Is it me or there's some cognitive dissonance going on with the whole article discussing the ramifications of a nationalization without describing at all what sourced this "news" in the first place?
I think we need to wait until there's something more substantial to go on. The headline makes it sound like this is a thing, when in fact (as far as we know so far?) it's a rumor.
There's a long tradition of "$Person hasn't been seen in public -> gigantic dramatic narrative" in media stories about authoritarian countries. No doubt it's great for clicks, but these things mostly turn out not to be true. If this one turns out to be true, we'll certainly find out and discuss it then.
The RFA references Song Qing, "Internet finance industry insider":
"These nationalizations are definitely happening, and [the antitrust investigation] will likely speed up that process," Song said. "It's also, I think, about making an example of [Ant and Alibaba]."
So I would trust the article as much as I would trust Song Qing.
I think the CCP is mostly at fault. They wanted to control and limit discussion and even news on alibaba so of course people are going to speculate in the absence of information.
I am most surprised about how surprised everyone is about these events. Did Jack Ma think he was going to tell the CCP how it is? China is executing an executive for bribery and corruption [1] (a lot of bribery and corruption though!).
Perhaps it's simply the Overton Window [2] delta between the US and China.
The West thought once China is full of billionaires, the billionaires having all that wealth would then have the power to oppose and dissolve the CCP.
Didn't go as planned.
That was the propaganda rationale used to justify opening up trade with China. The primary goals were to gain leverage over the Soviet Union and deescalate the Cold War.
One thing Chinese billionaires have is the freedom to leave (at least until they get in trouble). This precedent seems to make it clear that once you have amassed that much power and wealth, it would be crazy to stay in China.
Or maybe in order to archive such success in China one must have connections to people in high places and people with said connections can't imaging their connections turning on them.
The one true power in the world is the ability to physically harm others. Therefore given how modern civilization is structured, a head of state with a loyal military and police is always the most powerful person in the country.
There is not really much of a reason to believe this. Economically successful nationalization do happen. The main reason why the CCP is considering nationalizing Ant Financial is because their economists are afraid of the negative economic impacts it may have.
The same thing happened in my province, where the power generation industry was nationalized for economic reasons and ended up being a massive economic advantage, along with the lowest unsubdsidized rates everywhere in the world.
I think this kind of dogmatic viewpoint is dangerous.
Agreed. Without sources, this story could be totally made up. That being said, who really knows what the CPC is planning to do with Alibaba right now, if anything.
> But if China goes down this route, it looks like fears of China economically overtaking the US are overblown.
Agreed also. This would be the worst possible thing the government could do to China's tech economy.
> China economically overtaking the US are overblown.
They never really stood a chance. Militarily, economically, socially, culturally and spiritually they offer no better alternative to the American one. Similar to how "China owns US treasuries and can crash the US dollar" was the common trope until recently, the US called them out the trillion dollar loan to Qing dynasty which was transferred from KMT to CCP after Chiang Kai Shek's defeat (and really a symbol of CCP's legitimacy over Taipei), and China began buying more US treasuries to increase its US dollar dependence. Without HK, the yuan-hkd-usd peg is collapsing and CCP is running low on US dollars. Kyle Bass's interview with Guo Wengui explains this in detail [1]
I even had Chinese students condescendingly tell me that China is taking over and everybody will be speaking Chinese by 2020 back in 2005.
If Winnie the Pooh, censoring wikipedia, university students protesting over Tibet, Tianmen Square massacre, organ harvesting of Falun Gong (they are "scientology" so its okay they said) causes the security apparatus kick into high gear then you really are the complete opposite of anti-fragility which is what the US is.
US is anti-fragile, authoritarians are not because they are susceptible to even the smallest shock in the economy or the mindset of its citizens, so they use excessive violence and fear to maintain its power. They don't last at all.
It's more likely that people who made a lot of money working with/in China have an extremely skewed view of the world.
I was thinking about nationalization separately from this. The west has invested a lot into the Chinese economy hoping to translate the corresponding equity into growth. I wonder if the Chinese are really long term interested in honoring the equity.
Meaning - take the money now, grow the businesses and the economy and then at some point say "It's stupid that we're letting foreigners have 20% (or whatever) ownership of our economy" and just deem it illegal / confiscate that equity.
Obviously it will prevent future foreign investment but if China is in a place where they don't care about that, it would be the move.
