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Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

reuters.com

101–110 of 204 posts

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#101
post #89

Seeing Jack Ma come out like this makes me think things are very grim in China and I been obsessively following it for years. Historically, no country has survived without paying its government workers for more than 24 months. China has just entered its 16th month. so roughly 8 months remaining. coincidentally the new US president will be announced around then. So far the actions of Israel, Russia's confidence sugges…

Any recent articles about the government worker pay situation?

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#102
post #5

The last blurb in the article is the most damning part. "Ma spends much of his time abroad, especially in Japan where he is a visiting professor at Tokyo College, a research institute run by the University of Tokyo" Jack Ma has no hope for China, as evident by his action. The long internal post may have been requested by the Chinese government, or his staff, to somehow rally Alibaba's failing image. But Jack sees the…

> The long internal post may have been requested by the Chinese government.

Could have been written simply out of fear as well. No matter where he goes, he's not safe from the CCP, so better try and stay in their good graces.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#103
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BYD is not a Chinese state enterprise...yet. And yeah, I'm not worried. Nio Loses $35,000 A Car. https://www.carscoops.com/2023/10/nio-loses-35000-a-car-that... BYD lost its EV crown to Tesla after just one quarter as China’s EV market slumps https://fortune.com/asia/2024/04/03/byd-loses-ev-crown-to-te... The EU just got a step closer to hitting Chinese EVs with additional tariffs—and may even apply them retroactivel…

Ok feel free to not be worried. I'd rather listen to Elon in this regard, this is one thing he does have experience in. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-... >The EU just got a step closer to hitting Chinese EVs with additional tariffs—and may even apply them retroactively The EU having no major tech giants to call their own has pivoted to regulation and tariffs against both China and t…

You're really gonna take a statement from a CEO that it's important for the government to intervene in order to protect his profits at face value? Elon's made some stupid decisions in the past but I don't think he's stupid enough to be honest. Not lobbying for protectionist measures even if they aren't needed would probably be some sort of corporate malpractice.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#104
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know man, from the outside looking in it seems like despite this arrangement, the people doing the day to day work are fiercely competitive and they want it all. This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy? Maybe state ownership will collapse it all, maybe the coming demo…

This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy? Working long hours isn't necessarily efficient.

Exactly. The OP didn't know any English teachers in China, or else they can verify that Chinese workers in private enterprises nap on the job/play on their phone/waste a ton of time, to get through the long working hours.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#105
post #31
post #5

The last blurb in the article is the most damning part. "Ma spends much of his time abroad, especially in Japan where he is a visiting professor at Tokyo College, a research institute run by the University of Tokyo" Jack Ma has no hope for China, as evident by his action. The long internal post may have been requested by the Chinese government, or his staff, to somehow rally Alibaba's failing image. But Jack sees the…

Do you read his teaching job as a pretext to be in Japan or has his wealth been somewhat confiscated?

Just a best guess: I think essentially he's been officially hobbled in China but not technically under house arrest, so-to-speak. There's not much future for him in China. His wealth is likely a key-stroke away from being confiscated and he knows it.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#106
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know man, from the outside looking in it seems like despite this arrangement, the people doing the day to day work are fiercely competitive and they want it all. This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy? Maybe state ownership will collapse it all, maybe the coming demo…

No state owned enterprises in the history of the world has the quality you've just described - fiercely competitive, nationalistic pride, desperation. China is now Soviet Union, but with horrendous demographics, mind-numbing debt, and wealth flooding out of the country. China is old and broke. China is fucked.

Chinas situation is so incredibly far away from what the Soviet Union was. For one thing they aren't spending the majority of their GDP on a cold war.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#107
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell. "The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies.…

I don't know man, from the outside looking in it seems like despite this arrangement, the people doing the day to day work are fiercely competitive and they want it all. This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy? Maybe state ownership will collapse it all, maybe the coming demo…

No one doubts that Chinese people work incredibly long hours. They do so because there’s been a strong link between input and output. The harder you work, the wealthier you get. That has been incredibly motivating … so far. In an economy that isn’t growing quite so fast, people might not see the same returns for their labour that they did between 2001-19. They might not work as hard.

That’s speculation though. What we do know is that the CCP is changing the way of managing the economy. Between 1992 and 2019 they leaned heavily on the private sector for growth. They would do anything they needed to help private enterprise succeed. That approach paid rich dividends, it’s obvious.

Xi Jinping is going a different way now though. He reckons he knows better than Deng, the architect of the Chinese economic miracle. His approach is to pick winners and losers. It may succeed because he’s picked good horses so far - EVs, solar panels, AI, semiconductors. And state led capitalism has had success in China, with major players like Huawei doing well despite major headwinds.

Because of this shift in approach you can’t extrapolate from the success of 2001-19 and say China’s future success is inevitable.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#108
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds like the best possible endorsement to me

It would, if you are a closeted fascist.

Not saying the US model is the best, but having a fascist state like China would be worse. To quote Churchill: democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#109
post #2

Just going by appearances, the story at the time looked a lot like Jack Ma fleeing the country for a bit. One minute he was disturbing the tranquillity in China then the next he was picking up some Zen among the cherry blossoms. It is interesting to compare-and-contrast Jack Ma and Elon Musk who seems to me the nearest analogue in the US. How their host countries treat them says a lot about the real cultural differen…

Jack Ma didn't just try to build wealth like your average mid sized software or HVAC company. He built a monopoly and the company was fined for it and eventually broken up [0]. He obviously didn't like this and left the country to do billionaire things.

To me there's nothing 1984 or dystopian about this. The guy was building a company that was hurting the people. If anything we need more of this in the US.

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/07/07/tech...

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't communism supposed to be achieved through authoritarianism, after which the state "withers away" [sic]?

AFAIK (“Seeing like a State”), that’s specific to the Leninist modality. I very well could be misinformed, but, the book mentions essentially a moment where democratic-socialism was co-opted by authoritarian communism (Leninism), so that’s what the world ended up with.

That's not even in Leninism, no. Read Lenin's "State & Revolution" and you will definitely come away with a different impression -- he speaks openly about the abolition of the authoritarian state and a radical democracy... just not a parliamentary one.

Though clearly what happened in the USSR in the 20s was something different from what he wrote. What you saw in Russia in that period was a response to an ongoing civil war, followed by the rise of Stalin.. who, yes, really did believe in brutal authoritarianism.

All these Stalinist states (and I would classify China this way too) will pay lip service to Leninism as a way to seek ideological legitimacy. But their "official" readings of Marx and Lenin are very... creative... shall we say.

But it's 1:30am and I should no be getting into this argument.

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