My bet is that Chinese miners will sponsor Luke-jr so that he can change the PoW to put all the Chinese miners out of business.
It's a disgrace.
I realize now that I've made a mistake. Chinese miners will sponsor a "core" dev but not a Core dev.
That is, not one of the existing Core devs.
I think the important question is what will happen if and when the dev sponsored by the Chinese miners tries to bring the code in a direction contrary to Core's.
Either the Chinese miners plus dev would start a new fork (with majority hashpower) or they would suffer loss and humiliation as their pull requests were rejected.
So you're either a contender for the throne or a servant to the powerful.
Choose wisely, Chinese miners.
This idea doesn't really pass my smell test and I'm not sure why. BIP's are accepted or rejected based on merit. Throwing money at a developer in the hopes of getting some code past the gates? I don't get it.