Comment by Fade_Dance

>over the past 25 years are justified?

There have been periods of extreme excess (DotCom bust, the end of the ZIRP era), but overall I find it hard to argue that there hasn't been value creation for investors.

>China

Investing in China is a different paradigm than investing in US companies. By and large, Chinese companies do not put returning capital to shareholders as the top priority, and they are also restrained by government priorities (and it's not smart to violate the red lines - both the explicit and implicit red lines - see the tech crackdown a few years back).

This also goes for one of the most important elements for VC, which is cashing out. Remember DIDI and their clawed back IPO? In those cases the investors don't just lose their money, the people who violated the principles may be taken in for re-education and get blackballed from business entirely.

That said, the mainland Chinese equity/IPO space has gotten much more developed recently, and the government has even prioritized promoting things like the STAR (tech) exchange. This should theoretically make pushing startups to IPO have less friction, and I'd expect Chinese VC to continue to develop amidst this backdrop (and sure, valuations could rise with it). At the end of the day the Chinese startup scene doesn't have the trillion dollar right tail like the US does though. Returns are a bit capped, because anything of critical importance is going to be at least partially guided by the state instead of in the US, where by and large it's entirely about shareholders.