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Alibaba breaks itself up in six

economist.com

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Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#221

Post by shp0ngle »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #195
differentView wrote: post #11

How is this a breakup if Alibaba is just going to become a holding company owning those six new companies?

Because it is not breakup, in the same way that the establishment of Alphabet Group was not a breakup. But as it has always been on the U.S.-dominated English-speaking Internet and media, facts and objectiveness do not matter when it comes to any topic related to China. Anyone can twist, spin, or literally invent anything to fit their own narrative about China and people will believe it without question as long as it…

The strict law about what can and cannot Chinese say, share, and see online doesn't help this.

Yes there are tons of nonsense online about China. But it is not helped by the total dragnet there is over there. And by the fact that some of the over-the-top stuff about China is indeed true.

I mean Jack Ma really _was_ disappeared right after the speech.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#222

Post by pclmulqdq »

crop_rotation wrote: post #174
eloff wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the reason the stock jumped on the news is the company is potentially worth more this way, by breaking out higher margin / faster growth units from the big retail business. A lot of Amazon investors would love to see the same with AWS. It sounds silly since nothing really changes, but it has to do with the way investors calculate the value of public companies.

This sounds good in theory but might not work in practice. None of them are profitable and depended on Tmall/Taobao for growth. Turning to the public markets would require sacrificing growth for profitability. There might be many other inter dependencies which might turn out costly to unwind. What you are saying might be how it turns out in the end, but it is not a given.

Endless growth of unprofitable services is what has given us crazy market distortions in the past. It's what gave us things like Groupon, Doordash, and Uber, too. Growth isn't always a good goal.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#223

Post by throwawaymaths »

carschno wrote: post #180
RobotToaster wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given China's, (and to some extent, Asia's), obsession with face, his actions do all seem pretty clueless. I wonder, could it all be part of some performance? The fact that they let Ali "voluntarily" restructure, and save face from having it be enforced, is interesting on it's own. I'm not really sure what to make of it.

Genuine question: is there any evidence that "Asia's obsession with face" has actual impact on daily business, or is it really just a cliché?

It's only a cliche, because westerners are often just as obsessed with face, though having a foot in two cultures there are a few big places where the difference is noticable:

US (and by extension NATO, doctrinally) military is very unconcerned with face in the small. For (real example) anyone on the bridge of a US ship can report to the captain of a ship that the ship is out of position (for an exercise). A buddy almost got walloped on the bridge of a ROK ship for doing that. They didn't because he was American and that's what exchanges are for.

some cultures in the west tend to value bluntness over face in the small.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#224

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #216
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has a monopoly on Apple products, and even though there are plenty of non-Apple products to buy, they are behaving like a monopoly?

yes, they are engaging in monopolistic behavior, which as mentioned above, does not require them to pass any particular threshold for being a monopoly society has decided that some behaviors are in and of themselves bad, whether or not said threshold of yours is surpassed (for example monopolistic behaviors)

I just want to avoid going back to the time before Apple products were nice and relatively affordable, I hated buying a crappy Windows PC every other year and never being satisfied with it. Apple has transformed the entire industry twice in my lifetime, and I get really nervous when people say they should be forced to be just like another PC maker, and I should be forced to live again under a market that I absolutely loathed.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#225

Post by SkyMarshal »

ethbr0 wrote: post #213
SkyMarshal wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that’s the problem - the risk of losing a power struggle in a democracy with rule of law, separation of powers, an independent court system, and regular elections is vastly different from the risks of losing a power struggle in the CCP, which controls all branches of government, law enforcement, and the military and is accountable to no one. The former has a limited downside, the latter unlimited. Whatever the Ce…

I always figured that's why high-level power struggles were so constant and severely fought in totalitarian regimes. If the downside is unlimited then you do whatever it takes to win, always. And if there isn't currently a struggle then you prepare for the next one, constantly. Or in other words, you only spend a small portion of your total ability and time on the job, because you have to constantly expend effort on…

I have that impression too. Without having directly experienced it myself, it seems like a hellish system. Though it does at least seem like getting “purged” isn’t always final, and that execution is the last choice.

Xi Jinping himself got purged in his youth and spent that time living and working in the countryside and building his ‘man of the common people’ cred, then made it back into the CCP’s favor later. Though Xi was a princeling, his father was one of Mao’s inner circle, so he might have been untouchable and only at risk of exile and not actual execution for that reason, unlike most other CCP members and Chinese people.

