Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

I think this, in combination with the author's previous article about the moves the CCP have made on Ma's business make it pretty clear what is happening. Ma is being held whilst his businesses are dismantled. Ant is being turned into a traditional bank, Alibaba is being attacked from several directions, Ma's university (a clear source of soft power) is being shut down.

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.

What happens if Xi kicks the can tomorrow? How smooth is the transition going to be? China is so massive I cant understand how they dont have multiple power centers bumping into each other all the time.

Xi has been in power for under a decade, and there likely are many competing power struggles that take place under him.

Xi wants no waves for the CCP 100th Anniversary celebrations and a few other key milestones this year. That’s why even the wolf warriors are being muzzled at the moment.

Well last time there was a "successor problem" China went through a decade-long political and economic turmoil that was the Cultural Revolution.

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.

> Having experienced that first hand, Deng implemented the term limit

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.

This overlooks many changes that have occurred in the recent decades, such as the restructuring of the PLA (including their decoupling from state business), the development of the socialist market economy, and the further development of the rank and file organization of the party. All of these give structure and order where they didn't exist before. The leadership roles in the party have never been less significant within Chinese internal politics, as the collective leadership has been strengthening for the last three decades.

I really don't know where to start with this. The short answer is no.

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.

I think we must have different understandings of what causes power struggles within leadership. The comparison to the 1953-1956 period in the USSR also feels a bit misplaced to me, as although there was a minor power struggle during that period, it didn’t have broad implications the way the death of Mao did. (I also don’t agree that the structure of the CPC is all that similar to the structure of the CPSU during Stalin’s leadership, but that’s not of much relevance in my mind.)

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.

Calling what led to tens of executions, had an amnestia releasing 1.2 million criminals amongst the public and had top brass spending days in meetings with emergency support being flown in, minor is an understatement

I’m not saying it’s minor apropos of nothing, I’m talking about it in relative terms to the consequences of the Gang of Four’s downfall.

They do, if you remember a while back the head of Shanghai area was prosecuted and brought down on corruption charges, that consolidated power in current leadership because he was an alternate center.

The centralized, unitary structure of the Chinese government and the CPC make it unlikely that there will be a power struggle — there aren't many levers that would-be power players have to pull to achieve their goals (unlike after the Death of Mao, by contrast). Xi holds three positions of authority in China, and it's unlikely that anyone would immediately replace him in all three, as it's only happened in his case because of the confidence that the membership of the CPC has in his faction.

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.

Talking with a Chinese friend of mine, his take was that Jack Ma's imprisonment/disappearance is less about his comments in the October speech and more about an ongoing power struggle in the CCP between supporters of the former General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who is an ally of Jack Ma, and the Xi Jinping faction. The October speech may have just been the catalyst and pretense. As for how smooth the transition would be, Chinese politics are pretty opaque and I'm far from an expert, but from the outside it appears the Xi faction is fairly strong and only growing in power, so I would guess the transition wouldn't be too turbulent.

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".

Yes, I've heard the same thing. Jiang Zemin, Jack Ma, and others like Deng Xiaoping are/were more interested in making money. Xi Jinping is more ideologically motivated, and wishes he could be Mao Zedong.

So Medieval. The Crown accuses you of corruption/sedition/treachery, prosecutes you then confiscates your property as a fine. A bit like Henry 7th in England during his reign. Also a bit like Putin against any oligarchs who dared to oppose him. But then I suppose its a standard pattern of behaviour to give their actions the sheen of lawfulness.

Or like civil forfeiture, the only difference is how rich the victims are.

That's quite a stretch. In civil forfeiture the victim isn't disappeared/re-educated.

The victim has little influence in the first place, there's no need to make sure they can't cause further trouble.

I would say it's plain communism: nothing is yours, the state owns everything (including your life).

But I guess the difference between crown and communism is best explained in Animal Farm.

It’s just authoritarianism

They always come together.

That's because people don't understand the words that they use. Even people that label their countries communist.

'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.

Authoritarianism is possible with most types of government, but is necessary for communism. Most communists are well aware of the fact that an economic system with strict objectives requires a very powerful mechanism in order to accomplish this, and most of those understand that this mechanism is an authoritarian state, but there are obviously the delusional few that refer to the state by any other name (syndicates, guilds).

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

>Authoritarianism is possible with most types of government, but is necessary for communism.

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.

Majority rule is authoritarianism...

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.

There's always pragmatism though - it's possible to say that your end state involves no workers being alienated from their labour, but to allow it for some large number of years on the basis that it will help you get to a good version of the endstate quicker.

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.

Even if the majority was initially on board, one could argue that communism inevitably leads to authoritarianism and is necessary for its continuation.

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.

I agree with everything you said, except for China not being communist.

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.

Many communists assert that "state capitalism" is a step on the pathway to communism. From an outsider's perspective, we watched a failing communist state open up markets under Deng Xiaoping, and become the fastest rising capitalist power in the world. First, the thing that took the country from being a failed state to the fastest elimination of poverty the world has ever seen was specifically its rejection of communism, which is primarily an economic model. Secondly, there still remains no evidence that the country could ever go back in a communist direction and not lose all of the benefits incurred by a market economy.

They can call themselves communist all they want, but all they have in common with it is the authoritarianism.

A market economy has nothing to do with capitalism. Market economies existed long before capitalism was in practice. Capitalism is an employment model.

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.

I don’t really see the inequality of representation and taxation in capitalism as any less authoritarian.

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.

If you don’t see a difference, but millions of others do, it might be worth steel manning the opposite of your conclusions. It’s a useful rhetorical exercise at least.

Millions see sky wizards, should I?

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.

There might be a difference between belief in sky wizards and belief in taxation in capitalism being as authoritarian…

I was not speaking to taxation. I’m speaking to private influence on wages, regressive taxation, privilege for the financial elite, the real health issues and costs of extreme inequality as being authoritarian.

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.

how would this impact the stock? it didn't seem to have responded yet to those news. shouldn't that be the case if those theories were true? lots of large investors should have info on Ma's and Alibaba's fate.

It may be affecting the stock, if you compare the last year to the tech stock prices, it is down significantly.

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BABA:NYSE?window=5Y&com...

that's not much, though. alledgedly, a socialist party is taking control of a highly valued capitalist company - shouldn't that provoke a stronger response?

I don't think CCP would throw away billions of worth just because they dislike the man. Unlike the west, China is allowed to meddle into the affairs of any company, so it's not hard to imagine they are just profiting from him, like a shadow takeover. This explains why he is shown around from time to time: to calm down the investors. At some point this circus would be over, and the companies will collapse by themselves.

So, you could short the stock and make a killing? In around a year or two?

Shorting is about market timing. I wouldn't gamble on China not keeping the price high to save face. It could easily go the other way.

The one in China, i would assume that, but what about the stocks traded outside China? You don't buy tencent stocks in Frankfurt for example..

The market cap chart in the article suggests otherwise; since this started hundreds of billions have been wiped off the value of his business empire and its still declining. The trigger was simply a speech where he didn't even criticize the government directly, just the financial infrastructure (which is itself very interesting - why is the CCP so sensitive to criticism of its banks?).

The CCP makes a trillion dollars a year off of the current status quo, they can afford to throw away billions as long as the trillion keeps coming in.

And the iron grip they need to maintain control on the trillions inbound means they regularly need to stomp on the source of a few 10’s of billions here and there. This is just a slightly larger, and significantly more externally visible version of what they do on the regular - and must - to keep control.

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