China's leadership seem fairly intent recently on destroying the areas where China's economy was picking up. Tech companies, software developers, and now anything innovative that would benefit from external investment to get off the ground.
There is an meme online titled "When China made a decision", followed by a picture of the Prime Minister of Singapore laughing (see link 0 for sample), hinting the fact that due to many mistakes made under Xi's administration, companies/economic entities (including Chinese founded ones) are moving away from China to Singapore, often citing social control and economic reasons.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/real_China_irl/comments/162oc8g/%E6...
However, I don't really think that's all Xi's fault. There are so many things you just simply don't know if you're a child of nepotism. The party highleaders created their own social class, and as result, they and their offspring became disconnected from the reality more and more generation by generation. Most of them has so little experience of real people and so many experience of nepotism, it is already a miracle if they can still maintain a healthy mental condition, let alone the capabilities needed to do things right.
The same kind of disconnection can also explain why the highleaders believed that the Wolf Warrior Tactic was a smart move: they simply don't understand how politics work, so the most primitive solution became the most obvious to them.
At home, they say the sky is red, everyone says "Yes" or gets a visit from the secret police.
So they do the same thing elsewhere, and there's criticism, memes, humor, apologism, etc... all the features of a more open information space with diverse opinions.
But they have little basis for how to interact with that, because they didn't need any of the nuanced soft power skills at home.
And so you get Russia endlessly repeating 'Everything is proceeding as planned in the special military operation' and China saying the Philippines "deliberately stirred up trouble" by navigating and claiming Philippine UNCLOS-EEZ waters in the Spratlys.
Such as in Africa where Chinese and Russian propaganda along side homegrown Propaganda is actually pretty convincing for the citizens there.
That is the old(er) (outdated?) view of propaganda. The/A new view is to generally not necessarily care about about any particular message:
> We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”
* https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/i...
(Of course you can do both.)
The strategy seems more about decoupling and independence from foreign interference and potential sanctions. Likewise, when foreign investors leave it is also because they've seen what was done to Russia and thus don't want to repeat that with China, which would be massively more costly.
Edit with data:
In 2022 Chinese households accumulated $1tn in savings, just over that year (this is something typical in China because of lack of safety net and lack of investments avenues, hence also why everyone wants to buy property to invest their cash): https://www.crugroup.com/knowledge-and-insights/spotlights-b...
China also has $3.2tn in foreign cash reserves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-exchange_reserves_of_C...
They also use that cash as a tool of foreign policy with loans to foreign countries in excess of $240bn: https://www.reuters.com/markets/china-spent-240-bln-bailing-...
1. It's about 2 month's salary for low to low-medium level, in most big cities.
3. Rent for one room, about 120 square foot is about $100 per month, in big cities.
2. It costs 2 to 3 us dollars for one-person's meal, with 4 to 5 dollars you can get a good meal. Tax included.
At the end of the day, "wanting to be a superpower on par with the US or greater" and "isolating yourself from barbarians" are two incompatible goals. Superpowers need to build coalitions and attract allies; this cannot be done without some mixing of the involved nations, even if it just concerned students, businesspeople, investors, soldiers and diplomats.
Long term for the country it is terrible strategy, unfortunately short term for the dictator and his cronies it is profitable.
Another example of this recently - imprisoning your top entrepreneurs is a great way to ensure that your tech industry completely dies, but only over a long time frame as nobody comes up to replace the current companies (they all leave if they can). In the short term it offers great opportunities to enrich the leadership at the expense of all that wealth generated in previous decades, and at the expense of course of the country's future wealth.
So long term a disastrous decision for the country, short term it pays out for the current leaders if their cover up domestically is sufficiently thorough and there are other events to distract the populace (e.g. expansion through war).
I wish that was a problem only in dictatorships.
> long term a disastrous decision for the country, short term it pays out for the current leaders if their cover up
Dictators will remain in charge long term. To that extent their interests are better aligned with those of the country. I decision that will be bad in the medium term can be quite good for the ruling party in a democracy if they lose the next election and can persuade the electorate to blame whoever is in charge at the time.
Coincidentally, things could align, but they often don't.
IMHO most Chinese citizens remember that whenever they fight each other (civil war...) disasters happen, and therefore the most important mission of the government is to squash any growing quarrel. Everything else is ancillary.
I find this hard to believe
It isn't either in a democracy.
In a way it's even more insidious in a democracy because the corruption is hidden better by one or a few layers of indirection. In the end however corruption and interests of the powerful is king.
The government listens carefully to top bosses describing in which way it can help them. The major challenge is for them to align their various plans.
The government also acts as a referee, crushing quarrels they cannot tackle themselves, in a brutal way (this may be an approach adopted in order to entice them into rather solving it by themselves, letting the referee act as a last resort).
As a Chinese (entrepreneur or not) if you stay away from politics and, as a big fish boss, play by those "let's cooperate in order for the gov to help all of us" rules I doubt the gov will annoy you.
> imprisoning your top entrepreneurs
Jack Ma (Alibaba) was AFAIK playing at best solo, and at worse against most other entrepreneurs in his sector, and didn't abide to numerous warnings. Then he directly publicly and harshly criticized the financial sector, and announced that his company will become more and more of a direct competitor for banks. The gov then took care of his case.
