What really happened to Jack Ma?
forbes.com
forbes.com
When you then ask where Ma is I would say it's pretty clear - Ma is being held out of the way whilst this happens. There's no point in causing drama whist they're doing this, just hold him out of the way and in about 18 months there'll be nothing for him to come back to. At that point they'll no longer need him, all the businesses will be managed by cronies of the state. So what happens when they no longer need him? If he's lucky they'll let him manage some tiny sliver of his former empire, but I can't imagine them taking the risk of him fleeing and becoming a powerful critic, so I guess most likely thing to do is trump up charges of corruption and prosecute him.
Having experienced that first hand, Deng implemented the term limit, so that there won't be a position of absolute power for the rest of one's life (it's just too much a temptation and thus recipe for chaos every 20-30 years or so).
Now that the term limit is gone, I don't think the transition would be as smooth as the past two decades.
No... the man had zero sympathies for the civil state.
He just planned to stay in power way longer, and organised it so that all senior party men coming after him will be in compromised positions.
Similarly, Jiang never left the power on good terms, but with a hefty pack of compromising info on party elites, and arranging for new coming leadership being very weak.
Only Hu possibly left the power unconditionally, and without any power left, but only because he was weak.
The long answer is Stalin's supporters said the exact same things. And it's not a surprise -- Xi is borrowing a lot from Stalin's centralization playbook, including "restructuring" the PLA (i.e., purging generals who weren't loyal to him personally and ensuring he has a Party loyalist on every ship) and developing the rank and file (to replace the Party leaders he purged in "corruption scandals"). However, this time around, those of us outside the system smells the b.s. a mile away.
China would be wise to remember that Stalin came thisclose to losing WWII because of these changes. Purging military leaders may make them loyal to you, but it doesn't make them good at their actual jobs.
RE: the PLA and the party membership, I was referring to changes that mostly took place during the 1990s, which had much broader implications on the locations of structural power within the PRC than anything that’s been done in the last decade.
The next General Secretary of the party and Chairman of the CMC would both be elected by the party's Central Committee. Whoever is selected as General Secretary will most likely also be chosen as President, since this is mostly a ceremonial role. The majority of the Central Committee are in the same faction as Xi is currently, so it seems more likely than not that they'll find people from within their ranks to fill these positions and attempt to strengthen the collective leadership.
I definitely think politics are less unified in China that it may appear, and the whole situation with Jack Ma is an example of "multiple power centers bumping into each other".
But I guess the difference between crown and communism is best explained in Animal Farm.
'Communist' and 'nation' are mutually exclusive terms. There's no such thing as a communist nation, it's not possible. Communism as originally defined by Marx is lack of a state.
You can start another 100 countries and call them communist but they're really only Leninist (or derivative ideological strains). Guys starting with Lenin took the rather popular idea of statelessness, which is required to completely eliminate the master-slave / lord-serf / employer-employee relationship of capitalist employment, and used that popular economic ideology to create a vanguard state to work towards communism. It was always an attempt, either sincere or not, as a jumpstart towards communism.
I'm not a communist, nor am I a sympathizer. I'm a wholehearted statist in favor of democracy. I do think there are lessons to be learned from Marx's examination of the capitalist economic model, and believe we could have a better hybrid system with workers' cooperatives to compete with capitalist enterprise. I'm just telling the truth on this one, there cannot be a communist nation. It's a complete contradiction. Lenin completely understood the USSR couldn't possibly be both a state and communist, but admitted this, and called it communist anyway. And all of this is why if you read about 1800s communists, they're all referred to as anarchists. Still are, if you're talking to someone that understands communism.
Authoritarianism comes in every flavor of Kool-Aid.
China, however, is not communist. China is fascist.
> Fascism: authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy
Only if the people aren't onboard. The whole idea of communism is with people being onboard (and running soviets, worker councils, etc).
Some not being onboard is OK - communism is about majority rule, not what some person likes or dislikes. In that, it's like any other system. A modern democracy also doesn't care if somebody likes to sell heroin freely, or whether they'd rather have a King.
If you're gay and can't marry who you want because the majority says so, it doesn't matter if the dictator or your peers told you so.
