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

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

#211

Post by daemin » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

f430 wrote: 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…

I remember an episode of Planet Money podcast where they went to the village where a secret agreement was signed by some farmers to divide up the communal land and farm it individually, so they could sell the surplus and make some profit. In the podcast they managed to talk to one of the original signatories to the agreement, and he lamented that fact that after his farming days he had started many businesses but they had all been taken from him by the authorities.

Now given that the judiciary in China is just another arm of the CCP, there is no rule of law, there's just the rule of the CCP and the whims of whomever is in charge.

So you build something successful, someone in charge gets envious, then one small misstep and it all gets taken away from you. I don't actually know if it needs an actual misstep or just enough people to conspire against you.

This is also what worries me about Chinese companies buying other companies and property outside of China. There's a danger that at any moment the entire company will get nationalised and therefore China (or rather the CCP) will own it all. I'm not against some foreign ownership and investment, but usually this has originated from a country where the law rules the land and not some arbitrary dictator. (Yes I'm also concerned about middle-east money flowing in, but to a lesser extent because they don't try to hide it)

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

#212

Post by tkinom » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #184

jonathannat wrote: post #169

Earlier 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…

Current CPP leaderships are blaming US/West for all the trouble.

Xi is just a little red guard grew up from the culture revolution the only economic solution solution was follow Mao's "Nationalize" way.

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

#213

Post by vkou » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

jonathannat wrote: post #189

vkou wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So, when do you expect social collapse, and most of Fortune 500 pulling their presence out of the country? Give me a rough timeline. Three months? Six? Sixty? Six hundred?

It's easy to make non-specific, non-committal predictions of doom and gloom. I can say with absolute certainty that, say, the Euro will become worthless sometime between now and the heat death of the universe. My prediction is as useless, as it is accurate.

What kind of prediction, with what kind of error bar, are you ready to commit to?

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

#214

Post by SoylentYellow » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #173

emteycz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a very different country 10 years ago. It was comparable to the EU (I lived in both).

What propelled such a quick and strong change ?

Xi Jinping rising to power.

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

#215

Post by BobbyJo » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #121

jcytong wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: How does one get educated about modern China? (I'm Chinese but mostly Western educated) Having seen my grandparents/parents/relatives escaping communist China and now my generation escaping HK, it has heavily influenced me on how even people who identified as Chinese and hoping for democracy and freedom for their own cousins in China are being played and lied to for multiple decades. My people in HK…

I am not from China, but I am from Russia. Western posturing and brinksmanship isn't going to bring about any meaningful change. It's been tried for seventy years against the USSR, with no effect [1]. All that a foreign enemy (that loudly proclaims their belligerence) does is unite people behind shitty leaders. (As we have seen in Western democracies when their governments are more concerned with blaming external ene…

>It's been tried for seventy years against the USSR, with no effect [1]

Uhhhh, so you don't think the cold war was a major reason the USSR fell? That's the first time I've heard that take. I mean, obviously what killed the USSR was a failure to dictate an efficient economy (what is likely to kill the CCP as well), but the Cold War defenitely, in my opinion and in the opinion of every piece I've ever read on the subject, sped things up significantly.

>As we have seen in Western democracies when their governments are more concerned with blaming external enemies, rather than fixing internal problems.

I think this is a skewed view based on a shallow view of most western democracies. The most publicized actions are those taked by leaders in unilateral context, which are most often related to foreign relations and military operations, and thus not related to domestic issues. However, if you look at what the vast majority of these democracies spend their time on, on a man/hr basis, it's solving domestic problems. The US is a prime example. Trump represented >Change in the CCP will have to come from movements within China. These kinds of changes take generations, and will not always result in the kind of change you would like to see.

Agree for the most part.

> Even in an authoritarian country, there is still a feedback loop between public sentiment, and their ruling government

The fact that these feedback loops do not exist is why most authoritarian regimes fail. We are seeing the slow decay of those feedback loops in China from their more liberal economic policies 10+ years ago.

>Strong-man anti-China posturing will not do anything to China

Posturing, no, but policies can and do have a large effect.

>In the 90s, tough-on-crime was popular in America, for the same reasons, to devastating consequences.