I like J. Ma, however it seems to me that his style, probably forged through his personal history, isn't compatible with the way things are done in China.
Was another top entrepreneur imprisoned?
This approach is way more efficient than my own government (the European Union and France's government) way: acting as the boss of bosses by devising its own strategy with at best vague (and often neglected) inputs from experts (most chosen among friends or lobbyists) then burning huge amounts of money into void projects (often nurturing cronies), taxing everything in sight, promulgating laws framing any new thing...
As to unofficial disappearances, here's a short list of the most prominent, imprisoned and threatened for becoming popular and/or critical of the regime:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappea...
Many foreign companies have been threatened too - leading to Google for example leaving the country, Apple's supplier is currently under threat:
https://www.ft.com/content/e6abcb86-1c80-4914-ae54-c7df94d7a...
Finally, they also insert CCP members at board level in companies to control their direction directly: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business...
As to saying China is more efficient than France, France is a terrible example for efficiency, so that's a very low bar, but at least France isn't a dictatorship and has rule of law, I know where I'd feel safe investing.
My point was only about business (relationship between companies and the gov).
> unofficial disappearances
Apart from Jack Ma (I proposed an explanation), this list isn't about business: artist, actor, Interpol chief, and "A Hong Kong-based publisher who specialised in sometimes gossipy books about China’s political elite".
> foreign companies have been threatened
Indeed, my point was only about Chinese entrepreneurs and bosses, sorry for having neglected to state it.
> they also insert CCP members at board level in companies to control their direction
"The party doesn’t habitually micromanage their day-to-day operations. The firms are largely still in charge of their basic business decisions"
Also: "But pressure from party committees to have a seat at the table when executives are making big calls on investment" may be in line with my hypothesis: the gov enforces respect of a strategy defined by all (AFAIK the Japanese MITI also acted this way).
My point isn't about the Party's ways to enforce the strategy of a sector but about the method used to define this strategy: it seems to me that it mainly is defined by companies' bosses.
There also is a real will to strictly control the political side of things, which may explain some actions, which aren't the usual way.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67186745
'For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law'
China does not have rule of law, the law is used to intimidate rivals for power and applied very selectively. This is not just for people at the top, businesses at all levels feel this danger. It’s also not just for business people but anyone prominent. These are all hallmarks of a dictatorship.
My point is that, albeit there are perimeters strictly under its exclusive control (Taiwan being one, battles opposing Chinese individuals/companies being another), entrepreneurs and bosses are quite free to decide and to act.
Everything related to Taiwan is heavily politically loaded in China, this is one of the few taboos, and everyone knows it there.
This sort of behaviour and cooking the books by falsifying data is not compatible with foreign investment or a growing economy.
Now Xi (and unfortunately the rest of China with him) will reap the inevitable consequences of his policy shift from relatively open to a closed dictatorship.
Tech companies are examples of runaway mindlessness. Their scale has lost purpose long ago. They are over valued and over rated from a social cost stand point.
Their capabilities don't translate to real world reduction in health costs, education costs, housing costs, energy costs, defense costs etc. They infact increase those cost for everyone with time.
It's pseudo innovation from con men or the clueless. Natural that govts are reacting and overreacting. Good times are over world over. Jurassic Park is out of control.
If a well-earning programmer settles somewhere in a rural place, it means a) more money spent in a small community, b) one fewer affluent person seeking housing in an urban hotspot.
I would guess that the aggregated effect worldwide is an order of magnitude higher than whatever passes in Portland and SF.
The theory is good. Unfortunately, that downward pressure doesn't seem to be having any effect for cities in many western nations. Pretty close to runaway house pricing these days. :(
Ofc I had to lower my expectations with regard to good restaurants etc., but the resulting slack in our monthly household budget is enjoyable.
People will be unwilling to live in a small apartment or house in Ostrava the way they would in Prague so prices would skyrocket to beyond unaffordable very quickly.
The current trend of everyone coalescing into a few ant-like megalopolises has to revert somehow, otherwise we will end up in a dystopia: casket-sized microapartments costing 50 per cent of your income in rent.
Land is enormously valuable in huge cities and that is what is driving the cost of living up. Meanwhile, there is a ton of underused land elsewhere.
The CCP answer is that it's for the state. Policing benefits from enhanced data collection. Social media allows them to control and monitor domestic discourse. Consumer electronics exports create vast amounts of foreign exchange and very sticky attachments to international supply chains.
All other activities are fine, and specific areas basically are real tech are very much supported, eg, semi, semi equipment, chip design, EDA, etc. Chinese gov are saying instead of thousands of smartest phds trying to figure out how to play financial games, get them to build the lithography machine, cuz the latter creates real economic value.
They are simply trying to short China to profit, like they did before so many times.
This is not even news: in "Regulation of platform market access by the United States and China: Neo-mercantilism in digital services" published in 2022 you can read
Since 2009, both countries have progressively restricted access to each other's domestic information services markets. In both cases, the primary stated rationale involved national security claims rather than trade policy concerns
It's happening both ways.