Earlier quoted context omitted.
You claim: > The objective is not "control" of the tech sector as the article pretends, it is just greater collaboration. From the article: > This quasi-nationalization applies to China's startup scene, too. One recent report found that 60 percent of Chinese unicorns have either direct or indirect investment from the BATs. China's venture-capital sector is dominated not by traditional tech dealmakers but by the state…
> These stakes give the Chinese government control over these startups. Does it? Any more than it already has, what with China being communist and all. I don't see why the general ideas /u/reeedom discusses can't be true, and can't turn out to in fact be a perfectly workable way to successfully run an economy. This isn't to say it's not risky and scary, with so much power in the state, all it takes is one tyrant to c…
The West seems to have forgotten its own political history, which was based on the divine right of kings far longer than the current populist democratic consensus, which only has a 100-year history.
As for China——well, it's had something like 2500+ years of cycling between Imperial dynasties. China (along with India) was the world's pre-eminent economic power for the majority of that period.
The hubris of the West is that anything it does necessarily represents a permanent form of progress, rather than a single swing of the pendulum. That's not to say that societies that are more rooted in common law and popular representation aren't desirable, but blithely assuming that the 'end of history' has arrived is a bit silly.