The CCP has pretty explicitly said and proved that it places itself and its interests above Chinese and/or international law.
It's playing nice with international investment for now, because it's free money, but ultimately any investment in China is only valued to the extent the CCP feels it's in its best interests.
The West's intent was to make China dependent on the international banking and trade system, such that they would provide additional levers to control China's behavior, but we're talking about a government that starved its population to prove a point...
Nothing shy of being able to melt down the Chinese economy is going to change their decision, if they make it.
This is just modern day colonialism - as a leader of a country do you resign to paying a tax to foreign powers forever, or do draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough.
What is interesting is China is even powerful enough to do this. This isn't new - it's what Iran tried under Mosaddegh, and it's a story oft repeated in South America, and each case there is suddenly a CIA backed coup who fights against nationalization.
I don't think China would see any blowback from this - the idea that it would prevent future investment in China is like saying Europe would stop investing in the US after the American revolution; as long as there is some alpha to be made in an economy as large as China's, I'd expect them to still see foreign capital.
I think what it more interesting is the concentration of power in the CCP elite and how that power is wielded. On one side you have the "communist" dream where the nationalization of Alibaba is felt by all Chinese citizens who are given more through socialization - one can imagine what China would look like in another 15 years if they focused on further educating and strengthing their citizenry; its the progressive left's "dream" for America. On the other hand, it's also likely you end up in a situation where power corrupts and nationalization is just an excuse to enrich Xi and his inner circle.
>Obviously it will prevent future foreign investment but if China is in a place where they don't care about that, it would be the move.
In that case the state can still get sued. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos_shareholders_v._Russia As for actual compensation to the shareholders, it can range between money seized from foreign accounts (think US treasuries) to sanctions.
> The west has invested a lot into the Chinese economy hoping to translate the corresponding equity into growth
Chinese people are jointly invest in that venture, by (not limited to):
* Sacrifice family and personal time, by hundreds of millions of passent migration workers.
* Sacrifice health and life quality, even today 996 still a norm, and you can imagine what have been since the opening up
* Environment, early pollution has harmed the people's health and well-being
* Mental health, stressful working time, lack of support
At the top, it was CCP and Western capitalists grabbed most of the profit, but leaving the waste to be suffered by the people.
Case in point, Alibaba's success is a CCP sanctioned monopoly and unfair market competition. I pity Jack Ma's treatment from CCP, I don't pity him as a citizen, he already enjoyed too much beyond what he actually deserves.
As such, I do welcome campaign like the poverty elimination [1]. If CCP does nationalize alibaba and use that to help rural areas to gain access to market, I consider that a positive thing for the vast majority of the poor.
Are you asking the same question about what is supposedly an even safer investment, as in are the Americans really long-term interested in honoring its foreign debt? That has quite a bit of ramification beyond shore.
When appraising something from a propaganda-y source, the rule of thumb I use is to treat it like selling sausages - if they're your sausages, you don't go into detail, but if they're your competitors sausages and you know they're full of sawdust then you don't need to make anything up.
Also "this isn't Reddit" is just delusions of grandeur, HN commenters are self-selected around technology for the most part not politics.
Simply sad to see such a garbage-quality piece of fear-mongering "journalism" (published more than 2 weeks ago, no less), with only wild anti-CCP speculations from a single random commentator for Radio Free Asia (spoiler: not exactly known for their neutrality), and practically non-existent factual information, getting so many upvotes here. If one applies the least bit of logic, one could immediately grasp the absurdity of such a "proposal", which would only do every party involved immense harm.
Then again, maybe this is no longer anything surprising at all, given the multiple recent precedents, including e.g. the ridiculous "chromeisbad.com" post.
This is a serious misunderstanding of what the means and ways at CCP's disposal. Nationalization or taking controlling share of a company is a very Western view and would not happen to Baba. I wrote a few days ago about what would likely to happen to Baba: https://drz.today/2020/baba-is-not-the-next-khodorkovsky/. Only time would tell of course.
Great timing to do this if you are the CCP - the world is focused on the US right now not much oxygen for anything else in the news cycle. I think the CCP's true colors have been showing up a lot recently. I feel badly for the Chinese population as a whole as the rest of the globe finds it difficult to disentangle the two, and that the CCP applies pressure on foreign nationals (see: Australia).
This is a highly speculative article with vast, global, implications.
