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Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

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Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#51

Post by taf2 »

daemin wrote: post #37
mensetmanusman wrote: post #34

It’s hard for me to fathom the mind of an authoritarian. Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness? I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.

It's the same sort of person that gets offended by being compared to a children's cartoon and therefore has it and any mention of it banned from the entire country. So because this "Emperor" has seemingly lost "face" therefore the whole country must suffer.

winnie the pooh is so cute though. especially when he drives tanks and runs over people.

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#54

Post by shadowmore »

sddmee wrote: post #49
mensetmanusman wrote: post #34

It’s hard for me to fathom the mind of an authoritarian. Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness? I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.

I find this sort of flippant posturing and minimization much more disturbing than a higher-profile-than-usual disappearance. Acting as if these horrific, nebulous governing systems can be reduced to the image of a Saturday-morning cartoon villain, an infantile mustache-twirler angrily shaking his fist at the TV screen. It is not “offense”. A system does not get “get mad”. It constantly sniffs for the slightest hint o…

That flippant posturing is the result of reading history books from the perspective of everyone who lived over the past several thousand years being backwards and evil.

It blinds people to the realities of power dynamics that still exist today and have not been at all lessened or subdued by progressivism one bit.

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#55

Post by incrudible »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #34

It’s hard for me to fathom the mind of an authoritarian. Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness? I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.

There's no such thing as an authoritarian that gladly accepts challenges to their authority. It's not about emotion, it's carefully calculated.

If Jack Ma can speak up, what's to stop the next richest guy from speaking up? It's dissent all the way down. You need to nip it in the bud.

Furthermore, if the fortune of a billion people rests on your authority, virtually all ends justify the means.

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#56

Post by tw04 »

bingbong70 wrote: post #48
mensetmanusman wrote: post #36

An analogy for western audiences comes to mind. Imagine if Elon Musk had criticized Trump two months ago and then hadn’t been seen or heard of since then.

Quite an analogy with an assumption that "speech" is the only thing Jack Ma could have done wrong....

If Musk had murdered someone in secret, he still wouldn't just disappear with no formal charges or acknowledgement of what happened.

Ignoring the fact you haven't actually made any accusations, "disappearing" someone just doesn't happen in the US to US citizens.

And I'll get in front of it: no I don't consider foreign citizens on US soil "the same thing". While the US does provide robust protections for foreigners (relatively speaking) it's never fair or honest to compare the treatment of a citizen in one country to a foreigner in another.

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#57

Post by _skel »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #34

It’s hard for me to fathom the mind of an authoritarian. Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness? I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.

This needs to be viewed through the lens of the Communist Party's primary motivation: the persistence of the single-party system.

In a single-party system, you can't allow dissent or you will end up with multiple parties, if enough of the dissenters agree with each other.

When someone speaks against the government in China, particularly someone with a high profile like Jack Ma, the government is worried that other people might agree with him, and they might form a movement that demands change and challenges the party's policies.

If the party allows this to happen, that would mean they recognize the legitimacy of political action originating outside of the party. That would be an existential threat to the single-party system.

(Also, the last time the party allowed public dissent, it grew out of control and turned into the Tiananmen Square protests. The party's current leaders remember that time well, and the lesson they took from it is that allowing dissent was a serious miscalculation.)

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#58

Post by platinumrad »

anotheryou wrote: post #40

https://twitter.com/realvision/status/1171508657948778497 "[W]hy Jack Ma’s retirement could end with imprisonment or death." (2019)

The Jack Ma situation is eyebrow-raising but Guo Wengui is a nutjob and should not be taken seriously.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/07/guo-wengui-chinese...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/18/guo-wengui-...

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#59

Post by guardiangod »

I posted this in another thread-

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25636761

The rumor in China is that Jack Ma is part of Jiang Zemin's clique of politicians/sphere of influence. Alibaba's backed by and invested by Jiang's families.

Xi has been purging Jiang's people/influence on the Central Government for the last few years to strengthen his ruling. Originally he was going to leave Ma alone as he has proven himself to be useful.

But 2 things happened- 1. people start to idolize Ma the businessman over the party's absolute rule. 2. Perhaps as a result Ma is embolden to speak out against Xi's government directions.

So now Ma has to go. Ma knew this and that's why he resigned from Alibaba's Chairman position, but it was too late. Ant Financial, with its main backers from Jiang's gang, was put to a standstill. This is only the first step. Expect the party to eventually to take over the Alibaba group (国进民退). No private civilian will be allowed to gain this much power again.

https://time.com/5926062/jack-ma/

“There is no so-called [Ma] era,” read a recent headline in the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, “but only an era that has [Ma] in it.”

Anyway, to quote House of Cards-

“Such a waste of time. He chose money over power, in this town, a mistake nearly everyone makes. Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after ten years. Power — is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who doesn’t see the difference.” - Frank Underwood

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#60

Post by yongjik »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #34

It’s hard for me to fathom the mind of an authoritarian. Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness? I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.

You're not thinking like an authoritarian enough. Some farmer living in Nepal might as well say, "Imagine driving a car just to buy a dozen eggs because you don't want to walk - isn't this a sign of mental illness?"

However, Americans do it all the time, not because they're exceptionally lazy or mentally ill, but because the driving infrastructure is so exceptionally good that there's no reason not to use it. Driving is just what you do every day, without much thinking, instead of something that must be deliberately planned and executed.

(Whether that's a net plus to America as a whole is, of course, a different question altogether.)

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