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What really happened to Jack Ma?

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Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#181

Post by noone321 »

chartpath wrote: post #94
dfadsadsf wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LGBTQ by itself is not a threat to either Putin or Xi but what LGBTQ represents is a threat to traditional society and gender roles. The judgement is still out if new type of society developed in the west with modern gender norms, women’s rights and sexual freedoms is viable long term and from demographic perspective it’s frankly probably not. Authoritarians instinctively cling to the old roles/family and even if are…

LGBTQ folks probably have fewer children than the average. The demographic challenges we face are in scaling services to support the global population. So wouldn't freedom of gender expression, if anything, make things easier? Assuming that queer people will somehow take over the world and cause an unsustainable birth rate sounds a bit like the right-wing "gay agenda" conspiracy theory. Not to mention that people bor…

That's not what they're worried about. At all. Forget PR talking points for a minute and think about the very real relationship between macroeconomics and empires. THAT is party elite care about here.

The Party forced the population to HAVE fewer children in 1980. They did this primarily to jump start their economic modernization plans. Moreover, they figured everyone would start having kids at replacement rates second they lifted the rules. If that happened, they'd be able to consolidate their economic gains.

Economic modernization worked. The kids part...not so much. In fact, there's reason to believe (e.g., maternity store receipts) that their birth rates will look like Japan's or Korea's.

To put it another way, not only are people having fewer kids, they're having far fewer kids than Westerners with equivalent per capital wealth/income are. If that happens, China may not be able to consolidate their economic or international political gains. THAT is what Chinese elites are really worried about.

I, personally, am interested in the elephants in the room. For starters, my lesbian friends and I really wonder if the Chinese censorship machine are responsible for erasing lesbians from Western media spaces -- and especially LGBT spaces. Everyone hears plenty about bi and trans women, but lesbians? Nope. But we're still here.

While I'm not the only one who's noticed this erasure, I think I may be the only one who's also noticed how China's quietly been rolling out aspects of its online censorship system in the West over the past ten years -- and how it's REALLY intensified over the past five (i.e., doxxing, career ruining for anyone with political opinions threatening to the current leaders, sex pic leaks against political opponents, etc.). Guess too many of the Chinese kids studying abroad decided to stay abroad, so it's time to make the English internet feel exactly the Chinese one. Sadly, now the air sucks just as much here. Thanks guys.

More substantively, I find it interesting that absolutely no one will discuss how women in fully economically developed Confucian societies have FAR fewer children than equally economically developed non-Confucian societies (e.g., South Korea and Japan vs. Italy and France).

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#182

Post by pas »

tjpnz wrote: post #75
wsc981 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat related, this is an interesting story of the escape of a Western guy with his Chinese wife and child from China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7CPqROtanA He did have to escape on short notice after he shared or said something on his YouTube channel that offended the Chinese government (IIRC).

Similar thing happened with ADVChina. He had spent years trying to portray the positive aspects of Chinese society but was increasingly targeted by police. He ended up leaving after the harassment became too much.

They spent years biking together in China. Their Instagram and YT is very interesting (and the comments are full of blind China apologists).

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#184

Post by MsMowz »

noone321 wrote: post #177
MsMowz wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This overlooks many changes that have occurred in the recent decades, such as the restructuring of the PLA (including their decoupling from state business), the development of the socialist market economy, and the further development of the rank and file organization of the party. All of these give structure and order where they didn't exist before. The leadership roles in the party have never been less significant w…

I really don't know where to start with this. The short answer is no. The long answer is Stalin's supporters said the exact same things. And it's not a surprise -- Xi is borrowing a lot from Stalin's centralization playbook, including "restructuring" the PLA (i.e., purging generals who weren't loyal to him personally and ensuring he has a Party loyalist on every ship) and developing the rank and file (to replace the…

I think we must have different understandings of what causes power struggles within leadership. The comparison to the 1953-1956 period in the USSR also feels a bit misplaced to me, as although there was a minor power struggle during that period, it didn’t have broad implications the way the death of Mao did. (I also don’t agree that the structure of the CPC is all that similar to the structure of the CPSU during Stalin’s leadership, but that’s not of much relevance in my mind.)

RE: the PLA and the party membership, I was referring to changes that mostly took place during the 1990s, which had much broader implications on the locations of structural power within the PRC than anything that’s been done in the last decade.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#185

Post by dang »

rorykoehler wrote: post #174
dang wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite a stretch for justifying garden-variety flamebait. As it turns out, you're wrong on the facts as well. YC got out of China years ago. But none of that ever had anything whatsoever to do with how we moderate HN. It's much more straightforward: we don't want predictable, tedious, nasty flamewars on HN, we want the opposite. That's literally all there is to this, even though I routinely get accused of being…

YC got out of China but still invests in Chinese companies. At least that's what the press release that I read said. Is that wrong?

