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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Jack Ma: Hey everyone I'm back after a totally normal time away from China...

CCP (interrupting): Make sure to smile

Jack Ma: sweat...so, while I was gone, and totally unrelated to anything else, we decided on our own to break up and make sure I don't have too much power

CCP: Great news! We hoped you'd totally voluntarily come back and also wow what a great gesture

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I kind of would have preferred they just be strong about it but they are following the west's lead here in pretending like the government and major business isn't just the same thing

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> Jack Ma: [...] we decided on our own to break up and make sure I don't have too much power

Actually very good, would be nice if a few Western companies were splitted this way.

It's pretty common for Western companies to adopt this holding firm type structure, as the article points out it echoes Google's restructuring to Alphabet.

Although you could say that the outcome could be considered the same, the motivations behind it are completely different, as the parent comment mentions

It cannot remain a holding company if these businesses are expected to IPO though, can it?

They can keep a stake in the companies after the IPOs, even higher than 50%.

Sure it could. There's nothing (other than the government, presumably) stopping them from listing six separate companies with, for example, dual-class share structures that leave substantially all voting power to Alibaba Holdings Ltd.

Its good when the government is democratically elected. When its more autocratic like the direction Xi is taking the CCP is just means one power has less challengers which opens the door to catastrophic failure and thoughtless cruelty when the autocratic ruler errs (see the Donbas region today).

The challenge the west has is keeping its democratic institutions strong enough to stand up to wall street, the challenge China has is having anything to oppose the tight grip of the CCP.

It will be interesting if china solves the inequality problems that plague western capitalism first.

This actually puts pressure on the west to look into inequality as a competitive disadvantage

What the heck are you writing about, inequality is part of China's system as much as western one, if not more. All these naïve rich western kids suggesting some variant of communism which will magically cure all capitalism ailments need to spend some years in communism to gain a bit of perspective. Even China moved away from it quite some time ago.

You need to somehow motivate the best and brightest to actually perform and not just drown themselves in playing endless politics, otherwise there is no progress and soon you are poor weak punchbag for others. Its doesn't matter if its with camels, shells or cash, this accepts human nature with all warts and whatnot much better than some theories of spoiled kids who never had to work but felt they know it all (ie mr Marx, really one of more pathetic historical figures).

These are just power games of paranoid Chinese leader who removes all potential competitors (especially those with huge egos) before they can threaten him and establishment

How do we know it was even him in the picture? It's literally just a jpeg.

My conspiracy theory is that the MSS posts a pic of some random dude who looks alike every year or so while the real Jack Ma is currently on the bottom of the Yangtze river.

Pony Ma: [grimace-emoji]

Tencent is less impactful in the world of atoms compared to Alibaba (ecommerce and logistics). Yet in the world of bits Tencent seems to be more scumbag than Ali. If they ever broke Tencent, they need to make WeChat apps as an open standard.

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