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Comment by georgeecollins | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. I think you are used to Western Companies where the default is private ownership. All major Chinese companies began as state owned enterprises, and it is usually necessary to get investment from one to get a charter. So ostensibly private companies have a big state investment.

Plus a trade union committee implies a government structure.

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> All major Chinese companies began as state owned enterprises

Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Ctrip, JD.com and dozens of other major Chinese Internet companies did not begin as state owned enterprises.

They were all born during the prime years of Deng's philosophy holding sway over how the Chinese Government implemented economic policy. At one point Yahoo and Softbank owned about 80% of Alibaba as an example. The state had very little applied control over the company until the Xi era. China's system today is not the same as China's system in 1999. There was far more freedom in the system of 20 years ago, including in regards to corporate independence and speech online.

To what extent do CEOs like Jack Ma, who are known in the West (at least on here), acknowledge the reality of this system?

Or do they?

Yes, Alibaba started with investments from Softbank and Goldman Sachs.

It really is a private startup story like those in the Silicon Valley.

>I think you are used to Western Companies where the default is private ownership.

From a continental European perspective I'd contest that. Quite a few of today's multinationals here began as either wholly or partly state owned and/or today have still significant state ownership - especially in infrastructure/utility/telecommunications, but also in "strategic" industries. This includes telcos like Deutsche Telekom (with its daughter T-Mobile), former state mail companies like DHL, Airbus (and its numerous predecessors), most of the state airlines (Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, SAS etc.), and others like Volkswagen, Renault, Peugeot/PSA, STMicro just to name a few.

That is a good point. Because I am from the US I tend to think of companies as starting private. There are some really important exceptions in the US too: The Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, etc.

> All major Chinese companies began as state owned enterprises,

That isn’t true at all. A lot of the companies started after the late 80s were never stare owner at all.

It is not true that all major Chinese companies began as state-owned enterprises. Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu etc. are all private. They were started by their founders and funded by VC money. For instance, Alibaba was started by Jack Ma and 17 others. It is privately-owned by shareholders, none of which is state or government[1]. For some other industries such as banks, railway, oil etc., it is different. They are mostly state-owned. But tech is not one of them.

[1] https://www.marketscreener.com/ALIBABA-GROUP-HOLDING-1791667...

>All major Chinese companies began as state owned enterprises

How come there are so many Chinese startup success stories then?

Those weren't "major companies" when they began...

They are funded by the state indirectly.

Show me one that did not get some funding from a state enterprise. It is almost impossible to clear the bureaucratic hurdles without that. My source for this is “China’s Crisis of Success” by William H. Overholt.

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