People should be taking this with Kilograms of salt.
Food for thought: if this was to be true we would be seeing several bit coin whale operations going on from insiders, and this isn't the case even with the substantial drops in bitcoin value in the last 24 hours.
Obviously they aren't getting more Chinese business, but they've struggled there already. But it makes it a lot easier for them to compete everywhere else. Competing against CCP is going to be a lot easier than competing against Jack Ma.
Let's play this out. Suppose the CCP does nationalize BABA, and as a result Amazon starts beating it. Over time Amazon comes to dominate Chinese ecommerce, with hundreds of billions of yuan flowing from Chinese consumers to Bezos' pocket. Bezos then says something critical of the CCP.
How is this scenario likely to develop after that point?
996 doesn’t sound bad at all if it’s my own Company and I’m not constantly worried about Cash flow or run rate. Maybe that’s why in the quotes they say stuff like “996 is a blessing” :P
it may happen not necessarily as straight "nationalization", instead the CCP/government would just buy a controlling interest at a very sweet non-cash price what Ma and other shareholders would be more than happy to sell at ... given the alternatives.
In a different time with a hardline conservative government we would see moves being drawn in the sand to prevent this kind of power domination by China. But neither Biden nor Trump have any incentive in drawing boundaries on CCP.
I never thought I’d wish for bigger hawks in the white house.
The CCP is caught in its own version of purgatory through paranoia. When the great famine happened under Mao, it was because Mao had surrounded himself by yes-men who were competing to be the most loyal. When the famine hit, the provinces all reported better yields than actual, collectivism happened based on reported and not actual yield, and millions of farmers starved.
His successor, Deng Xiaoping started a lot of really great reforms, including term limits on leadership and granting Shenzhen & some other cities special/experimental economic status, to basically run autonomously as capitalist.
Several decades later, paranoia is too strong. Xi Jinping removed term limits because he doesn't trust others to run the country better than him. The One China policy has killed a number of vibrant cultures including those of Tibet, Hong Kong, and the Uyghurs. A social credit system is being implemented. Now Alibaba is being nationalized.
These issues will likely only get worse, until another great famine event.
Fraser Howie, author of "Red Capitalism", says that all Chinese corporations are either state owned enterprises or state overseen enterprises. It appears China may want to transition Alibaba from the latter to the former.
All US companies are also either state owned (USPS), state overseen (regulated), or even state subsidized as well (Boeing). You can add state monitored (Telcos) in there as well.
Guo Wengui said back in September 2019 that "Jack Ma would be jailed or killed" on Kyle Bass's youtube channel. [1]
At this point its not even a question of whether we will see Jack Ma in public again. Overnight he went from billionaire to peasantry. We've seen dozen cases like this:
1) Billionaire disappears or is "killed"
2) Billionaire's company becomes nationalized
3) Rinse & Repeat
Everybody who isn't familiar with the inner workings of the CCP thinks that Jack Ma openly challenged the CCP. That simply isn't the case. They are using as an excuse to take over the company because they can.
As much as people in the West praise CCP's economic rise, and some even point to its authoritarian system as superior to our democracy, but little do they know the very laws that protect them isn't an option in China.
Imagine spending most of your life building a massive business and then one day it is taken from you by force by an authoritarian ruler.
This is why anyone that has money send their kids abroad and move permanently to a Western country that their kids despise and criticize their host for calling out the CCP.
The era of CCP economic rise is over. Middle income trap and aging demographics dictate as much. CCP will now have to contend with
- internal turmoil
- political infighting
- encirclement by democracies (India, Japan, Australia, US, UK, Canada, France, South Korea, Taiwan). Once Merkel is out in sept 2021, Germany will be onboard
- negative sentiment from most of population in the world due to covid
- exploding debt/bankruptcies
- lack of efficient feedback loops to self correct, as dictatorship has little of that. Thus Jack Ma is no more.
If you have a foreign commercial presence in China, expect
- kidnapping of executives (for layoffs, unpaid bills)
- no delivery for paid merchandises
- seizure of molds/machines/factories (nationalization)
I remember an episode of Planet Money podcast where they went to the village where a secret agreement was signed by some farmers to divide up the communal land and farm it individually, so they could sell the surplus and make some profit. In the podcast they managed to talk to one of the original signatories to the agreement, and he lamented that fact that after his farming days he had started many businesses but they had all been taken from him by the authorities.
