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The RMB is growing in importance and rapidly becoming an increasingly stable financial instrument in global trade. That is not to be debated.

Even though China's economy has overtaken the US in scale, there is one MAJOR issue that is commonly overlooked when contemplating the possibility of them becoming the go-to global currency... They are still an authoritarian state that controls and manipulates the free flow of information in-and-out of its borders. Baidu, Tencent, Weibo, and Alibaba are all still clones of basic US internet infrastructure. Until there is a great lifting of restrictions on the flow of information inside of China, I don't see them building the next Google anytime soon. (Baidu does have Andrew Ng doing some cool stuff in Deep Learning tough!)

I'm not trying to say there isn't innovation coming out of China, just that there won't be a technological renaissance to the likes of Silicon Valley until people can communicate more openly online about potentially dangerous ideas.

Can the RMB survive and increase its power with constant tension with HK and Taiwan over political ideology? I'm not sure... If the Chinese can slowly open up its internal lines of communication without massive protests or radical power struggles, they will be unstoppable.

The only question left in my mind is when given the choice to purchase technical infrastructure from the likes of Google/Facebook or Baiudu, what are developing markets (SEA, Africa..) going to pick. Chinese tech companies ideals might be more inline with rapidly developing companies than the old guard in SV..



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