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

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

#351

Post by onecommentman »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #272
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government isn't really THAT much different from Japan and all of Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, etc... Even India and, theoretically, even Russia, too. So, it's not surprising the average Chinese person has a decent understanding of how a basic democracy works. In some ways, China is also not THAT much different, either. But it is more different than pretty much every other major economy in the wo…

I've yet to find a country where that country's inhabitants aren't mostly concerned with themselves and I've been to quite a few countries.

“All politics is local” — quite a famous saying in the US

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_politics_is_local

And people are just people, once you scrape off the cultural and political veneer.

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

#352

Post by onecommentman »

euix wrote: post #322
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…

Before covid I would have just said go visit China and travel the country. I don't think westerners really understand China as cliched as that sounds. If you add up all the western countries together + their westernized protecterates/allies, Japan, SK, Taiwan. You would only get half the population of China. Think of the scale of that, your internal market is literally twice the size of the entire western market. Tha…

“the western elites just recognize the balance of power has shifted in China's favour and have started to accept the "facts of the ground””

What’s a “Western Elite”? Russia, India, Japan, Australia? What “power” are we talking about? Military power? Economic power? Intellectual power? Cultural power? What are the “facts of the ground” you are talking about? How have the Western elites accepted “facts”?

These are all open questions to the unbiased reader. Could you elucidate? Otherwise it sounds like you are just juicing Chinese stocks...

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

#353

Post by KorematsuFred »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #64
KorematsuFred wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is working well in my opinion. I would rather live in a world where billionaires are happy to dissolve a corrupt and disgusting politician than other way around.

I wouldn’t. Billionaires can be corrupt and disgusting too, and unlike politicians, are unaccountable to the citizenry. Important difference.

Billionaires can't take your money by force like government can. Government can not just take money by force (taxation), through indirect means (regulation) or by simply reducing its worth (inflation). And while they do that they make you stand in a line and clap for them.

The only way Bezos makes money is if I chose to buy something on Amazon. Surely, billionaires are not angels and are just as corrupt as politicians and would love to force me to buy their stuff one way on another but in every single of those instance they use government as their partner.

USA elected Trump, how much accountable was he to you ?

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

#354

Post by fakedang »

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…

> 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?

Yes. Sanctions can be very effective in curbing China's outsize influence worldwide and cut their economy by half. Just embargo them as long as they persecute Uighurs and HKers.

Unfortunately that can't be done, since American and European companies were too stupid to give away their schematics and let the Chinese copy them outright, while also simultaneously reducing their indigenous production capabilities in important sectors such as rare earths mining and refining, solar manufacturing and extraction technologies.

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

#355

Post by bobthepanda »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #337
bobthepanda wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more internal demand but few people working is basically going to increase debt significantly, leave seniors in abject poverty, or some combination of the two. And possibly massive deflation as well since old people are on fixed incomes and don't spend too much.

I thought Chinese household debt was absurdly low, but I guess that's changed. Still, I would prefer to "quotient out the money", and say either the demand is met or it isn't? To the extent it is met, perhaps there are imports of material goods or domestic labor (nurses?) I don't think it makes sense to worry about "domestic debt" in the same way, given the non-liberal political economy. Of course that doesn't mean t…

So, Lost Decade Japan on steroids. A massive debt hangover after an asset bubble pop, deflation for a decade, and worse employment prospects and economic conditions for young people.

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

#356

Post by blackrock »

loceng wrote: post #222
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…

That's a trillion dollar question. Firms will leave China once democracies around the world make a multi-lateral trade agreement and put our money elsewhere that's aligned with our core beliefs including or primarily free speech, say India. Get the agreement in place, have it come into effect in 2 years ahead of time, provide investment grants or loans to businesses (globally if they're aligned with democracy/free sp…

Have you ever been to India?

The fine people of India believes that cows are sacred gods. They also believe that drinking cow piss is good for you. They also believe that bathing and wallowing in cow sh*t is healthy for you, because it’ll help strengthen your immune system.

India has a very very long way to go.

But hey, India has free speech and elections. So maybe you should tell all your multi-national corporations to relocate to India.

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

#357

Post by thu2111 »

kurthr wrote: post #330
hhjinks wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Calling them communist is pretty hilarious even if the word is in their name Why? China was clearly a communist project, and this is what they became. Why is the end result we see in reality less valid than the theory?

For the same reason we don't refer to Hitler as a socialist. There are still places with actual communes. Words have meaning so unless you're using them as a proper noun or acronym (CCP, NAZI) you follow common usage. Just because a word is useful for demagoguery or insult doesn't make it correct.

This is an old, stale debate. The common usage of the word "communist" is defined not by vague Marxist theorising or tiny enclaves nobody has ever heard of, but rather the typical end state of actual communist revolutions. That's how the word is used in practice.

This has the unfortunate property that at least for China the end-state is constantly evolving, but only in relatively unimportant ways. China has a freer market than the USSR did, but even the USSR had to abandon completely planned economics almost immediately after Lenin took power. After that it was mixed, just like China's. And in all other ways they are the same: no democracy, rampant censorship and propaganda by state-allied corporate entities, no real private property rights (if you can lose your IPO by giving a single speech criticising the government, it's fair to say whatever private property rights you thought you had don't really exist).

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

#358

Post by cbozeman »

threatofrain wrote: post #132
jonplackett wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a discussion a while back between Musk and Ma. I think you do a disservice to Musk to compare them. He really didn't seem able to keep up.

There’s a lot of reason why Jack Ma might not want to say anything interesting, esp with asymmetrical stakes where for Elon this is just fun banter and brand building, but missteps by Jack Ma could be severe.

> but missteps by Jack Ma could be severe.

Looks like missteps by Jack Ma were severe.

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

#359

Post by thu2111 »

scarmig wrote: post #265
SoylentYellow wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is calling the CCP a dictatorship getting the West into trouble?

Reductive thinking of how Chinese politics works gets the US into trouble. Particularly, the idea that the CCP is primarily a sclerotic, nonfunctional tumor on society, operating through sheer force of malign will, and that a democratic transition would be enabled as soon as the US helped cultivate alternative domestic institutions to the CCP. The reality is that the CCP is a dynamic organization, which has the abili…

Can you evidence that? I've seen absolutely no evidence of the CCP being dynamic or creative. Chinese history forked the day Taiwan became independent, and Taiwan has been well ahead of China in basically every way for my entire life. The CCP seems to hold China back quite drastically. It gets praised as having brought about some sort of Chinese economic miracle in certain western circles, but the evidence from Taiwan, South Korea etc shows that they'd probably have joined the first world in the 70s already if not for the CCP.

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

#360

Post by seebetter »

Aunche wrote: post #196
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…

It's sad to see unsubstantiated hearsay as the top comment. I'm sure every billionaire in China has multiple escape routes. Guo Wengui certainly did, nor is he a "peasant."

And sad to see mindless authoritarians on Hacker News.
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