Now given that the judiciary in China is just another arm of the CCP, there is no rule of law, there's just the rule of the CCP and the whims of whomever is in charge.
So you build something successful, someone in charge gets envious, then one small misstep and it all gets taken away from you. I don't actually know if it needs an actual misstep or just enough people to conspire against you.
This is also what worries me about Chinese companies buying other companies and property outside of China. There's a danger that at any moment the entire company will get nationalised and therefore China (or rather the CCP) will own it all. I'm not against some foreign ownership and investment, but usually this has originated from a country where the law rules the land and not some arbitrary dictator. (Yes I'm also concerned about middle-east money flowing in, but to a lesser extent because they don't try to hide it)
>Imagine spending most of your life building a massive business and then one day it is taken from you by force by an authoritarian ruler.
I don't think most of the people praising the CCP or (any other similar system where one's life work can easily be taken) know what it's like to be in business for one's self.
The blame mainly lies with the Xi dictatorship, where as previously the CCP was ruled by committee. I can't imagine the CCP doing this in the era before Xi and post Deng Xiaoping. imo the CCP is gone. It's the Xi Jinping Party now
The good news for the West and China's Asian competitors is that he is effectively helping slow and cripple China's progress. Xi advocates a return to Mao centralism while ignoring all the good that came with Deng Xiaoping's decentralization reforms. With this act, he is also introducing a lot of uncertainty for any foreign investors. This gives the West time to recuperate since the failure of the anti-BRIC TPP.
It's sad to see unsubstantiated hearsay as the top comment. I'm sure every billionaire in China has multiple escape routes. Guo Wengui certainly did, nor is he a "peasant."
You don't become a billionaire by being naive. Why would anybody choose to become a billionaire under such conditions? Was there a chance he'd come out on top?
Ma: Thank god I bought a gazillion overpriced penthouses in London and USA--if he did. Now, if only I could get out
That's why the superich in these countries buy any asset they can in countries like USA and EU. 20 billion is funny money and can disappear...might as well have plan B, C and D ready
The USA is not a democracy it is a federal republic. Anyone who disagrees needs to recite the US pledge of allegiance, and review the US constitution. China is also a republic. But, neither of the two dominant USA parties currently espouse the Marxist Leninist doctrine.
If he gets out of this with a few very long apologies and crippling debt, but alive and free, then he will be already much luckier than millions of others.
10 years ago, nobody would've believed me if I were to say China will slide back into mass nationalisation, let alone nationalising something like an Internet company.
The real hardcore bolshevik style communists have clawed their way back into power.
They are back. I'm very well convinced now that Chinese nouveaux riche class, and foreign capital in China are living on a leased time.
The country is on its way back to seventies, irreversably now.
China is Unitary Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist republic. Communists are actually communists.
This is what is eventually supposed to happen every Chinese company according to the Chinese Communist party. They just allow private ownership, "for now".
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
xster|5 years ago
A cursory search seems to show this is a regurgitation on a sourceless Radio Free Asia article (https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/alibaba-probe-1225202...) from December?
dang|5 years ago
There's a long tradition of "$Person hasn't been seen in public -> gigantic dramatic narrative" in media stories about authoritarian countries. No doubt it's great for clicks, but these things mostly turn out not to be true. If this one turns out to be true, we'll certainly find out and discuss it then.
Edit: also, there have already been a bunch of major threads on basically this same story: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
thewarrior|5 years ago
bigpumpkin|5 years ago
"These nationalizations are definitely happening, and [the antitrust investigation] will likely speed up that process," Song said. "It's also, I think, about making an example of [Ant and Alibaba]."
So I would trust the article as much as I would trust Song Qing.
DaedPsyker|5 years ago
rootsudo|5 years ago
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/jack-ma-missing-232138645....
Best, semi-legit source I can find, there's other news postings, but from more tabloid and sources that aren't as sincere as Yahoo Financial News.
Which, itself is curious, because CNBC spins it differently:
"https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/05/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-is-l..."
Which also falls under the AU-CN struggle, but also curious about how CNBC did not outright say he's missing yet.
