Ask HN: Do you trust SaaS software made by China teams?

6 points by shawnpang 2 years ago | 14 comments

Just stating a fact that I observed - teams that are based in China cannot easily get people's trust, especially when they are selling to large enterprises who care about data security and compliance. Is the country the team is based in part of how you make the decision? If so how can a company prove theirselves to gain your trust.

solardev 2 years ago |

I wouldn't use a Chinese business service, mostly for geopolitical reasons. China may decide to block Western users at any time, or the US may decide to block Chinese servers at any time. It's volatile.

And there's concerns about the Great Firewall, CCP ownership of all your data and assets, cultural and ethical differences (in regards to privacy, piracy, IP, etc.), censorship and wiretapping, VPN blocking... it's a lot of overhead that's hard to justify. It's just matter of time before you piss off some official and get in trouble. And if they ever invade Taiwan, oof, it's gonna be a real mountain of headaches. Just not worth it. Even if China does nothing hostile, the US will keep using them as a scapegoat for all our domestic problems because it's easier to blame them than ourselves.

I don't think there's anything a Chinese team could do to earn trust, short of moving out of that country and reforming the business elsewhere (like how Jetbrains left Russia after Ukraine). It's really got nothing to do with the team, but two superpowers approaching a cold war.

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With games and movies though, I guess it's not as big a deal. I still don't like that China owns so much of our entertainment sector (between Tencent owning many Western studios and much of Hollywood being Chinese owned now), but whatever, that's just entertainment.

shawnpang 2 years ago | |

Ya I see many people having the same opinion as you.

When it comes to consumer internet products, where the product was created doesn't matter that much honestly. There isn't that much at stake. But if it comes to enterprise software the risk needs to be measured.

comprev 2 years ago |

The laws within the country by which the product operates - and stores data - might not be compatible with regulations in which the customer must operate.

The legal headache for a US/EU company to use a SaaS product from China would not be worth the cost and risk.

It's not about the company or teams trying to prove trustworthy.

shawnpang 2 years ago | |

This is the most objective answer! If a Chinese SaaS company wants to grow in US/EU, compliance is a place they must invest in.

comprev 2 years ago | | |

Cynically most people will probably assume (with zero evidence, just hearsay) their data is mirrored outside of the EU/US as companies bow to pressure from CCP.

Something along the lines of “We will grant you a license to operate in EU/US on the grounds we have full authority to inspect all customer data to ensure you are complying with CCP regulations”

Either way it’s a tough uphill battle for Chinese companies!

farouqaldori 2 years ago |

I don't necessarily mistrust Chinese SaaS products, though I find Chinese products to follow a design paradigm that is outdated from a UI/UX perspective.

Also, in general, Chinese products tend to be slow which is understandable if the servers are located in China.

leros 2 years ago |

I wouldn't use a Chinese SaaS simply out of fear that it might cause one my customers to not use my service. There are many Chinese things I would use but not SaaS software.

shawnpang 2 years ago | |

How would your customers find out about this tho.

comprev 2 years ago | | |

When a customer requests an audit of your supply chain as part of their due diligence. For legal reasons they might want to know who _you_ do business with, for example in case of international sanctions.

leros 2 years ago | | |

There are several different audits a company might need to do. Having a Chinese SaaS as a vendor would definitely prevent me from passing certain audits and doing business with certain customers. At minimum, it would be something I have to disclose and it would be a talking point, so better to just avoid it for simplicity.

solardev 2 years ago | | |

If your company is subject to the GDPR, I think you have to list subprocessors and where they're located.

Also ping times will probably be an issue.

farseer 2 years ago |

There are SaaS companies from China and Russia that register and open their head office in US with token sales staff and retain the rest of their core engineering and management back home. You might not even notice it. Case in point: Bitrix24 is primarily a Russian company.

shawnpang 2 years ago | |

Singapore is often a choice for those Chinese companies as well. It's hard to define a "Chinese company". There are many Chinese Americans / Chinese Canadians doing business in North America, myself included. If all of their team members and the legal entity are in the US, are they still a Chinese company?

comprev 2 years ago | | |

It’s probably easier to define “a Chinese company” as one which is under jurisdiction of CCP regardless of their geographical location - similar to a US citizen having to pay tax even if they never intend to touch US soil again.