China: The Disappearing Millionaires (2019) [video]
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The result was quite scary, Jack indeed started to fade away, first by suddenly parting from Alibaba, diluting his position, then he stopped showing in international media (which he was relatively active, since he was a reference in china entrepreneurship), and now he vanishes.
Basically these individuals grow with the hand of the CCP on their back, and when it's time to collect they are stripped off and put on tight leash, and at any moment they can easily be muffled.
Why do the major trade blocks ignore these actions? USA, EU...
Edit: the predictions I'm talking about are from this youtube interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtJK_5qDraM , which bare in mind it's still a biased source.
That being said: Your explanation makes more sense to me. It is often enough to anger the wrong person to get a bad treatment (well, even assassination). And looking at history this is exponentiated in dictatorships, where power is concentrated on few ppl, who can act with impunity.
To be fair though, that never was much of a conspiracy. Maybe in the United States it was but in the rest of the world I don't think people believe the WMD story, rather, we believed the UN weapons inspectors' story.
I've told and convinced plenty of anti-vaxxers about the magical secret way our body naturally produces antibodies if we expose our body to dead versions of a virus (or, now, things shaped like that virus). They like magic, secrets and nature, they do not like the word vaccine.
I do the same with the word conspiracy, "That is a secret plan by a group to do something harmful". It rolls off the tongue.
I think that's interpreting the term "conspiracy theory" more broadly than it's typically used. IMHO, colloquially it pretty much only refers to outlandish theories, based little to no actual evidence, and usually requiring a conspiracy so impossibly large and impossibly well executed that it beggars belief.
I don't think the idea that Jack Ma is being targeted by the CCP is just a plausible theory, not a conspiracy theory (in the colloquial sense). You have a group with the motive, means, and MO to do so, you just need to find the proof.
Which is the definition of a conspiracy theory. Words have meaning and this is a technical term; and altho it is common knowledge that it is being used as a smear word, this doesn't mean we have to play the same game here as well.
There is also no reason to pretend that the colloquial usage of conspiracy theory is more than opinion.
As far as I can see that’s bullshit.
They say what they are measuring, and people do check it.
They’d be open to straight up legal action from both customers and shareholders if they were lying.
Keyboard design aside (which was fixed a year ago, and wasn't a poor production standards/cheap materials, etc. issue, it was a BS make-it-thinner-design issue), you mean the best built laptops in the industry, or the CPUs, battery, etc. with universal praise (M1)?
Not just the best ever, always 3x or 300% better according to fake benchmarks that nobody can audit. It's beyond Marketing, basically propaganda.
So far, every single time, they have been shown to be accurate.
(smallprint) * tested in very specific condition X that does not reflect at all everyday usage of 99.9999% of users.
(The tech media) Apple did it again with 300% perf increase! Mad engineering!
That's just legal department finding a way to make propaganda harder to challenge. It's still propaganda in effect.
They don’t in fact make exaggerations like that, otherwise you’d be able to quote a real one.
The piece with that headline is about the only thing that has been audited and found to be false.
Search for commentary anywhere on that piece and you’ll find it has been completely debunked.
Well that is the new / recent Apple. Steve rarely use these technical benchmarks with specific numbers and only talk about the experience or it is being faster, better.
Now it is just a more polished event Keynote which felt the same as Google event in that they were prepared by tech people for tech people.
Or perhaps they could start with properly taxing them!
99% they report on gross revenue and complain about how little tax is paid. And almost everyone buys it.
That's why I don't buy the "gross revenue" argument, or the "actually the rich pay more of their income in taxes" arguments.
The rich and big corporations have billions (pun intended) of ways of padding their expenses, hiding their net, moving their wealth around so it can't be taxes, making shell companies etc.
Panama Papers is the most unreported, under-investigated scandal of the century
And you feel it right. This is what is the explanation for the schizophrenic public position of the Chinese establishment: on one hand they shout out loud that "economic liberalisation is irreversible, opening up will go on," and on other keep tightening all legal, and extralegal nuts on private enterprise, and in overall sliding back into the madness of seventies.
They have accepted the fact of millionaire chicken run to the West being unstoppable, but they at least want to prevent the multimillionaire, and billionaire chicken run.
