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China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

ibtimes.sg

141–150 of 371 posts

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#141
post #38

Article looks fishy. But if China goes down this route, it looks like fears of China economically overtaking the US are overblown.

> 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.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBl05xNq_AU

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#142
post #38

Article looks fishy. But if China goes down this route, it looks like fears of China economically overtaking the US are overblown.

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.

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radio free Asia has deep ties to US agencies. "Deep ties to US agencies" is sensationalizing the facts. It's part of the United States government, and nobody has ever tried to keep that secret. Not RFA, not the U.S. Government. Nobody. "Deep ties" makes it seem like it's trying to be covert. It's not. It isn’t really a credible source. It's one of the more credible sources of news in Asia. Especially for more authori…

Entirely possible, probably likely, that it's somewhere in the center. Not all propaganda and not all unbiased

So basically the US version of RT?

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misunderstanding about the inner workings of China isn't the CCP's fault, at least not at this level. The discourse about China, misunderstandings about how the Chinese systems functions, and lack of even a basic interest in getting a realistic view of China are rampant. The average view of China in the US is so cartoonish it's quite ridiculous. If you talk to an educated, middle-class Chinese audience about the US p…

Would love some pointers to read up on. I am imagining something that talks about how provincial governments work, any factions at play, day-to-day politics of getting things to happen whether by official process or informal etc.

https://sinocism.com/ is one of the better US sources.

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#145
post #95

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 w…

It's odd to experience (afar) what the cold war era people were fearing.

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#146
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radio free Asia has deep ties to US agencies. "Deep ties to US agencies" is sensationalizing the facts. It's part of the United States government, and nobody has ever tried to keep that secret. Not RFA, not the U.S. Government. Nobody. "Deep ties" makes it seem like it's trying to be covert. It's not. It isn’t really a credible source. It's one of the more credible sources of news in Asia. Especially for more authori…

NYTimes seems to disagree: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propag...

That article, which is from 1977, is about an earlier incarnation of Radio Free Asia that was originally run by the CIA, but ceased operation in 1955 (the article even mentions this). The current RFA started broadcasting in 1996 and is under direction of the US Agency for Global Media.

RFA is still run by the US Government, which is worth considering when talking about the possible biases of RFA... but the NYT article you linked has nothing to do with the current RFA.

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#147
post #38

Article looks fishy. But if China goes down this route, it looks like fears of China economically overtaking the US are overblown.

Not sure I follow.

How does this action demonstrate that China isn’t going to overtake the US economically?

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#148

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 o…

> 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 p…

996 is no joke. Visiting friends in China, after dinner we went back to our hotel. They went back to work. They were in tech.

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did Jack Ma think he was going to tell the CCP how it is? Yes, I did actually. There's every reason to believe that the people installed to run Alibaba / Ant after Jack gets sent off to "re-education camp" will be unable to propel it to further heights. Stagnation is likely as good as it'll get and there's every reason to believe it'll be run into the ground eventually. I see Jack Ma as a sort of Chinese Elon Musk…

> There's every reason to believe that the people installed to run Alibaba / Ant after Jack gets sent off to "re-education camp" will be unable to propel it to further heights. We in America are much too obsessed with "one great man" theories of history. I also think we are inclined to underestimate the competency of Chinese governmental figures, which is structured very differently from the West. > that could be par…

> We in America are much too obsessed with "one great man" theories of history.

Seems to me that China also has this theory at the moment, with Xi.

Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a lot of ways it is more capitalist than a lot of the West China definitely has big market aspects and private ownership, but I also think this can be overstated. There is still massive public ownership of major companies and banks in China and land in all urban areas is publicly owned as well.

Is it actually publically owned, or is it state owned? There is a major difference between these two outside of a democracy.

Public control is a continuum rather than an on/off switch in my view. They are owned by the state which is nominally responsive to the public, albeit very indirectly. But, then again, much of our economy and laws are determined by unelected councils (the Fed, the SCOTUS, etc.).
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