And technically, both could be correct, imprisoned means missing from society but not exactly "missing" in terms of knowing general wherebouts.
toomuchtodo|5 years ago
Perhaps it's simply the Overton Window [2] delta between the US and China.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/china-sentences-ex-banker-to-death-for...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
(nothing in this comment should be construed as approval, support, etc for the actions of the CCP; this is only intended as an observation)
jihadjihad|5 years ago
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/08/954046428/alibaba-founder-jac...
orange_tee|5 years ago
whimsicalism|5 years ago
The ability of the government to take on actors with vast amounts of private capital is, in my view, one of those things worth learning from.
notJim|5 years ago
Aunche|5 years ago
caycep|5 years ago
loosescrews|5 years ago
Or maybe in order to archive such success in China one must have connections to people in high places and people with said connections can't imaging their connections turning on them.
ASalazarMX|5 years ago
majani|5 years ago
ffggvv|5 years ago
don’t think the US acrually expected the oligarchs to overthrow china as they are in bed with the ccp.
ndiscussion|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
bmitc|5 years ago
[deleted]
f00zz|5 years ago
sudosysgen|5 years ago
The same thing happened in my province, where the power generation industry was nationalized for economic reasons and ended up being a massive economic advantage, along with the lowest unsubdsidized rates everywhere in the world.
I think this kind of dogmatic viewpoint is dangerous.
seanmcdirmid|5 years ago
> But if China goes down this route, it looks like fears of China economically overtaking the US are overblown.
Agreed also. This would be the worst possible thing the government could do to China's tech economy.
f430|5 years ago
They never really stood a chance. Militarily, economically, socially, culturally and spiritually they offer no better alternative to the American one. Similar to how "China owns US treasuries and can crash the US dollar" was the common trope until recently, the US called them out the trillion dollar loan to Qing dynasty which was transferred from KMT to CCP after Chiang Kai Shek's defeat (and really a symbol of CCP's legitimacy over Taipei), and China began buying more US treasuries to increase its US dollar dependence. Without HK, the yuan-hkd-usd peg is collapsing and CCP is running low on US dollars. Kyle Bass's interview with Guo Wengui explains this in detail [1]
I even had Chinese students condescendingly tell me that China is taking over and everybody will be speaking Chinese by 2020 back in 2005.
If Winnie the Pooh, censoring wikipedia, university students protesting over Tibet, Tianmen Square massacre, organ harvesting of Falun Gong (they are "scientology" so its okay they said) causes the security apparatus kick into high gear then you really are the complete opposite of anti-fragility which is what the US is.
US is anti-fragile, authoritarians are not because they are susceptible to even the smallest shock in the economy or the mindset of its citizens, so they use excessive violence and fear to maintain its power. They don't last at all.
It's more likely that people who made a lot of money working with/in China have an extremely skewed view of the world.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBl05xNq_AU
Crash0v3rid3|5 years ago
How does this action demonstrate that China isn’t going to overtake the US economically?
echelon|5 years ago
They needed a slow burn to achieve world domination, but he's much too eager.
xyzelement|5 years ago
Meaning - take the money now, grow the businesses and the economy and then at some point say "It's stupid that we're letting foreigners have 20% (or whatever) ownership of our economy" and just deem it illegal / confiscate that equity.
Obviously it will prevent future foreign investment but if China is in a place where they don't care about that, it would be the move.
ethbr0|5 years ago
The CCP has pretty explicitly said and proved that it places itself and its interests above Chinese and/or international law.
It's playing nice with international investment for now, because it's free money, but ultimately any investment in China is only valued to the extent the CCP feels it's in its best interests.
The West's intent was to make China dependent on the international banking and trade system, such that they would provide additional levers to control China's behavior, but we're talking about a government that starved its population to prove a point...
Nothing shy of being able to melt down the Chinese economy is going to change their decision, if they make it.
nemothekid|5 years ago
What is interesting is China is even powerful enough to do this. This isn't new - it's what Iran tried under Mosaddegh, and it's a story oft repeated in South America, and each case there is suddenly a CIA backed coup who fights against nationalization.
I don't think China would see any blowback from this - the idea that it would prevent future investment in China is like saying Europe would stop investing in the US after the American revolution; as long as there is some alpha to be made in an economy as large as China's, I'd expect them to still see foreign capital.
