>Did Jack Ma think he was going to tell the CCP how it is?
The thing is that [even allowing for the fact that any news coming out of China that we get in the west is heavily spun to make China look bad] what Jack Ma is alleged to have said seems very mild to me, to be provoking such a massive response. Apparently he said
"Chinese banks operate with a pawnshop mentality"[0] --hardly calling for the overthrow of the state, is it?
It all seems so over the top that I'm almost convinced that the US has infiltrated the higher echelons of the CCP and is working hard to make China shoot itself in the foot economically. Is that any crazier a notion than the pretty widely held belief that Donald Trump's election was a Russian plot to undermine the US on the world stage?
Because, the only results of this over-the-top crackdown by China are likely to be that:
* More Chinese entrepreneurs are going to 'get the hell out of Dodge' as soon as they can, rather than risk the same fate. By emigrating from China and setting up elsewhere.
* Western businesses are going to be extremely reluctant to enter into any partnerships / large contracts / investments with Chinese companies, for fear of the rug being pulled from under them.
* AliBaba & Ant will stagnate under government management
It just doesn't make sense to me:
* Lots of reports recently predicting China will become the world's no.1 economy before the end of this decade.
* China's economy first out of the starting blocks on the road to recovery, after the Coronavirus pandemic
* Chinese companies outdoing technologically & commercially their US counterparts [so much so that it led to Trump's spurious sanctions against HuaWei et al].
All of this should have led to the CCP becoming more pro-capitalist in outlook and more supportive of Chinese entrepreneurship from people like Jack Ma. Why suddenly shoot yourself in the foot, when you're finally 'winning'? I just find it really hard to believe that the leadership of the CCP which, if nothing else, has demonstrated itself to be extremely pragmatic over recent decades, is so thin skinned as to risk massive and ongoing damage to their economy over such an innocuous remark.
As I say, in my tinfoil-hatted opinion either the CCP has been infiltrated by the US who are attempting to destroy the Chinese economy from within, or there's a lot more to what Jack Ma has actually done than we're being told.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/ant-group-ipo-suspension-reg...