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Comment by onethought | Hacker News Reader

There are 26 million (official) companies in china. Just to orchestrate such a thing would require an entire department/ministry... could you point out which part of the chinese government apparatus that is?

This is just the normal Chinese gov control everything narrative that people who've basically not spent a lot of time in china tell themselves for whatever reasons.

CCP preserves CCPs power. That's its main focus, it controls what it needs to, to do that. Which it achieves by controlling just the top tier business like 10-20 of them. The other 25,999,980 businesses would likely never hear anything from the CCP in any meaningful way.

This is not dissimilar to how government has fairly significant influence over Amazon/Apple/Facebook etc in the US.

Note: I'm not defending CCP here, they do stupid/bad stuff but controlling every single business is not one of them.

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How is that remotely relevant. At any time a senior figure in the CCP can wipe out the company, hire or fire anyone, put anyone in jail, get anyone out of jail, changes it's managerial direction with a memo, outlaw it's entire industry, make legal it's formerly illegal business, etc, etc. There is not even the concept of private property under the hilarious pretext of chinese "law". Everything is "leased" from the government to be taken back for any reason or no reason at all at any time. There are probably a lot of companies the CCP does really give a shit about but that doesn't mean they aren't the ultimate bosses of them.

There are a lot of broken things in the US but it does have some modicum of separation between business entities and the government as well as a sort of psuedo attempt at rule of law.

I agree with you. Businesses definitely operate with the power of gov in mind. But that is very different to the government actively directing them.

"The party’s efforts to place itself inside private companies have been, according to its own figures, very successful. One recent survey by the Central Organisation Department, the party’s personnel body, found that 68% of China’s private companies had party bodies by 2016, and 70% of foreign enterprises. Although these figures sound high, they don’t match the targets the party has set for itself. In Xi’s old stamping ground of Zhejiang, for example, officials set a target in August 2018 to have cells inside 95% of private businesses. There was a need, the survey said, to retain the revolutionary spirit inside the companies as their ownership was handed on to the next generation."[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business...

Using western propaganda to strengthen a western propaganda point.

There are lots of communist party members in lots of organisations. Just like there are lots of republicans in organisations.

But the premise that you are trying to support is: ccp “controls” all the companies. Not: ccp membership can be found in lots of companies.

“For us small businesses, we have no choice but to follow the party,” says Li Jun, a 50-year-old owner of a fish-farming business in the eastern Jiangsu province. “Even so, we’re not benefiting at all from government policies.” [0]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-xi-clampdown-private-sect...

You are now referring to regulation. Not direct party influence of companies. This is the same as Californian companies complaining they have to follow strict environmental regulations: we have no choice.

Keep the strawmen coming.

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