I think what it more interesting is the concentration of power in the CCP elite and how that power is wielded. On one side you have the "communist" dream where the nationalization of Alibaba is felt by all Chinese citizens who are given more through socialization - one can imagine what China would look like in another 15 years if they focused on further educating and strengthing their citizenry; its the progressive left's "dream" for America. On the other hand, it's also likely you end up in a situation where power corrupts and nationalization is just an excuse to enrich Xi and his inner circle.
gruez|5 years ago
In that case the state can still get sued. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos_shareholders_v._Russia As for actual compensation to the shareholders, it can range between money seized from foreign accounts (think US treasuries) to sanctions.
rorykoehler|5 years ago
star-trek-fleet|5 years ago
Chinese people are jointly invest in that venture, by (not limited to):
* Sacrifice family and personal time, by hundreds of millions of passent migration workers.
* Sacrifice health and life quality, even today 996 still a norm, and you can imagine what have been since the opening up
* Environment, early pollution has harmed the people's health and well-being
* Mental health, stressful working time, lack of support
At the top, it was CCP and Western capitalists grabbed most of the profit, but leaving the waste to be suffered by the people.
Case in point, Alibaba's success is a CCP sanctioned monopoly and unfair market competition. I pity Jack Ma's treatment from CCP, I don't pity him as a citizen, he already enjoyed too much beyond what he actually deserves.
As such, I do welcome campaign like the poverty elimination [1]. If CCP does nationalize alibaba and use that to help rural areas to gain access to market, I consider that a positive thing for the vast majority of the poor.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-11-27/china-...
Aunche|5 years ago
That would be a very dumb move since they own over a trillion dollars of US debt.
pishpash|5 years ago
razius|5 years ago
[deleted]
karmasimida|5 years ago
hungryhobo|5 years ago
mhh__|5 years ago
Also "this isn't Reddit" is just delusions of grandeur, HN commenters are self-selected around technology for the most part not politics.
SZJX|5 years ago
Then again, maybe this is no longer anything surprising at all, given the multiple recent precedents, including e.g. the ridiculous "chromeisbad.com" post.
gher-shyu3i|5 years ago
liuliu|5 years ago
dgellow|5 years ago
pizazzz23|5 years ago
The. State. Will. Take. Your. Property. And. Kill. You. If. You. Step. Out. Of. Line.
boringg|5 years ago
philipov|5 years ago
guhcampos|5 years ago
People should be taking this with Kilograms of salt.
Food for thought: if this was to be true we would be seeing several bit coin whale operations going on from insiders, and this isn't the case even with the substantial drops in bitcoin value in the last 24 hours.
ogre_codes|5 years ago
Obviously they aren't getting more Chinese business, but they've struggled there already. But it makes it a lot easier for them to compete everywhere else. Competing against CCP is going to be a lot easier than competing against Jack Ma.
scarmig|5 years ago
How is this scenario likely to develop after that point?
adam_ellsworth|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross|5 years ago
Either way, a standard if frequently-forgotten message to innovators in such regimes.
PeterStuer|5 years ago
nowherebeen|5 years ago
xwdv|5 years ago
29athrowaway|5 years ago
antoniuschan99|5 years ago
https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU
996 doesn’t sound bad at all if it’s my own Company and I’m not constantly worried about Cash flow or run rate. Maybe that’s why in the quotes they say stuff like “996 is a blessing” :P
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
didip|5 years ago
trhway|5 years ago
martin1975|5 years ago
ddmma|5 years ago
nashashmi|5 years ago
I never thought I’d wish for bigger hawks in the white house.
idrios|5 years ago
His successor, Deng Xiaoping started a lot of really great reforms, including term limits on leadership and granting Shenzhen & some other cities special/experimental economic status, to basically run autonomously as capitalist.
Several decades later, paranoia is too strong. Xi Jinping removed term limits because he doesn't trust others to run the country better than him. The One China policy has killed a number of vibrant cultures including those of Tibet, Hong Kong, and the Uyghurs. A social credit system is being implemented. Now Alibaba is being nationalized.
These issues will likely only get worse, until another great famine event.
skyde|5 years ago
metabagel|5 years ago
https://www.ft.com/content/055a1864-ddd3-11e9-b112-9624ec9ed...
Fraser Howie, author of "Red Capitalism", says that all Chinese corporations are either state owned enterprises or state overseen enterprises. It appears China may want to transition Alibaba from the latter to the former.
chrischen|5 years ago
impalallama|5 years ago
f430|5 years ago
At this point its not even a question of whether we will see Jack Ma in public again. Overnight he went from billionaire to peasantry. We've seen dozen cases like this:
1) Billionaire disappears or is "killed"
2) Billionaire's company becomes nationalized
3) Rinse & Repeat
Everybody who isn't familiar with the inner workings of the CCP thinks that Jack Ma openly challenged the CCP. That simply isn't the case. They are using as an excuse to take over the company because they can.