It had it's problems, but the falling crime rate over that time was in part because of these policies. NYC is a perfect example of both sides of that coin.

> Today, we've moved on to tough-on-China (which will result in devastating consequences if it ever moves past rhetoric, and into a shooting war.)

Well yeah. No one wants a war. It would pretty much destroy earth at this point. I think if you want to point to rising risk though, most of the blame needs to go to China itself. It's ever expanding territorial claims are the largest risk factor. We can talk about how the US lays claim to a large part of the Pacific, but then we have to start talking about the validity of most of the world's borders, so that's kind of moot in my opinion.

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

#216

Post by blisterpeanuts » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #183

fakedang wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hist…

That is essentially the thesis of American foreign policy in Asia since the 1980s. The results have been mixed; yes, they have a huge, prosperous middle class now, yet the government remains about as authoritarian as it ever was.

Now, with technology, in fact things are getting worse. Everyone is required to have a cell phone, everyone is spied upon, a "social score" is maintained and if your score dips below a certain threshold, you may not travel etc.

If the EU thinks that making more trade deals with China is going to temper any of these, they're naive indeed.

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

#217

Post by bobthepanda » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #200

jonathannat wrote: post #169

Earlier 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/…

Yes, many good points, but some of the same problems exist in the West and in the Asian democracies: covid, debt, aging demographics. China does have one compelling advantage: its enormous population. Even if a horrible plague or even a civil war happened and 100m people died, they still have plenty of people to accomplish anything they want. They have Ph.D. scientists, many trained at top Western universities, who a…

The one child policy makes China’s aging problem particularly rapid, at a time when they are not wealthy enough per capita to make the transition. One child supports two parents and four grandparents. Plus a low retirement age that is only now getting extended. (60 for men, 55 for women previously). Over a third of Shanghai is over 60, as is a quarter in Beijing, Tianjin, etc.

Now the one child policy has been relaxed, but it will take a while before extra kids are available to work, and at this point it’s sort of a cultural norm to have one kid (plus prohibitively expensive to raise two kids and provide them decent resources).

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

#218

Post by marcus_holmes » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #34

marcus_holmes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they" being the CCP, or high-net-worth Chinese nationals attempting to get their money out of China? Because if the latter, then the CCP is not going to give a monkey's what happens to that property. The CCP has been trying to stop rich Chinese from investing outside China for years now.

CCP. I’m talking shipping ports, infra investments etc

I'm no expert, but I understood that those were more "diplomatic" investments. The ports in Sri Lanka, for example, are impractical and unused, their function fulfilled as soon as the deal was agreed.

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

#219

Post by hungryhobo » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

bosswipe wrote: post #203

brabel wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to get things straight: everyone should praise the rise of Chinese people's living standards, which has been astonishing in the last 45 years or so, and has taken 850 million people out of poverty[0]! This is not something a reasonable person can argue against! The increase in human wellbeing in the whole planet has been almost entirely due to the Chinese in the last 50 years. That doest' mean we should prais…

> 850 million people out of poverty. This is not something a reasonable person can argue against! I'd argue against it on the grounds that the planet doesn't have enough resources for everyone to live a middle class lifestyle.

So chinese people should just sit down and live low class life. Got it.

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

#220

Post by eternalban » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

notJim wrote: post #75

orange_tee wrote: post #32

The 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.

Why is it better for Chinese billionaires to run the country than the CCP? Seems like just trading one master for another.

Jack Ma is a member of the Communist Party of China.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alibaba-jack-ma-idUSKCN1N...

This is a classic power struggle between ideological and technocratic elements. Jack Ma vs Xi Jinping. Jack Ma, a communist party member, challenged party Chairman. As we can dispense with the notion that Jack Ma lacks the necessary wits, the actual interesting question is why did Jack Ma think it opportune to openly challenge Xi Jinping at this time?

In the US, this struggle is a non-issue as the ideological element (venture capital) finances and controls the technocrats (such as Jack Dorsey). We just however recently were treated to a purported “outsider” ideologue locking horns, via technocrat proxy of FANGs, with the ideological establishment. Given that this outsider also happens to (still) be the head of state in USA, I guess we need not wonder too deeply as to the logic of CPC reminding a prominent party member and fellow travelers of who still calls the shots in China.