From Wired, May 3:
Before the US cracked down on China’s tech sector, the country’s investors chased deals in California with Maseratis and Michelin-starred food.
Michael made his fortune in electronics, starting an appliance company right out of college. He rode the astronomical growth of China’s economy in the early 21st century, selling his company to one of the country’s tech giants. In late 2011, he moved to the US—partly motivated, he says, by a huge sandstorm that had affected his children’s health. He settled in Irvine, California, and was soon invited into an exclusive club of investors, wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs who had made their own ways in real estate, mining, and IT.
The next few years were a whirlwind. Friends in China kept calling him, asking if he could connect them to people in Silicon Valley. Almost every month, he would host a Chinese delegation, introducing them to American startups and venture capitalists. “It felt like everyone had so much money to invest, they would fight for deals and compete to sign memorandums,” says Michael, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as he’s since moved back to China. “It’s almost like they are afraid that they would lose the opportunity to make a great fortune if they act slowly.”
And, of course, there were parties. Boat parties, penthouse parties, suites at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles and fancy Japanese meals in Michelin star restaurants. Parties in mansions in Palo Alto with free-flowing premium wine and cigars, and gourmet food. Rounds of golf at exclusive country clubs. Michael was invited to all sorts of pitch competitions, fundraising events, road shows, and industrial conferences. He bought a Maserati because everyone else was driving Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and Maybachs. “At that time, you often heard people talk about making tens of millions of dollars, raising multiple rounds of funding, and going public,” he says. “You had this illusion that making money is so easy.”
The late 2010s were a boom time for Chinese investors in the US. Relations between the US government and Beijing were cordial, and the two countries’ tech sectors were constantly seeking opportunities to tap into the other’s market. Chinese venture capitalists—many of them with close ties to the government—invested billions of dollars in US startups; American companies went on tours of Chinese provincial cities. That’s all come to a near-total stop. The US government is deeply suspicious of any technology linked to China, tightening its controls and threatening to ban companies from its market, making American companies nervous about taking Chinese investment. China, too, is throttling the flow of money and talent to the US. Chinese VCs still want to put their money to work in America, they say. But the good times are well and truly over.
One sign of how comfortable the relationship between Chinese capital and the American tech sector was in the late 2010s is the sheer number of state-linked players operating in the US market. One, the ZGC Innovation Center, was based in Santa Clara, California. It is a building with nearly 7,000 square meters and provides an open-space work area for startups to rent, as well as conference rooms and multimedia centers to host events. It was opened in May 2016 as an incubator and an accelerator, providing capital and mentoring to early-stage startups and working to bring American technology and talent to China. According to its official website, the mission of the center was to “help Zhongguancun (China’s equivalent of Silicon Valley) capital to go abroad, and bring in overseas advanced technology and talents.”
The innovation center was backed by ZGC Group, which is funded by the local Beijing government-owned Operation and Management Company and other government-related entities. It was hardly the only one. According to Reuters, more than 20 Silicon Valley venture capital firms operating in Silicon Valley in 2018 had close ties to a Chinese government fund or other state-owned entity.
These ties to the government were part of the appeal. Frank Liu, director of Silicon Valley–China Innovation Development Center, an incubator, says that from 2015, each year his organization would arrange a startup competition in North America, giving winners a small angel investment round. Then they’d send details of the companies to the government of Shandong Province, which would invite a select few to attend a roadshow in China, where the founders could pitch to local officials. American entrepreneurs were treated to complementary hotel rooms, fancy dinners, and sightseeing tours, but most importantly, they got to meet people in government with the power to help them enter the Chinese market.
Aimee Chin, founder of Kuaizi Express, an international logistics company, told WIRED that US startups that could demonstrate they had potential in the Chinese market found it easy to raise funds. “Deals in my industry usually closed within six months,” she recalls, “there were not so many regulations and restraints on Chinese people moving their capital abroad, and there were not so many investigations.”....
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