Making connections and investments : an ethnography of China-to-US venture capital business
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- From the second half of 2014 to the first half of 2018, with Chinese government's financial and policy support and also a relatively relaxed US-China trade relation, unprecedented amounts of money from Mainland China flooded Silicon Valley and became an important new source of capital for tech startups in the US. This wave of China-to-US venture investment, which is a reversal of more than two decades ago when the US money poured into China, was channeled by a class of Chinese transnational venture capitalists who shuttled between the two countries, navigated and mediated flows of information, capital and people. Given the changing US-China relation, Chinese venture capitalists have to develop different strategies to craft their Chinese identities in order to secure, legitimize and even obtain an advantage when competing with their US counterparts. With their Chinese characteristics, they are not "just a member" of the local investor community in Silicon Valley. Rather, their status and business activities have always been embedded in and understood through the transnational context. My dissertation studies this wave of China-to-US venture capital business from 2016 to 2018. Starting with a historical review of its emergence and decline, my dissertation is mainly concerned about exploring the central ideas and practices through which Chinese venture capitalists manage uncertainty and maximize capital gains from transnational investment. As they describe venture capital being a "people-centered" business, networking, or in their words, "jianli guanxi" (building guanxi/建立关系), has been the key. Through actively making and managing their web of guanxi, Chinese venture capitalists recruit talents, sort startup deals, evaluate investment cases and exit at the right time and at the right price. Contrary to the stereotype of venture capital being a male-dominated industry, my fieldwork reveals that Chinese women have taken a leading position in cultivating and maintaining these human relationships which support the transnational venture capital business. My dissertation thus has a special focus on women venture capitalists and explores how they, as active and full participants who are emotional and rational beings, initiate and engage in cultivating guanxi. In addition to accomplishing business goals, I argue that the process of making connections also produces values and sentiments which structure the business and also shape their life as venture capitalists.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Xie, Tianyu |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko, 1945- |
| Thesis advisor | Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko, 1945- |
| Thesis advisor | Ferguson, James, 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Kohrman, Matthew, 1964- |
| Thesis advisor | Zhou, Xueguang, 1959- |
| Degree committee member | Ferguson, James, 1959- |
| Degree committee member | Kohrman, Matthew, 1964- |
| Degree committee member | Zhou, Xueguang, 1959- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Anthropology |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Tianyu Xie. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Anthropology. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/sq322tv9055 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Tianyu Xie
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