They simply want their money that much, and that started to outweight the rational interest of "not slaughtering a hen laying golden eggs" in recent 2-3 years.
No one knows what happened to him, in my opinion I doubt they killed him simply because he was in China. What's the point of killing him there? They can simply remove him from the picture.
Recent article on this [1], because I must admit that for me also this was a tough thing to believe.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-susp...
You live in the time where there's massive outrage for one week, but the next week that's the subject of the past that lost hype and momentum so it's forgotten.
I think the CCP knows this, hell even political leaders of the free world know this - no one resigns due to scandals anymore. They just sit tight, don't acknowledge it, and it blows over.
Are people that normally see him also reporting him missing? Or other events he had to cancel lately?
Or when the media reported Dr. Ai Fen (one of the first to identify COVID-19) was “missing,” but less than a week later she posting on Weibo and back at work.
Once Jack Ma is found, I wonder who will be the next person the media claims is missing?
The idea is prevent him from fled, or moving his money aboard, or retaliate through medias.
PS: Even criminal businessmen lives in separate jails which conditions are extraordinary compared to other crimes. Let alone Jack Ma is not a criminal at all.
It's a massive loss.
Also, if we're at the point where "democracy values" are stumped by short term profits then maybe we deserve all of this.
I wonder if it's possible to change this and have a 'wise' constituency that is able to do a more long-term prioritization.
There’s 1.3 billion Chinese. Their government is capable of being infinitely more organized and long thinking than just about all the others.
Maybe a world war could curb the inevitable sans nuclear weapons. With nuclear weapons...
Perhaps if the smaller trade blocs all rejected vehemently China along with the major it’d be a stronger position. Say in reaction to such actions. The large trade parties could help this by investing with infrastructure and other such programs in those countries.
Possibly hoping for the Chinese people to change their form of government from within is the “nicest” option.
Personally, I wonder whether a UBI in a developed country could work to essentially lower their external 'trading costs'. Try to change their thought processes at the margin. i.e. Make the local goods and services out compete the foreign goods/services through moving local costs not observed in foreign goods/services to localized costs. i.e. Maybe a person making a UBI would be willing to do a job for (X+U) - where (X+U) is their reservation price, X is the foreign price, and U the UBI.
Edit-flipped signs
You see them announcing long term goals and going on giant infrastructure projects, which go on to be under used, poorly built e&.
China has serious structural issues that the CCP is trying to hide. Massive food, drug and alcohol fraud hurting people (fake alcohol is a HUGE issue). Riots, mass stabbings/attacks, economic slowdown/hardship. All of which the CCP covers up because foreign media can't easily penetrate, and the CCP control the domestic media/narrative.
China is a house of lies, they're essentially trying to fake it until they make it.
My view is based on ex-pats who've shared their experience and did pseudo journalism there.
When you have an aging population, the young need to take care of them, and when the old outnumber the young that tends to result in angst as the young are not as well off as those who came before them.
Now, the long term taking stake in foreign entities, that one... that seems smart on the surface. As to what end, dont know and without a long form of discussion isnt practical to talk about here.
House of lies... eh, barn full of horseshit if you ask me... but even horseshit has its uses... and flies. So many fucking flies. I hate horses.
That and dude yea, the mass stabbings are insane over there.
Those are the people that inhabit the territory. Don't attribute them all to a single party and to the same set of moral values that the party proclaims. One day it can turn out that their government is a joke, as it had happened before with USSR.
That is categorically untrue. The model of government and economic success of China is the biggest existential threat to western hegemony, much bigger than the USSR. China is well in the process of building a strong military with greater capabilities than Russia and once this is complete, the world order will undoubtedly change unless something is done about it now.
The only reason we don't see more noise on this is because a lot of people depend on trade with China for their wealth, which was never the case during the cold war with the USSR.
The state department was fully aware of the Chinese threat, hence why the TPP was proposed as a measure of containment. Too bad that play was ruined and replaced with ineffective populist measures that sound good on AM radio and internet forums, but are actually counterproductive in practice.
