By Xie Jun & Chi Jingyi
The Trump government’s crackdown on Chinese companies and its hostile attitude toward China are likely to backfire, as Washington’s coercion is disrupting globally-recognized rules of business and commerce, experts said.
According to the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2020, a list released by Hurun Research Institute which ranked global startups founded after 2000, there were 16 unicorns founded by first- or second-generation Chinese by the end of March, and most are located in the US, particularly the US technology hub Silicon Valley. Unicorns refer to private companies whose valuations exceed $1 billion.
Based on statistics in the list, a large portion of ethnic Chinese-founded unicorns in San Francisco are high-tech firms, such as the artificial intelligence (AI) company Nuro and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firm Airtable.
Besides founding businesses, Chinese talents also form an important force in Silicon Valley by working for local companies. Zhang Xiaorong, Director of the Cutting-Edge Technology Research Institute, said that many cutting-edge technologies in Silicon Valley are being developed by Chinese.
Meanwhile, what China has brought to the US tech hub is not only talents and innovative business ideas, but also capital. For example, ZhenFund, founded by one of China’s most celebrated angel investors Xu Xiaoping, has invested in Silicon Valley-based firms including big data firm TasteAnalytics.
An article by tech news portal OneZero also noted that the flow of people and money between Silicon Valley and China was “constantly rising” in recent years, with many Chinese people flowing to work in the Valley.
–The Daily Mail-Global Times news exchange item