What makes communism necessarily authoritarian, as compared to capitalism (which can be, but is not necessarily authoritarian), is that communism is a prescriptive ideology. It stipulates outcomes regarding distribution of resources, how hierarchies are manifested or not manifested, economic relationships, etc. Capitalism is an ideology of systems, unconcerned with outcomes. This is why communes can exist in capitalist countries, but private enterprises cannot exist in communist countries.
A state that governs with a communist endstate in mind might still be regarded as communist, even if they use capitalist policies to get there.
I strongly doubt that a communist system would be ok with everyone not being onboard. It is highly likely that any disagreeing individuals would be classified as bourgeoisie or enemy of the revolution.
The CCP's take is "Mao was 70% right" and officially identifies as communist. Its stated end goal is a communist society. It is in service of this goal that they are taking a capitalistic / globalization route to expanding their Lebensraum. Whether CCP = China I guess is another discussion, but I don't have a strong view there.
They can call themselves communist all they want, but all they have in common with it is the authoritarianism.
As far as crediting their rise due to their economic opening, I’d say that is not reproducible. Not without the agreement of the wealthiest nation in the world to begin massive investment into it. If it were that easy every nation would do it for the same result.
Definitely agree on everything else, and I addressed this more completely elsewhere in this thread but it’s impossible to have a communist country. Communism is anarchy. Leninism is a vanguard state.
If everything I do is being validated for value by management and bosses, and my buying power is managed by bankers who have inflationary powers to dilute my earnings, we’ve just made managed economy ephemeral. We’ve socially normalized grift and protection rackets.
Some estimates suggest up to 30% of inmates are innocent. And when plenty are in there for marijuana, that’s a bit more petty than a billionaire disrupting an entire society.
Rather than real prisons we let people die on the streets from preventable disease so we can say we didn’t force anyone into anything as if letting them rot is glass half full.
It’s a shame the “I am educated and worldly” community hasn’t put much though into the depth to which relativity applies to human existence.
If we’re going to intentionally avoid lifting people up at the cost of putting agency into propping up the already rich, well, the poor can never experience the alternative to form meta opinions.
This bantering in traditional political memes is patronizing and ignorant af given our scientific understanding of reality.
I get the difference. It doesn’t absolve our culture of ignoring it’s deficiencies. But look what happens at a university in 2008 when students simply sit on the ground.
Is there a difference? Or have we just accepted our fate?
I don’t think I’m the one that needs to take tour advice.
Relativity; being poor isn’t a character flaw. Lack of experience means not knowing what one should be fighting for.
Relativity is a scientific fact yet in the free world we enable class-based suffering. Do we throw them in a gulag?
No, we let them rot in the open in tents under bridges, and complain about it. We’re far more civilized.
Even for engineers buying power is incredibly diminished by inflation to prop up Bloomberg’s and grandpa’s property portfolio he was able to afford starting in 1970.
Normalized agency in deference to political nostalgia not what communities need isn’t constrained to China and has real consequences on lives. Is it jackboots with machine guns? No. But the effects are just as measurable.
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BABA:NYSE?window=5Y&com...
I have friends travel to interesting places during times of (relative) stability. To paraphrase one of the guys that I know: "When you travel in some of these places, you exist at that time and place, not because you belong there or have a right to be there, but because nobody has decided you shouldn't."
I have always kept that in the back of my mind when traveling, even in places that I would consider first-world. It is certainly something that I would keep in the forefront of my mind if I lived or worked in a place like CN. It is always interesting to watch people who push the boundary, become emboldened and forget that they aren't the ones making the decision for their fates.
I have always thought of CN as one of those countries that wants all the benefits of a western society, with expectations that people will conform, with an implicit "or else".
He did have to escape on short notice after he shared or said something on his YouTube channel that offended the Chinese government (IIRC).
In the USA, the rules are known well in advance. There might be questionable rules, but POTUS cannot decree a rule into existence and put a bag over your head an hour later.
What the US does to non-citizens outside the USA is a messy area. Inside the USA? The rules are far more clear.
As a collective institution there was the whole Edward Snowden thing where he pointed out that the NSA had definitely not been following those rules and no one who knew what they were doing seemed particularly keen on stopping them.
> Inside the USA? The rules are far more clear.
Is false. The NSA was/is carrying out a mass spying operation over a number of years and involving hundreds of people that directly contravenes those rules.