PRC is nowhere close. It is a threat to Japan, India, Russia, Vietnam etc to US and Europe not so much
Force projection, like the US has been able to do for 30 years, is relevant and when China ramps up in that regard there's no telling how things will change.
IMO China doesn't even need to bother much with military advancement to become a massive threat to Western democracies though, as they can simply continue to build their economic engine and leverage it whenever necessary. They are already doing so to great effect against multinational corporations.
2. Also, as a quick note to the comment above yours, China is an economic and possibly to some extent resource threat to Russia, but the obvious target of simply overtaking a huge chunk of Russian territory through Siberia (which in purely conventional military terms I think China could easily pull off) wouldn't happen, because Russia despite all its modern systemic weaknesses, crumbling demographics and terrible military administration still has the single largest nuclear arsenal on Earth, which takes us back to point one above.
3. China is a strong power with a vast population that dwarfs that of the U.S and an economy that's getting very close to rivalling it in both sophistication and raw wealth production, but it's also strangely isolated in its power. The U.S on the other hand has strong affinities with much of western and central Europe, several other asian nations with large populations and also a much better relationship with the second most populous country on Earth, right next door to China. Russia would never readily take China's side in a global conflict even if it dislikes the western hegemony and all of these things combined along with others leave china in a state of extreme vulnerability if we were to start talking about a real, serious multinational conflict between it and the U.S.
China's biggest strength is the economic dependence it has created in so much of the world, especially for manufacturing, but if a war were to break out between it and the west, this would in any case become a moot point, removing the one major incentive that any other country not directly next to it would have for trying to stay on China's good side.
* Jack Ma is himself a CCP member.
* Before regulators stopped Ant's IPO, people were worrying about how Ant is a CCP ploy to take over the world, and a national security threat.
Speculations about China have a tendency to view everything through the "CCP is evil and the only thing that's constantly on their minds is how to kill/jail/invade more" lens. As if all behavior in China is solely attributable to the CCP. This lens distorts things so much that a lot of the time you end up with nonsense.
Global perceptions about Ant Financial are completely irrelevant to Jack Ma. This is all internal politics. Anyone who poses a potential threat to the party (read: Xi Jinping) is liable to disappear (even if only temporarily).
I know. But that's not the point. Not that long ago people were speculating all over the place that Jack Ma's CCP membership means that Ant is a wholly state-controlled company and a national security threat. The 180 degree turn of all the comments, shows that at the end of the day, people don't actually know anything about China, and therefore we should be critical of speculations.
The recent Jack Ma + Ant kerfuffle started after he gave a public speech that was mildly critical of the CCP's financial regulation. He probably should have known better given the current political environment in China, but alas.
Since there are many factions within the upper echelons of the CCP, many of these speculations may not even be contradictory. It's quite plausible that Ant group was planned as a stalking horse for Chinese state infiltration of foreign banking systems, and also that Jack Ma and Ant were seen as conflicting with power groups within the CCP who eventually took them down.
X happens: "CCP is bad"
Opposite of X happens: "CCP is bad"
What is this, a children's story? Where is all the nuance? Reality can't be reduced to a simple "X is bad" narrative.
This narrative overshadows the actual issues, and thus produces nonsense. Note that nearly nobody talks about the ACTUAL financial issue, which is that Ant's way of dealing with money is very dangerous and has the potential to cause a financial crisis.
Yes I know the regulator's timing is suspicious. But to completely ignore the actual issue, or to casually brush it away as an illegitimate distraction, and instead to focus 100% on just the 'CCP bad' narrative, is just sensationalism, stereotyping and oversimplification.
It’s impossible to competently discuss entities more sophisticated than oneself, by definition. If one comprehends all the competing and confounding factors involved in the actions of the CCP, for example, then they would at least be as sophisticated as the CCP, by definition.
If not, then sooner or later reality intrudes.
Of course it may be that no human is intelligent enough to actually comprehend all the dynamics within an organization of 100+ million. Therefore no one on this planet, even in China, fully understands all the factions, factors, reasonings, etc., of such an organization. And actions may happen for mysterious reasons because no one fully comprehends all the underlying reasons.
> Of course it may be that no human is intelligent enough to actually comprehend all the dynamics within an organization of 100+ million.
