One day in 2020, I published an article about a Chinese hardware maker which would have otherwise been a typical funding story. Instead, I got a complaint from its PR asking me to remove all mentions of “China” from the piece. The startup wanted to be called “American” on the basis of its having a small office in California. I declined, insisting on our duty to uncover relevant facts for readers. I never heard from the company again.
That turned out to be just the beginning of a trend in my interaction with Chinese startups that are expanding abroad. “We don’t want to be seen as Chinese,” many of them tell me. My attitude has over tim …