Can you clarify this? As far as I'm aware, the US govt can dispute anyone's citizenship without recourse, even if you're holding e.g., a valid passport.
From 2016: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/22/504031635...
As far as I know, nothing in this article has changed.
Your cite does not support your claim. If Palma had ever had a US passport (expired or not), his situation would never have occurred in the first place.
They'll just fabricate lies, label you a terrorist or a "Russian spy" and put you in prison.
You mean like this guy, for example? https://www.npr.org/2020/12/11/945565473/u-s-clears-for-rele...
Or the (by now, likely in the thousands) people killed by US drone attacks?
I don't want to play the whataboutism card, but let's not pretend that the US is somehow exceptional here. In fact, I'd consider it one of the more troubling countries, with the kindappings, Guantanamo, and the "grey area" on the borders, where your constitutional rights do not apply.
The world is not a nice place, and the US is no exception, unfortunately.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793
"Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733
According to this ^, the police in the US is 3.5x more likely to kill civilians compared to other developed nations. (It would be interesting to find a world-wide comparison here.)
These soundbytes usually (intentionally) omit half of the story. For example, how many police officers are being killed in encounters with black men?
And how many less lethal (for black men) encounters would there be with black men not attacking officers or third persons but actually complying with police orders?
The greatest danger to a black person's life only second to coronary diseases is another black person.
It's these kind of questions which grievance studies activists and journalists never (dare to) ask.
Unlike your claim that "journalist never (dare to) ask", the numbers of violence against police are well studied, published and easily available with a search. Had you done that, you'd have realized that your basic premise is wrong: violence _by_ police is significantly higher than violence _against_ police.
Indeed, police work is _less_ dangerous than e.g. farming, construction, trucking and sales.
https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfar0020.pdf
Edit: if you are interested, check also this https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-23/how-da...
Logging, fishing, aircraft, roofing, recycling, even landscaping is more dangerous than police work in terms of fatalities. Yet you don't hear politicians complain about the dangers of landscaping work, do you? Why do you think is that?
Criticize the US as much as you want (after all, you can do it), and the US government DOES deserve a good deal of criticism, but saying that the countries are somehow equivalent in the consequences for anti-state speech is laughable.
In many countries, cities, and neighbourhoods in "the west" if you aren't white you experience exactly the kind of insecurity you describe elsewhere. There are plenty of incidents where non-white residents are arrested while working on their own car, or entering their own home because a neighbour saw them and decided they did not or could not belong. There was a rather notable protest movement just last year that had it's roots in a group of people not being allowed to freely exist in the same way as the rest of society.
Does this go beyond anecdotes and are that quantifiable occurrences that are disproportionally happening in the west vs. other countries? Because I know of many contrary anecdotes of Non-European people, living very safely and without such concerns in western countries.
In my opinion I'd tend say that modern western societies are the most safe and welcoming societies for foreigners, were you face the least amount of discrimination as an outsider.
I think it depends on so many factors that you shouldn't make a blanket statement in any direction. You can say both things on different areas of the same city.
Corruption is a pretty good example. When it occurs non-western country it's called out and criticised but when speaking about western countries we dress it up in fancy clothes. In the U.S. it's "Lobbying", in the UK it's "Cronyism" or "Chumocracy". By redefining the terms, corruption becomes something that only happens elsewhere, in less "civilised" places, and not something that has to be dealt with at home.
Labour could be another, there's a huge lack of perspective in discussions around foreign labour standards where we will condemn the working conditions in China or India while ignoring the fact that these people are experiencing those conditions working in the factories of some of the wealthiest companies in the west.
The only people who feel this way are people who have been scared into it by reading too much of this garbage
Yeonmi Park, a defector (escapee?) from North Korea, was surprised in what could and could not be said in the US when she went to university:
Her father was literally sentenced to a labor camp. How can that possibly compare to anything you'd run into at Columbia. Yeah, it's annoying that people wouldn't cut her a break with the pronoun stuff as she was learning english. But again, that's worse than North Korea?
People learn fast if things are not good. If you’re targeted, if you’re harassed.
I don’t mean people who have very little choice (their home countries are so bad they have to leave), but I mean middle class families who have alternatives. They still choose the west as a destination by choice.