"The knowledge of some principles easily compensates for the ignorance of some facts", a.k.a. you really don't need to know how shit tastes to keep away from it, you just need to know what it looks like.
In fact this example is a bit humorous because there is a type of fruit called the ‘miracle berry’ that is sold commercially to trick the taste receptors on human tongues, turning sour foods into sweet tasting foods temporarily.
I am sure if it doesn’t already exist one day products will be created to do so for the entire taste spectrum and beyond that all the human senses...
Genuinely beneficial things may be disguised as harmful and vice versa in such an environment. And then we would be back to the original point.
What if we could see how phenomena draw projections in the fourth dimension and reveal that the same underlying traits of these self-modifying and self-evolving entities? a.k.a. we can play imaginary worlds infinitely deep.
But the bottom-line of the previous comment was that people are conceptually-reasoning beings, and we can build and refine meaningful ideas and abstractions that help us to properly orient ourselves in the world. The proof of that would be the fact that you and I are interacting here on HN, and neither of us comprehends the full complexity of the systems (and relations between them) that provide us this ability.
That's because they are unquestionably, unambiguously evil. The CCP has murdered more people than any organization in the history of the world -- more than the nazis, more than the bolsheviks. But unlike the nazis or bolsheviks, the CCP death count continues to increase every day.
Are they a competitor and do they want to protect their interests? Yes. Export their governance model to you? No, why would they want to do that?
China just signed the RCEP -- an initiative by ASEAN. Clearly their neighbors don't think they're going to invade make everyone their slaves.
ever heard of Taiwan, Hong Kong? They are trying hard to keep away from this plague at the moment, if you haven't noticed. But please don't start another thread on how CCP claims their legitimacy over all chinese territories, because that would be indeed a true fairytale for children you mentioned above.
China isn't in Hong Kong because they're afraid of democracy. Under British rule, Hong Kong never had democracy in the first place. In 2014, CCP offered a limited form free elections for Hong Kong -- that's more democracy than under British Hong Kong. Why would they do that if they want to destroy democracy? The Hong Kong opposition shot down the proposal because they wanted more concessions. Unfortunate, because if it was accepted, it could have paved way for more democratization down the road.
As for Taiwan, the conflict exists because it's a leftover of the Chinese civil war. At the end of WW2, the Chinese Nationalist Party fled to Taiwan -- a part of the [People's Republic of China]'s predecessor, the [Republic of China]. Officially, both Taiwan and China claim to be the legitimate goverment of the whole of China -- this is the One China Principle. Heck, Taiwan' s modern-day flag is the exact same as that of the Republic of China.
Ever heard of Macau? It's democratic, part of China, and is doing fine under One Country Two Systems.
Whether anyone thinks Hong Kong and Taiwan should or should not be independent is besides the point, as well as totally irrelevant. The CCP has issues in those areas because they are, or used to be Chinese terrority. These issues are not new, and have been there since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, back when the CCP was small and weak and in no position to invade anybody.
But these issues persist because many mainland Chinese people care. Unity is and has been a Chinese core value for thousands of years. The issues don't persist because the CCP is evil and want to destroy democracy. Even if Hong Kong and Taiwan were under a seperate communist rule, the CCP would still have issues with those areas.
The narrative that China is an expansionist invader is based on the twisting of half-truths, for the purpose of painting a "China threat" in order to justify spending more money on the military industrial complex. China has not fought a war or shot a bullet outside its borders for more than 30 years. In fact, if you take out the People's Republic's map, and compare ot to the maps of the last 2 predecessors (the Republic, and the Qing dynasty), you'll see that the People's Republic's map is smaller.
British Hong Kong has elected local council and officials that are given power and budget within their constituency. The small council was disband just after 1997. Hong Kong had far more democracy than it ever had under China.
Local elections also exist on the mainland.
Anyway, this is still irrelevant. The point still stands: the above doesn’t indicate in any way that China is an expansionist invader out to crush democracy.
I'll offer an alternative, although admittedly simplistic lens to understand the actions of the CCP:
To pull their population of 1.4 billion people out of poverty. To which political stability is essential.