I have no idea. I'm pretty sure YC funded companies all have to be incorporated in the US. But just to repeat the important point, that has literally zero to do with how we moderate these threads. How am I able to say that? Because I'm the one doing the moderation, and I can tell you that "gosh I'd better tell HN commenters not to post flamebait about the great Xi because it might affect some investments I don't know about" is not going through my head.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#186

Post by zucker42 »

Bojui wrote: post #25
Traster wrote: post #18

I think this, in combination with the author's previous article about the moves the CCP have made on Ma's business make it pretty clear what is happening. Ma is being held whilst his businesses are dismantled. Ant is being turned into a traditional bank, Alibaba is being attacked from several directions, Ma's university (a clear source of soft power) is being shut down. When you then ask where Ma is I would say it's…

What happens if Xi kicks the can tomorrow? How smooth is the transition going to be? China is so massive I cant understand how they dont have multiple power centers bumping into each other all the time.

Talking with a Chinese friend of mine, his take was that Jack Ma's imprisonment/disappearance is less about his comments in the October speech and more about an ongoing power struggle in the CCP between supporters of the former General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who is an ally of Jack Ma, and the Xi Jinping faction. The October speech may have just been the catalyst and pretense. As for how smooth the transition would be, Chinese politics are pretty opaque and I'm far from an expert, but from the outside it appears the Xi faction is fairly strong and only growing in power, so I would guess the transition wouldn't be too turbulent.

I definitely think politics are less unified in China that it may appear, and the whole situation with Jack Ma is an example of "multiple power centers bumping into each other".

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#187

Post by yaitsyaboi »

throw0101a wrote: post #108
Jochim wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of intriguing to me because, as a member of a western society, I think we place largely the same expectations on people to conform, the only difference is in how the enforcement is applied. In many countries, cities, and neighbourhoods in "the west" if you aren't white you experience exactly the kind of insecurity you describe elsewhere. There are plenty of incidents where non-white residents are arrested w…

> […] I think we place largely the same expectations on people to conform, the only difference is in how the enforcement is applied. Yeonmi Park, a defector (escapee?) from North Korea, was surprised in what could and could not be said in the US when she went to university: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7CPqROtanA * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Yeon-mi

North Korean defectors are really fascinating. I just can't wrap my head around her claim that what I perceive as a kind of over the top righteousness on the campus of elite American universities is comparable to--let alone worse than--North Korea.

Her father was literally sentenced to a labor camp. How can that possibly compare to anything you'd run into at Columbia. Yeah, it's annoying that people wouldn't cut her a break with the pronoun stuff as she was learning english. But again, that's worse than North Korea?

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#188

Post by [deleted] »

the_third_wave wrote: post #96
smcl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're putting words in my mouth to provoke an argument, don't do that. There are plenty of very enthusiastic supporters of communism elsewhere who will be happy to have that discussion with you, I specifically said I didn't want to encourage it here.

There are plenty of very enthusiastic supporters of national socialism who will be happy to have a discussion on that subject yet we do not avoid pointing out the failure of the doctrine and teach our children about the resulting carnage. The same standard should be used when discussing communism no matter how many very enthusiastic supporters it has.

[deleted]

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#189

Post by smcl »

the_third_wave wrote: post #96
smcl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're putting words in my mouth to provoke an argument, don't do that. There are plenty of very enthusiastic supporters of communism elsewhere who will be happy to have that discussion with you, I specifically said I didn't want to encourage it here.

There are plenty of very enthusiastic supporters of national socialism who will be happy to have a discussion on that subject yet we do not avoid pointing out the failure of the doctrine and teach our children about the resulting carnage. The same standard should be used when discussing communism no matter how many very enthusiastic supporters it has.

What I’m saying is - you’re clearly desperate for a fight with someone. You can definitely find one somewhere, but not here no matter how edgy or provocative you are.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#190

Post by HKH2 »

zucker42 wrote: post #186
Bojui wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if Xi kicks the can tomorrow? How smooth is the transition going to be? China is so massive I cant understand how they dont have multiple power centers bumping into each other all the time.

Talking with a Chinese friend of mine, his take was that Jack Ma's imprisonment/disappearance is less about his comments in the October speech and more about an ongoing power struggle in the CCP between supporters of the former General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who is an ally of Jack Ma, and the Xi Jinping faction. The October speech may have just been the catalyst and pretense. As for how smooth the transition would be…

Yes, I've heard the same thing. Jiang Zemin, Jack Ma, and others like Deng Xiaoping are/were more interested in making money. Xi Jinping is more ideologically motivated, and wishes he could be Mao Zedong.
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