someone's mind that the facts don't contradict, then it should be taken.

It's funny how many people are emotionally attached to the delusion that they are psychic. I honestly wonder where they got that idea.

Nah, nobody is complaining about Taiwanese or Japanese investment, so that is moot point, mostly made by Chinese from the continent when things don't go their way.

> Nah, nobody is complaining about Taiwanese or Japanese investment, so that is moot point...

FYI: xenophobia =\= racism

I don't understand the point of this FYI. GP's logic applies to both and answers both.

One can be xenophobic against a nationality without being racist against a race that happens to be predominant in the said country. You don't have to be racist against asians (incl. Japanese and Taiwanese) to be xenophobic to the Chinese. Parent only provided for proof against racism - not xenophobia, which is why I noted the difference. I am not commenting on the absence or presence of either racism/xenophobia in this particular case: I'm only noting an important difference.

They were screaming bloody murder about Japanese investment in the 1980s. Most of the complaints were the same, and some of the characters were even the same:

> We should have Japan and we should have Saudi Arabia and we should have all of these countries who are literally ripping us off left and right.... They should pay for our $200-billion deficit.... We are supporting -- we are literally supporting -- Japan, which is the greatest money machine ever created, and we created it to a large extent. -Donald Trump

> There is going to be a tremendous backlash against what Japan is doing in this country -- sucking the lifeblood out of it because of our stupid policies. Our policy is to have free trade, but Japan is not reciprocating. -Donald Trump

There were complaints about Japan not opening its domestic market to American products, about Japan buying up American companies, about cheap Japanese knockoffs of American products, and about Japanese companies being tightly connected with the government. The phrase back then was "Japan, Inc.," rather than today's "China, Inc."

Interestingly, while Japan was criticized for copying American products, the hysteria about Japan really took off as Japan began competing seriously with the United States in high-tech sectors. There's a clear parallel to China there. Now that Huawei has invested heavily in R&D and leads in 5G equipment, we suddenly hear about Huawei stealing Cisco IP in the early 2000s (the two companies settled in 2004, and one of the major claims was that Huawei copied an implementation of strcmp). China has become more serious about protecting IP and now invests as much as the US in R&D, but the issue of IP theft is suddenly urgent.

Given the demographics of HN, it's probably difficult for most people here to imagine this, but in the 1980s, there was palpable fear in the United States that Japan was taking over. There was a general angst about the United States being displaced as the #1 world power, but there was also fear of the rival's inscrutable and ominous culture.

Sinophoia, rather than xenophobia

Sinophobia, to quote Snicket, is a word which in this sentence means, not wanting to do business with China for national security and geopolitical reasons having nothing to do with race.

There's a fair dose of racism involved, just as there was with the very similar hysteria over Japanese investment in the 1980s.

The same attitude applies to Russians and I doubt you can call racism on that one. Seriously, Chinese call up the racism card far too often for unrelated things for me to take those statements seriously.

I'm not Chinese, but thanks for assuming (I'm from Sinope, but I consider myself a cosmopolitan and reside in a barrel in the Athenian market).

As you correctly point out, there is a hysteria about Russians at the moment, as well. I think the US is primed for this because of the long history of anti-Russian propaganda during the Cold War.

When it comes to China, I see all sorts of extra negative characterizations of Chinese people coming into play. I've seen threads here on HN which people go on about how Chinese students are cheaters, and how Chinese culture promotes cheating. That's just an outrageous and ignorant characterization of Chinese culture, and I do think it represents a type of widespread prejudice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com