I have to admit, a one party system does seem like the best type of government, on paper. It can be more efficient and do things much faster than anything else. Billionaires can't just pay politicians to create/modify laws in their favour. And for the average citizen, life's the same as in a democracy.
But that only works if the party is working for the country, gives people a decent amount of freedom and listens to their needs.
When the party no longer keeps the people content (which seems inevitable, looking at history), there's practically no way to change it besides a violent revolution. That's a huge drawback, and the reason we're better off with a slower democratic system that doesn't have a single point of (catastrophic) failure.
Modern China seems to work a lot like Imperial China. Just with different names for the emperor and his officials, more freedom and rights for the population, as well as more means to keep them in check.
Building the 3 Gorges dam out of various types of concrete, and not letting it cure properly, etc. Every possible corner was cut, repeatedly. This is a project that not only supplies power- it is supposed to control floods, and they more or less agreed that it won't work for that. The damage to the dam this year must have been immense, and as the climate changes we can expect more of the same kind of rainfall and flooding. In no possible universe is a major dam collapse flooding Wuhan under 2m of water and washing away Pudong an example of "short term concerns".
Building empty cities, despite having a population that will decline very soon, and low quality construction that degrades relatively quickly. Ok, short-term consequence is the real estate bubble keeps on going, but if you are worried about the long term, probably better to nip that in the bud. And don't even get me started on the Belt and Road initiative, which is an expensive jobs program that has hurt China's image abroad.
The US has had bad presidents. They did damage. But without the checks and balances, they would have done far more.
I may be factually wrong, but I hear that Singapore is/was somewhat autocratic. However, the government was competent and honest, avoiding things like nepotism and suchlike. The result of all this is that starting from the mid-20th century, it grew from one of the poorest nations on earth to one of the richest. All this as a small island country that even has to import its own water.
China is basically a giant kleptocracy. My dad is fond of China, but I am hesitant. China is so corrupt that it's hard for good things to come from it. I guess it is slowly industrialising and getting better, but it seems to be labouring under a heavy burden.
I have long been suspicious that the Chinese economy would collapse. My theory is that it produces returns below the cost of capital. That's why we've seen movement in production from places like America to China.
My argument is that you produce wealth by creating returns that are in excess of the cost of capital. You destroy it if it's the reverse. So we could find out that America has actually done the right thing by letting China do the manufacturing.
That's all just my theory, though. I've been thinking like this since the 90's. So far, I've been shown to be resoundingly completely wrong (at least as it appears on the surface. Will I have been proven to be very wrong until I'm proven very right, or is the whole thing just a completely invalid theory on my part).
It really depends on the demographics. For example, I think you need a more decentralized and federal government when the state is comprised of different nations.
Careful now ... I know of several people who were banned from HN for being critical of China ...
EDIT: I suspect this post will be gone soon.
HN is full of criticisms of China on any thread that touches even tangentially on China. We don't ban users for that. We ban users who repeatedly break the site guidelines, such as by posting nationalistic flamebait—especially if they do it repeatedly. Those are not at all the same thing.
It's common, of course, for people to make grandiose claims about being banned for their noble views when really it was for their bad behavior.
PS: Some information about Guo from the video. According to Vice, He was rich because he was close to high ranking officials, and fled because the Government ally he linked to was under investigation because of accepting bribes [0]. Everybody would know in China, a close relationship comes from bribing at least from those times, and bribing is a crime in most countries especially in the US. It seems to me, he callout corruption issues only because he's out of the game.
It is a classic tactic in dictatorship: Make sure that for anybody to advance, they need to get their hands dirty (i.e bribes) so that you always have a Damocles sword over their head. It's one way to ensure obedience.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%88%86%E6%96%99%E9%9D%A9%E5...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/business/media/steve-bann...
That's the reason I never got why all the fanfare for Jack Ma. I don't know how much of his success can be attributed to CCP's belssings.
These people are literally disappearing millions from an ethnic group into concentration camps in a genuine genocide and nobody cares. Why would anyone care about some puppet "billionaire" who gets disappeared for acting up?