I think this is a reasonable proxy indicating life isn’t bad for foreigners immigrating to the west. If it were bad, they’d choose to stay home or a neighboring country that has similar culture.
Also, regarding travel. Most people experience their travel to other countries as middle class visitors, not as lower class visitors. Take someone from a first world country who didn't go beyond high school who earns <$25,000 and put them in one of these places and see how far their skills take them.
This is the same sentiment that I get from most non-white foreigners.
In terms of the typical outcomes, in the first case those people are rightly considered criminals and will be held accountable if caught. In the second there is usually no accountability even though we know who carried out the action.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/21/the-man-who-re...
From China's point of view, the creation (and concentration) of (large amounts) of wealth in the hands of individuals, leads to the concentration of power. That power in turn, becomes a threat to the current approach of the CCP, and the messages being shared with society.
In 2019, China began working with PWC in an effort to repatriate, or at least dual-list IPOs, in either Shanghai (Star) or Hong Kong. DIDI publicly want against that goal - by single-listing on the Nasdaq.
By accruing a massive amount of wealth, and freedoms, Ma began to become a thorn in the side of the CCP. It's one thing to have (direct) access to finances, it's another to disparage the state-run financial system. But it's still another to control purchase platforms, chat platforms, and the next-generation of educated, technology executives. This is where he was.
Ma has been silenced, the threat has been eliminated. The CCP has proven, once again that they are adept at addressing both the internal and external threat to their perceived stability.
EDIT: I don't mean this critically, I'm actually quite interested. There seems to be a correlation between how repressive a government is and how nasty they are towards LGBTQetc people. I never considered this to be a causal relationship until your comment. Maybe somehow Putin and Orban and Xi think that that this helps them stay in power? How? Why?
Warning if you don’t want to get angry: it is full of repulsive views.
Authoritarians instinctively cling to the old roles/family and even if are not able to fully stop changes (US is amazing at exporting ideology) they try to and battle against LGBT is part of that fight.
I do not think you can directly connect authoritarian and being anti LGBQ outside of modern context - Xi, Putin or Orban views on lgbt were mainstream in US only 20-30 years ago.
I think you're severely overstating the effect of LGBT people on this matter - western countries struggle with demographics, but it's not because more gay people are able to live their lives without being forced into straight relationships.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230554993_4 https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
Not my views, what I see as the reasons traditional conservatives want to keep LGBT acceptance to a minimum.
(Also, American elites don't really see themselves as struggling demographically.)
Personally, I think they also like being able to blackmail powerful LGBT within their countries/satellites. Historically, when their targets realized that America's fairly tolerant towards foreigners, leftover women, <i>and</i> LGBT people, their targets tended to defect.
Assuming that queer people will somehow take over the world and cause an unsustainable birth rate sounds a bit like the right-wing "gay agenda" conspiracy theory. Not to mention that people born with a vagina can have a male gender identity and still get pregnant, and some trans women can get others pregnant. Sex != gender. Also because gender identity isn't just a lifestyle choice, it's not like all the straight people will somehow get converted.
The Party forced the population to HAVE fewer children in 1980. They did this primarily to jump start their economic modernization plans. Moreover, they figured everyone would start having kids at replacement rates second they lifted the rules. If that happened, they'd be able to consolidate their economic gains.
Economic modernization worked. The kids part...not so much. In fact, there's reason to believe (e.g., maternity store receipts) that their birth rates will look like Japan's or Korea's.
To put it another way, not only are people having fewer kids, they're having far fewer kids than Westerners with equivalent per capital wealth/income are. If that happens, China may not be able to consolidate their economic or international political gains. THAT is what Chinese elites are really worried about.
I, personally, am interested in the elephants in the room. For starters, my lesbian friends and I really wonder if the Chinese censorship machine are responsible for erasing lesbians from Western media spaces -- and especially LGBT spaces. Everyone hears plenty about bi and trans women, but lesbians? Nope. But we're still here.
While I'm not the only one who's noticed this erasure, I think I may be the only one who's also noticed how China's quietly been rolling out aspects of its online censorship system in the West over the past ten years -- and how it's REALLY intensified over the past five (i.e., doxxing, career ruining for anyone with political opinions threatening to the current leaders, sex pic leaks against political opponents, etc.). Guess too many of the Chinese kids studying abroad decided to stay abroad, so it's time to make the English internet feel exactly the Chinese one. Sadly, now the air sucks just as much here. Thanks guys.