And to be fair, US politicians spend most of their time fundraising for their next campaign, so in terms of total ability and time spent on the job it’s probably similar in both systems. But losing a power struggle in the US just means losing your election, and trying again in the next one. In the CCP there’s a wider range of consequences.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#226

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #224
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, they are engaging in monopolistic behavior, which as mentioned above, does not require them to pass any particular threshold for being a monopoly society has decided that some behaviors are in and of themselves bad, whether or not said threshold of yours is surpassed (for example monopolistic behaviors)

I just want to avoid going back to the time before Apple products were nice and relatively affordable, I hated buying a crappy Windows PC every other year and never being satisfied with it. Apple has transformed the entire industry twice in my lifetime, and I get really nervous when people say they should be forced to be just like another PC maker, and I should be forced to live again under a market that I absolutely…

it's an interesting topic (whether Apple's monopolistic behavior has produced any good), but again, entirely orthogonal to the underlying question, whether Apple is behaving monopolistically (they are).

in the amount equal to how much you like any such benefits, other people dislike the downsides of monopolistic behavior, so we decided that it's bad even if maybe some good comes with the bad

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#227

Post by ssnistfajen »

shp0ngle wrote: post #221
ssnistfajen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is not breakup, in the same way that the establishment of Alphabet Group was not a breakup. But as it has always been on the U.S.-dominated English-speaking Internet and media, facts and objectiveness do not matter when it comes to any topic related to China. Anyone can twist, spin, or literally invent anything to fit their own narrative about China and people will believe it without question as long as it…

The strict law about what can and cannot Chinese say, share, and see online doesn't help this. Yes there are tons of nonsense online about China. But it is not helped by the total dragnet there is over there. And by the fact that some of the over-the-top stuff about China is indeed true. I mean Jack Ma really _was_ disappeared right after the speech.

Tim Cook or Sundar Pichai also step off the stage after finishing speeches. Does that mean they have been "disappeared"? They have a private life in case you aren't aware. Acknowledging the fact that the CCP is meddling with private sector businesses is not an excuse to spout misinfo.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#228

Post by [deleted] »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #68
SilverBirch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert on this, but from what I gather this all leads back to a power struggle between Jack Ma and Xi Jinping. Ma was ready to go public with AliPay and in the build up to it made a speech that criticised the government regulation as being out of date. This was viewed as a challenge to the governments power. Over the next few months the government moved to tighten regulations on companies like AliPay and d…

Also, one of Ma’s last public appearances was at an American conference, maybe TechCrunch but I’m not sure, where he said in an on stage interview something to the effect of, “I’m not afraid of the CCP”, in relation to recent revelations he was a CCP member. Then he got disappeared shortly after. He was really clueless about what kind of org he was dealing with.

[deleted]

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#229

Post by _skel »

RobotToaster wrote: post #168
SkyMarshal wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, one of Ma’s last public appearances was at an American conference, maybe TechCrunch but I’m not sure, where he said in an on stage interview something to the effect of, “I’m not afraid of the CCP”, in relation to recent revelations he was a CCP member. Then he got disappeared shortly after. He was really clueless about what kind of org he was dealing with.

Given China's, (and to some extent, Asia's), obsession with face, his actions do all seem pretty clueless. I wonder, could it all be part of some performance? The fact that they let Ali "voluntarily" restructure, and save face from having it be enforced, is interesting on it's own. I'm not really sure what to make of it.

We don't need to resort to cultural tropes like "face" to explain this.

This is about power and control. The Communist party does not want any other centers of power or control to emerge which might challenge the party. Jack Ma, and the tech industry in general, was emerging as such a power. Now that problem has been taken care of.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#230

Post by robocat »

philipov wrote: post #164
midasuni wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans tend to equate wealth with ability and set aside luck, everyone is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Musk certainly used to have decent business accuumin - he hit it big several times, that’s not just luck. From all accounts he’s a half decent engineer too, which is rare in many CEO levels. However his behaviour over the last 3 years has been very surprising. He seems to be less interested in the tech…

People thought he had some engineering skills, until he took over Twitter and started talking about all the idiotic engineering decisions he was making.

Musk could simultaneously be a numpty at Twitter and a superb engineer at SpaceX.

You imply that skills are context-free black or white - that is a terrible way to think about people or the world IMHO. And you can’t ignore changes over time either.

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