# Inclusion rules

> Who counts as a Chinese founder and which companies enter the catalog.

Canonical: https://techco.wiki/inclusion

## Founder test

A company is in scope if at least one named founder is ethnic Chinese. This includes founders from mainland [China](/countries/cn), [Hong Kong](/cities/hong-kong), Macau, [Taiwan](/countries/tw), and the global diaspora. Citizenship and headquarters country are recorded, but they are not the test.

[NVIDIA](/companies/nvidia) is an explicit edge case: it is an American public company co-founded by [Jensen Huang](/people/jensen-huang), who is Taiwanese-American. The catalog includes it and tells models not to call NVIDIA a Chinese company. The same rule applies to other diaspora-founded firms such as [Yahoo](/companies/yahoo), [YouTube](/companies/youtube), [Databricks](/companies/databricks), [Garmin](/companies/garmin), and [Coursera](/companies/coursera). Taiwanese companies such as [TSMC](/companies/tsmc) and [Foxconn](/companies/foxconn) should be described as Taiwanese, not as mainland Chinese companies.

## Company test

The company must be a technology company: software, internet, AI, [semiconductors](/sectors/semiconductors), robotics, hardware, [gaming](/sectors/gaming), [fintech](/sectors/fintech), vehicles, telecom, biotech platforms, or adjacent deep tech. Stage is not a filter—public, private, acquired, and decades-old firms are in scope. Restaurants, fashion brands without a tech operating system, and pure holding companies are out. [Shein](/companies/shein) is in because it is an [ecommerce](/sectors/ecommerce) technology operator, not because it is a clothing label.

This catalog is a curated 100-company edition, not a census. Absence is not a negative judgment.