More substantively, I find it interesting that absolutely no one will discuss how women in fully economically developed Confucian societies have FAR fewer children than equally economically developed non-Confucian societies (e.g., South Korea and Japan vs. Italy and France).
LGBTQ rights are a sub-set of human rights, in which individuals have self-autonomy/integrity. This may be antithetical to more traditionally collectivist cultures.
An independent judiciary and due process also has a noted history in the West as compared to how things were run in (say) Imperial China:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3624887-the-medieval-ori...
The CCP are is obsessed with the relationship between demographics and war because it always thought that their extraordinary numbers would be their saving grace in WWIII. Now, for a lot of reasons, they're really not so certain.
If you're a CCP leader, gay men aren't the problem so much as it is lesbians. (I've never seen trans people enter into the debate at the policy level, even though all three are existential threats to Confucianism.) The gender imbalance caused by the one son policy really is a problem because it means you have tens of millions of unmarriageable single young men. Historically, the more unmarriageable single young men you have as a percentage of your total population, the more violent crime your society has. If you hit a certain point, revolutions become far more likely. Lesbians -- as well as Chinese women who prefer Western men, their careers, or anything else -- have to be stomped out by any means necessary because because they feel that they are uncomfortably close to that tipping point. It's why a lot of people think the campaign to denigrate leftover women ultimately came from the CCP.
Interestingly, its this demographic imbalance that is the reason for gay porn to still be somewhat tolerated, even if forums aren't. (Lesbian porn still isn't.) Chatrooms and forums are bad because they encourage solidarity and planning; porn is okay because you're just sitting in a room staring at a screen.
Edit: Am I the only one who's a little disturbed at how closely the English language media has followed the Chinese language media on this? And people wonder why I stopped using FB/Twitter/smartphones.
Much easier to sympathize with the expropriation of a Billionaire than some schlub from the middle of nowhere.
Yes, like protecting rich criminals.
> Much easier to sympathize with the expropriation of a Billionaire than some schlub from the middle of nowhere.
Some people never have enough. It is good that sometimes they are shown that limits exist.
And to your second point, are you saying that it is good to threaten, silence or disappear wealthy people in case they might become a threat to your authoritarian regime? I suppose from a purely practical point of view yes that might be the best move. We seem to disagree on the ethics of authoritarianism though.
Look at what fascists do, not at what they say.
So I'm going to stick with them seeming pretty facistic.
Capitalism uses violence against the working class to maintain profits for the owning class.
Revolutions of the working class are violent, yet they end the former violence and exploitation.
Fascism is violence to protect the owning class from a revolution by the working class.
Suppression of capitalists after a working class revolution is also violence to prevent them from regaining power to yet again use violence to exploit the working class.
Violence is just one way to exert power.
If it was a billionaire calling for former small business owners to attack organised labour, that’d be fascism.
That when billionaires become powerful enough to exert unchecked power we lavish praise instead of imprisoning them?
Because the unchecked power of the typical billionaire couldn't achieve what is being done to Jack Ma.
Would you prefer to live under Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un?
It's a completely different type of power than ad tech and a myriad of other lesser powers, it is the most in need of thorough checks and balances.
Just look at my sibling comments here...
I took this at face value and asked my wife (Chinese) what her opinions were on Ma having not been seen in public for so long. Within a couple of minutes she brought up some Chinese social media posts:
video: https://open.163.com/newview/movie/free?pid=TG921CJDP&mid=TG...
that do indeed show Ma giving a speech.
Is this a case of the linked article's author not being aware of Chinese social media?
https://www.reuters.com/technology/jack-ma-makes-rare-visit-...
The project screen behind him in the video looks like it says Aliday 2021 at the top, and the 20 second video clip has subtitles that seem to match what he's saying. The content of what he's saying seems generic, something like "Ali needs to have a singular vision."
I _guess_ it could be real. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a deepfake.
I very much doubt it's DeepFaked. Why bother? If the CCP were holding Ma and wanted him to make a generic video like that for putting up appearances I'm sure they have ways to make him do that. I suspect the OP is correct and it's simply that the author of the article doesn't know how to search Chinese social media.
