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Comment by magpi3 | Hacker News Reader

> not only has billions of U.S. dollars just went to China without anything in return

Genuine question: doesn't Chinese crackdown on its tech industry and private education industry have a greater impact on Chinese people (who are also investors) than it does Americans?

Your post seems to imply that both actions were designed almost specifically to harm American pension and hedge funds. I would think that is just a side effect of the real goal (whatever that exactly is).

I am in China currently, but I am as ignorant of the underlying motives behind the crackdowns. I just know some Chinese friends involved in after school education (which is a huge market here) who are worried right now. I do believe it is possible, however, that the crackdown on private education is because of the pressure that kids are put on over here. But maybe it's naive of me to think that.

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Exactly. There's a myopia here: people[1] prone to imagine global geopolitics as a zero sum war between superpowers imagine ever action by the superpower they're unfamiliar with as some kind of targetted attack.

But the PRC government doesn't see it like that. Historically, they are far, far more vulnerable to their own people than they are to the US, which at the end of the day just wants to buy cheap junk and sit around streaming movies.

So if I see the CCP moving against financial interests inside China, I'm going to assume that they view those financial interests as the threat they're trying to control.

[1] And there are a LOT of such people here on HN.

This is my opinion: but my belief is that the crackdown on education is not about the health and well-being of children, it’s 2 different reasons.

1) it’s crazy expensive to have kids in china now. This is putting off people from having kids. Removing the one child policy hasn’t helped the birth rate and with a growing aging population, china needs more people to have kids. Removing things that cause having kids to be expensive will (their hope) make couples want to have kids.

2) the last couple of generations have worked their butt off to put their kids in higher education for the dream of a better life and a white collar job. Recently they tried to merge schools which would make some degrees useless and force graduates into blue collar jobs. After the recent protests the merging of schools got scrapped. I believe this move is a stepping stone to try and prevent some people from progressing to degrees and force more people into blue collar jobs and keep their manufacturing industry alive.

Hey thanks for the info; this is very interesting to know; mind sharing some links (English or Chinese is fine) on the protests regarding the merging of schools? Thanks!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57409218 Was first link on Google. But it’s 1am I need to sleep!

this is nonsense, especially 2. Job market does not work that way. If everyone is a data scientist, there are only 10 data scientist jobs, only 10 will be data scientists and the rest will work on other sectors.

You do get a lot of disaffected former data science majors in that scenario though. At least in the short term.

If your parents spent a ton of money on you getting you educated and you got a degree in data science. Would you go work in a factory? Would your Chinese parents allow you to work in a factory? Remember china has a huge culture of being about face. They want to say “my son works as a neurologist” not “my son works in the assembly line at Foxconn”.

Most people in the west who get a degree as a lawyer don’t go work at McDonald’s for the next 40 years, despite the fact we have too many lawyers. They choose to not work at all until they can find a job with their degree.

Xi's thinking behind cracking down the after-school education sector started from 2018, he published an essay on this issue. From 2018, the ministry of education has been issuing orders to reduce the study pressure of school kids [1]. Chinese government set an objective, a few policies will lay out to achieve it, the current crackdown is just a follow-up when ministry of education's policy didn't work out, now four ministries are working together on this objective.

[1] http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A06/s3321/201802/t20180226_327...

>I am in China currently, but I am as ignorant of the underlying motives behind the crackdowns.

Why search for underlying motives when the overt motivates are clear; Chinese tech companies should 'come home' to mainland capital markets. The script is simple:

1) Ticket X is floated in an NYC-based exchange 2) China announces some regulatory crackdown affecting X, whose valuation falls precipitously 3) X goes private at a fraction of its original valuation 4) X is re-listed Shanghai / Hong Kong 5) The regulatory challenges affecting X miraculously dissipate

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