This is the most overtly communist thing China has done in a while.
China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
181–190 of 371 posts
Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
#182Article 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?
To really overtake the US economically, China needs to become better than the US at innovation – innovative technologies, innovative business models, etc
Coming up with leading edge technologies or business models – as opposed to mere incremental improvements on stuff invented elsewhere – is not China's strong suit.
China's problem is that authoritarian regimes in the long-run are worse at innovation than freer ones. At one point it was hoped that China might address this problem through gradual liberalisation, but recently under Xi China has been moving in the opposite direction.
Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As much as people in the West praise CCP's economic rise 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.
Most of the Middle East, Africa (up until their debts had to be collected), Indian nationalists (up until the incursions in Kashmir), Singapore, Duterte. Heck, Europe just signed a trade deal with China with full knowledge of the Uighur camps and the HK protests, while on the other side extolling vacuously about democratic ideals in Sub-Saharan or war ridden failed states. If people counter me and reiterate stating t…
Do you believe antagonising China even more will make things better? Should the EU stop all deals with the biggest exporting economy of the world, home of one in 5 human beings, because it disagrees with its policies?
I will answer that: no it shouldn't. You can have a certain level of engagement even when you strongly disagree with another country. Showing aggressive behaviour, specially taking into account the history of agression and colonisation by the West as recently as 50 years ago, will not do anything at all to make life better to the victims of Chinese prosecution. By engaging with the Chinese, the EU may at least have some leverage to politely request that the Chinese , as sovereign people, start displaying a little more respect to other cultures within their own borders.
Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
#184Guo 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…
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/…
> If you have a foreign commercial presence in China, expect...
In how many months do you expect your predictions will come true, in a way that will cause the majority of Fortune 500 firms to leave China? Three? Six? Sixty? Six hundred?
I, for one, have strong doubts that the majority of those firms will ever leave China.
I will also note that all of your criticisms can be applied even more-so to democracies. Internal turmoil, political infighting, negative world sentiment (for some of them), exploding debt, aging demographics, ossification of political structures and poor ability to self-correct, check, check, check. It's true that, say, the United States is not encircled, but it has a separate problem of having to over-reach to maintain an incredibly ambitious, and unsustainable overseas military presence.
If those criteria were sufficient for a social collapse, then we're all living on borrowed time, and I don't see why you're singling China out as a likely point of failure.
Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not covert, but it's quite literally a propaganda machine. The reason Radio Free Europe/Asia were founded was to broadcast the benefits of 'freedom' into communist-governed areas. You might think that we're qualitatively the good guys, and I'm all for freedom, but that's definitionally 'propaganda'.
The question at issue here is whether RFE/RFA's reporting is known to be reputable. As far as I can tell, it is. (Funding a reputable journalistic organization is entirely consistent with "broadcasting the benefits of freedom", and doing the opposite would probably undermine those goals.) The person who started this thread is trying to discount an RFA report solely because of the source. That seems unwarranted.
RFE/RFA's reporting will never, ever, ever undercut US geopolitical interests.
Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
That article is 44 years old. RFA isn't part of the CIA. It's part of U.S. Agency for Global Media. From Wikipedia: an independent agency of the United States government which operates various state-run media outlets.[2] It describes its mission, "vital to US national interests", to "inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy"[3] and in accordance with the "broad foreign p…
That’s literally the definition of propaganda. Why is it so difficult for Americans to believe that the US engages in a war of propaganda against countries it labels as “adversaries”? [1] [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-...
The "Truth" (or facts presented in a very specific way) is a incredibly effective form of propaganda. You think foreign governments like Chin haven't been using the storming of the United States Capitol as a means to demonstrate the US's weakness or incompetence?
Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
#187The 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.
I have serious issues with China. But I also think that there are lessons to learn from many different models. 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.
Only as a cautionary tale. A government that can silence a billionaire or take away his company for something short of a clear cut crime is too powerful.
Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I would trust the article as much as I would trust Song Qing. What does that mean in this context? What do you know about Song Qing that the rest of us don't that makes him untrustworthy? A quick search didn't come up with anything. Do you have an informative link?
What do you know that makes him trustworthy? This is just a rumor spread by a single person at the point. Not very substantial at all. About as believable as when Sally at work says there's layoffs coming - but she's the receptionist.
Because I trust the reporters at RFA and RFA's long-earned reputation not to select Sally the receptionist as a credible source. That's the difference between bloggers and journalists.
That's why I want to know who this person is, and why I asked the critic for more information about him. I trust RFA more than I trust some rando commenter on HN.
Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/…
> If you have a foreign commercial presence in China, expect... In how many months do you expect your predictions will come true, in a way that will cause the majority of Fortune 500 firms to leave China? Three? Six? Sixty? Six hundred? I, for one, have strong doubts that the majority of those firms will ever leave China. I will also note that all of your criticisms can be applied even more-so to democracies. Interna…
most of it is already happening, check chinalawblog (including tales/warnings of kidnapping). the only thing that hasn't happened full scale is nationalization of tangible assets, such as molds, machines or factories. But if you owe some (made up) bills to the local government when you close your factories, the local government will prevent you from grabbing your stuff.
Re: China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report
#190Is 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? 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?
Radio free Asia has deep ties to US agencies. It isn’t really a credible source.
The same as VOA, Epoch time(This one is not directly sponsored by government fund). Their main audience are not English speakers.
Some of Chinese audience see the news in somehow opposite direction: True is likely(but not certainly) False. It's a little more than "not credible".
There is another group always fighting against non-believers and saying they are "wumao"
To some point VOA (A lot of Chinese think they are the same but actually not.Just content similar) was criticized by US government that they are helping CCP. What they really did was put some objective/neutral news. It's likely that the management tried to improve their impression and make them more conceptional because Chinese editors of VOA seem quite delusional to fabricate stories. They are much better now that they misleading with some events really happened but mixed with their interpretations.
A lot of their content show up in: https://www.backchina.com/news/ You have to under Chinese though.