These days seems like the press has sold out and seems like they are in someone’s pocket…
>These days seems like the press has sold out and seems like they are in someone’s pocket…
We do not want to compensate journalists, and there seems to be quite some risk in doing investigative journalism in China, so I would not expect someone to donate their life as the risk reward ratio is out of whack.
We barely have the choice to compensate journalists. For them to do their jobs effectively, they need to group together. But the people who control the groupings of journalists take active steps to cultivate a feeling of distrust and hostility between the would-be compensators and the controllers of the groups. Are there any news websites that make you feel better and more informed after you've visited them? It always seems like you should feel grateful they haven't started tracking you, got you an expensive and hard to cancel subscription and like your life will be desperately uncertain if you decide to go make a cup of coffee.
It's almost impossible to spend nothing but a couple of dollars and some attention in exchange for quality journalism like it was just a few years ago.
There is one party who controls the interaction between journalists and the public, and prior to casting aspersions on the general public you need to consider their actions.
In the face of declining ad revenue media organizations are much more keen on predictable revenue streams.
This should be pretty embarrassing, so if Didi had legitimate security issues, the CCP would have kept it quiet and gotten it fixed quietly. I think this is to send a message, but I'm not sure to whom.
Could just be a general message to anyone who doesn’t scratch the right backs.
This point would be better if it could be demonstrated by showing that there were a lot of ordinary people taking pictures of Ma in public all the way through October 2020 and then that suddenly stopped.
So I decided to check for myself and searched for 马云 偶遇 on DDG. First result was this article about a woman's selfie with him going viral, published on June 2, 2021: https://new.qq.com/omn/20210602/20210602A02NNM00.html
If he'd known about this, there are many ways the author could've attacked its credibility (e.g. maybe it's a deepfake or an old picture) but given that he doesn't mention it, I conclude that he didn't do enough research and his list of sightings is incomplete.
EDIT: Yep, it's an old picture, also appears in this Zhihu post from two years ago: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/57836061
EDIT 2: Also a few semi-recent results on Weibo: https://m.weibo.cn/search?containerid=100103type%3D1%26q%3D%... I'm too lazy to check how many of them are reposts of old pictures.
> I'm too lazy to check how many of them are reposts of old pictures
You just proved his point - plenty of images available from 2019 and earlier. Plus he used to have flashy appearances that would be reported on international media every once in a while - the lack of those alone tells us something has changed drastically.
We probably will know eventually if $BABA keeps its downward trend and margin calls cannot be fulfilled.
So the borrower should never need to sell enough of the stock to seriously affect the price, and the tax is only payable on a small number, not a big one.
That really may be what's most noteworthy about this case—it feels like it should be a bigger deal, and so it's hard not to speculate about it.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/ber...
From the outside, it sounds like certain SV companies are behaving in the exact same way. But I guess we won't know until someone leaks, huh?
Just sending him to Gulag would be too much of a bombshell even today, so they perpetuate his "semi-imprisonment" just to not let out people thoughts that capitalism is done for in China.
Yes but there is the (pretty high, tbh) risk that he would like to leave china as soon as possible and if it happens, he would be able to talk, and be listened.
- Xi announced more hands-on CCP oversight for all companies in 2020 after a few decades of Wild West-style capitalism. The point of temporary capitalism was to grow the Chinese economy to a Western standard and avoid Soviet-style economic stagnation, which ultimately made the USSR non-viable. Then control and suppress the economoy going forward.
- Xi had himself declared dictator for life, well, to be exactly that. He doesn't need industry titans distracting the population, or leaving him in the shade. There can be only one.
In other words we better hope that someone like Musk will make good on the promise of a new frontier - we need one to have something to aim at other than at our neighbour.
Both China and Vietnam have limited forms of capitalism in order to not be blockaded and be allowed to develop.
Come one, are you really puzzled..... Follow the Money...
US Media (and they are Media not journalists) is a for-profit business tied to entertainment, we have seen all manner of entertainment from movies to sports bow to the directives of China. Why does anyone believe the "news" media would be any different than these other entertainment outlets?
Presenting this as anything but an "internal conflict" doesn't fit their narrative and agenda and therefore it isn't interesting.
China: Cool it, buddy.
US: Outer space? Sure thing. Here is a couple of billions from our infrastructure program.