As much as people in the West praise CCP's economic rise, and some even point to its authoritarian system as superior to our democracy, but little do they know the very laws that protect them isn't an option in China.
Imagine spending most of your life building a massive business and then one day it is taken from you by force by an authoritarian ruler.
This is why anyone that has money send their kids abroad and move permanently to a Western country that their kids despise and criticize their host for calling out the CCP.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtJK_5qDraM
jonathannat|5 years ago
- internal turmoil
- political infighting
- encirclement by democracies (India, Japan, Australia, US, UK, Canada, France, South Korea, Taiwan). Once Merkel is out in sept 2021, Germany will be onboard
- negative sentiment from most of population in the world due to covid
- exploding debt/bankruptcies
- lack of efficient feedback loops to self correct, as dictatorship has little of that. Thus Jack Ma is no more.
If you have a foreign commercial presence in China, expect
- kidnapping of executives (for layoffs, unpaid bills)
- no delivery for paid merchandises
- seizure of molds/machines/factories (nationalization)
- seizure of tangible assets (nationalization)
- trademark/copyrights given to Chinese entities
with no recourses.
daemin|5 years ago
Now given that the judiciary in China is just another arm of the CCP, there is no rule of law, there's just the rule of the CCP and the whims of whomever is in charge.
So you build something successful, someone in charge gets envious, then one small misstep and it all gets taken away from you. I don't actually know if it needs an actual misstep or just enough people to conspire against you.
This is also what worries me about Chinese companies buying other companies and property outside of China. There's a danger that at any moment the entire company will get nationalised and therefore China (or rather the CCP) will own it all. I'm not against some foreign ownership and investment, but usually this has originated from a country where the law rules the land and not some arbitrary dictator. (Yes I'm also concerned about middle-east money flowing in, but to a lesser extent because they don't try to hide it)
throwaway0a5e|5 years ago
I don't think most of the people praising the CCP or (any other similar system where one's life work can easily be taken) know what it's like to be in business for one's self.
chaostheory|5 years ago
The good news for the West and China's Asian competitors is that he is effectively helping slow and cripple China's progress. Xi advocates a return to Mao centralism while ignoring all the good that came with Deng Xiaoping's decentralization reforms. With this act, he is also introducing a lot of uncertainty for any foreign investors. This gives the West time to recuperate since the failure of the anti-BRIC TPP.
hungryhobo|5 years ago
Not to mention his deep ties with Steve bannon
onlyrealcuzzo|5 years ago
And aren't there a lot of negatives by taking over the largest IPO in history only a few months later???
jjcc|5 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO3pO3ykAUybrjv3RBbXEHw/vid...
eplanit|5 years ago
They do? I don't think this describes a large population.
Aunche|5 years ago
agumonkey|5 years ago
newen|5 years ago
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/alibaba-founder-jack...
drieddust|5 years ago
Corporate geed is the reason CCP is so powerful today.
Every single corporation I have worked with is willing to comply with China,it's censorship laws, and it's atrocities on the work force.
orblivion|5 years ago
itsthefnlacctdn|5 years ago
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Haga|5 years ago
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jackthehammer|5 years ago
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RockmanX|5 years ago
echelon|5 years ago
Who is praising the CCP's economic rise? The American consensus as far as I can tell is that we need to shut them out and push them into decline.
The West should brain drain the best and brightest from China.
onetimemanytime|5 years ago
That's why the superich in these countries buy any asset they can in countries like USA and EU. 20 billion is funny money and can disappear...might as well have plan B, C and D ready
potiuper|5 years ago
ketamine__|5 years ago
pas|5 years ago
baybal2|5 years ago
The real hardcore bolshevik style communists have clawed their way back into power.
They are back. I'm very well convinced now that Chinese nouveaux riche class, and foreign capital in China are living on a leased time.
The country is on its way back to seventies, irreversably now.
unknown|5 years ago
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nabla9|5 years ago
This is what is eventually supposed to happen every Chinese company according to the Chinese Communist party. They just allow private ownership, "for now".