If that time comes it will be interesting to see how the owners of ycombinator react. China's anger has made many high profile companies fold at the earliest signs of tension. Remember the guy who got fired from the hotel chain because he was logged in to the hotel social media account and simply like a pro-Taiwan post? Within days China had put pressure on the hotel to get rid of him. Remember when the clothing company put out a shirt that showed a map of the world and had Taiwan as its own country? Chinese pressure made them completely pull that piece of clothing and redesign it to remove Taiwan.

God forbid they allow Chinese moderators on HN or some type of Chinese-centric oversight

YC and HN are symbiotic. Much easier to just make YCChina and news.ycchina considering it won't be in English.

>They've barred far larger targets for far less than the discussions that go on here.

Can you give any example of China successfully censoring any large media companies outside of their own territory?

All it takes is for a stuffed bear related post to make the front page.

HN is already blocked. Funny, right?

Where? Over the last 2 years I visited HN from China almost daily without any issues. I'm no longer there, but this test seems to indicate that HN is not blocked: https://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall/?domain=news.ycombinato...

HN isn't blocked in China

Well it is definitely blocked last time when I was in China, or in Beijing, but that is like 3 years ago.