The US opted to drop it and unsuccessfully deal with the Chinese party 1:1 in negotiations. Imagine if a business partner was robbing you, and instead of finding other partners, you tried to negotiate with them. Obviously, they hold all the cards and have no incentive to play along. If anything, they would want to steal more! They would get more leverage!
I don't know if the TPP would have been a silver bullet, but it's hard to imagine the CCP would be this brazen if they were on the outside looking to come in. Remember that actions in Hong Kong and Xi Jinping's lifetime appointment all happened after the TPP was killed. I think they are power grabbing as much as they can now while no one is really holding them to task.
The situation could be similar to the idea that you gave unfair terms to a business partner and felt robbed. So you found other business partners and signed the same terms with them, basically to spite/limit the original business partner. But now you are still being robbed, even faster infact, and by multiple people, and no way of recourse, as you just signed that deal!
It didn't do much for US workers, just protected Intellectual Property. TPP means you can't outsource it to China, but you can absolutely outsource it to Malaysia, Vietnam, etc. as long as they respect the IP.
Mixed feelings. It has no real benefit for US workers, but, at the same time, the damage is done and US manufacturing isn't going to magically reappear. Might as well at least try to lock down the IP and force Asia (read: China) to play by the rules.
‘everyones work belongs to everyone else’
and then the practical realities of
‘we need productive citizens to increase our wealth because we are starving to death’
The government will always be an elite group with the backing of violence (law/military). Once it becomes compromised, the injustice will cause those with means to flee.
Pretty sure he is just laying low or negotiating with the government right now.
That's not how it works for Chinese billionaires; it would elevate their status to that of CCP heavyweights. When their time comes, billionaires simply vanish:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/business/china-xiao-jianh...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/china-billi...
Yes, it's exactly because they don't want to cause a billionaire chicken run, unlike with own party officials, which are humiliated, punished in the most public, and terrible way.
By now he has no control of any of his companies. He is basically just a body now to be used by PRC as they see fit. Compost? Tear eyed apology? Reformed new face? Whatever he needs to be for them he will be.
Jack Ma is finished.
Those capital outflows might be panic setups but they may also be prudent diversifications. For example, Japan citizens also went on a buying spree around the world during their 1980s bubble, which did not mean persecution and fear in Tokyo.
Despite the common fantasy here that if someone was not appearing in public in China means they must have 'disappeared', what usually happen is they come out again and then the news pretending this whole episode never happened.
It became so excessive, I remember news calling Kim Jong Un's disappearance and death at least 5 different times in 2020.
History would suggest otherwise...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/business/china-xiao-jianh...
I don’t see China backtracking on capitalism.
Also what does Ma have a monopoly on?
Just because a company is big and successful doesn’t mean it has a monopoly.
I have no idea about The Great Reset but it makes sense for the CCP.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/26/guo-wengui-chinese-bill...
I've seen the west do this countless times with their reporting on China, make up a piece without any evidence, but later when the story is proven false, nothing is said.
Dear lord, if I said this to someone 20 years ago, you would think we were back during the ww2 era...
Not to say any of his claims are false. In fact, I expect much of his claims against the government of China are true.
But it's just something to watch out for, especially when he talks about things further from his direct experiences.
For what it's worth, he's also close friends conservative media proprietors like former Trump-advisor Steve Bannon (who is articulate, has some interesting and mostly reasonable, well-thought through things to say, but is sometimes divisive).
I think it's too bad, had he been less zealous in his crusade against the CCP he could have been a good source on how the CCP handles the upper business class. Now, any plausible observations and experiences are drowned out by partisan nonsense.
How ARTE, which is a French/German public service TV station, can have him as a center-piece of their documentary is beyond me.
Or just mentioning that he helped bring this activity to light?
These people are not trustworthy at all.
They can be entertaining though.
That's why I trust very little of what is written about, e.g., North Korea: it doesn't mean that everything that sucks and supposedly happened there is true just because the system there indeed sucks. I think everybody is maybe predisposed to believe whatever they read about a topic they don't know about themselves as long as it fits in their worldview, so journalists get a free pass doing less checking than Wikipedia editors as long as the "news" is believable.
China is not exactly North Korea. There are plenty of people who can tell you what is going.