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Comment by dirtyid | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat tangent ownership factoid.

~30% of Tencent is owned by South African multinational Naspers.

Huh, that's a lot. With what happened with Jack Ma, I am not sure how comfortable outside companies are with holding that much stake in a company in PRC.

News reports seemed to indicate even Tencent was under scanner along with Alibaba.

They were early investor. Different companies with different focus has different exposure risk. Tencent is golden goose as long as it stays in it's lane and read the tea leaves. They've been very competent at it so far.

Domestic/geopolitics affect companies everywhere. Investors of Qualcomm (Edit: _can't_) be happy after US implemented entity list, and that affects third parties as well like TSMC and ASML. The latter got off light because semis are in such demand, but a bunch of Euro/Japan/Korean tech companies in Huawei supply chain lost out big.

Well ... Jack Ma was epitome of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. He knows from inside out how the CCP system works and how to push criticism about the system (subtly, privately).

It is not as if he doesn't have Xi or any other high level party official on quickdial.

Well that's obviously not reality, because Ant is in the process of being essentially nationalized or broken up to a degree because of Jack Ma's public criticism of the system. Having someone on quickdial doesn't mean having them under your control or in your pocket.

>It is not as if he doesn't have Xi or any other high level party official on quickdial.

I highly doubt it, Ma was never on Xi's side in the first place those high level party official he once had dont matter in Xi's era anymore.

Ma didn’t publicly criticize the party as far as I know. Do you have sources to suggest otherwise?

He criticized the system in China. That's a huge no for the CCP.

He didn't just criticize the Chinese system. He criticized the Chinese system regulating themselves so that they could conform to the Basel V standards (which all major Western banks and global banks follow). Ant wanted to fight as a bank, while not calling themselves one. Ma's speech was an attack not only on China but on the Western regulated banking sector. He wants a return to the pre 08 wild west that the Western system was.

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