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Comment by Ajay-p | Hacker News Reader

Is this pandering or do these business leaders truly honor and respect President Xi? By all accounts he is a dictator and many of China's governmental policies run contradictory to Western values and morals. This is not to assume that America is perfect, or without its own problems, but the basic principals of free speech, elections, and assembly in China are without question deplorable.

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I'm reading "Trade Wars are Class Wars" by Klein and Pettis. The thesis is in the title and his case is convincing. American elites have every reason to give Xi a standing ovation: his oppression of the Chinese worker has played a key role in pumping American assets into the stratosphere and subduing American labor interests. Not only do they love him for it, they should love him for it.

You and I? Maybe not so much.

How has he suppressed the Chinese worker?

TWCW cites 40% labor-share-of-value-add (vs 70% typical) as the macro figure and gives the hukou system as one example of policy that achieves this outcome.

What do the "business elite" actually care about? Power. End of story. A lot of people will say money, but money is just an indicator of power and tool for achieving it. Xi has ultimate power. He can bend the entire global south to his will. The Musks, Zucks, Bezos, Thiels of the world lust after that kind of control.

You guys are reading a LOT into this headline. The only direct quote:

> On his way into the Hyatt, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio told the Financial Times he was “excited to have this relationship [with Xi]”.

All this is saying is they just showed up to a conference with Xi. These guys do business in a place that is very hostile to American business. Keeping a good image in their eyes helps keep all of those factories the average American depends on chugging along without interference. Image matters a lot to small minded leaders and certain Asian cultures.

But otherwise I don't see any evidence they are hyping Xi up or something. It's just "big american companies show up at conference with Xi Jinping and one guy said he's excited".

Its simpler than you think.

China is a big market with a growing middle class. Read that to mean - they have money to spend. They also have a large labor pool and world class manufacturing.

More consumers, more labor - that's opportunity.

It doesn't even matter if a world leader orders the dismemberment of journalist. [1] The values and morals of American business leaders is always up for sale.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/10/29/saudi-arabia-ho...

Right but many things in china are done better than the US such that an average business person or citizen can live a relatively happy life.

Most people don't exploit the right to protest or the right to speak Ill of their government in a public venue.

The western view of China is not fully correct. You have to take a more neutral view. It is two competing ideals. The US has plenty of deplorable that are on the scale of the "evils" china has done and china has done "good" also to to the same level of not greater than what the US has done.

It is wrong to look at this through the lens of ohh china is just another dictatorship.

What's the problem if that is the case? If we truly believe that these values are beneficial to humankind, why would we dislike Chinese to act differently, handicapping themselves?

I would argue, the only reason why we would object is if we secretly believe that these values are not in fact beneficial, but merely luxury goods rich nations can afford to make life nicer, at the cost of restricting their growth. Only then Chinese not doing the same sounds like a genuine threat.

Today's business leaders are members of the managerial class. Xi is probably the world's most important manager, so there may be some sincere appreciation. (now think about what this chinese manager did to the oceans, the people, etc and what a sincere standing ovation would mean)

According to Bloomberg and a few other sources, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to Xi Jinping and asked him to name his child. Like, what has to be in one's head to even consider such a thing...? Can you imagine asking Trump or Joe Biden to name your child?

Well, Zuck did exactly that. You really can't make it up.

Source?

I must correct myself, apparently he didn't write him a letter but rather actually asked him in person with other people present in the room. Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-...

Bloomberg clip: https://youtu.be/S20BoxH8W9g

Much appreciated!

I have an utter dislike of Zuck, but there is no evidence this happened. Unnamed source tells page six, the Bloomberg reports on the page six article.

Never heard that one… His wife has Chinese heritage though so I can see a more culturally rooted desire to have the region’s leader name your child.

It's absolutely pandering.

These same lads denounce democrats and progressives for being "socialist" or "communist" for not backing unhinged neo-liberal policies. Xi is literally an authoritarian communist quasi dictator and gets a standing ovation.

Private ownership of capital is legal in China. It’s not communist at all.

Oh here we go again, but CCCP was a communist state, eh?

This is akin to calling everything and everyone socialist.

The Soviet Union was a socialist state: that was the word they used to describe themselves. It was ruled by the Communist Party, which has nothing to do with the economic or political system the country followed. The best word to describe China's economic system is Mercantilism.

I believe, academically, the phrase used to describe China's economy is "socialist market economy". However, that doesn't preclude calling Xi a "communist", as the other commenter did above. A person is not the economy, and I think there is plenty of evidence to conclude that Xi is worth of the label.

It’s a middle road between communism and capitalism. Sure, you can own capital, but annoy the regime, and you’ll soon be relieved of your assets by the ultimate owner: the state.

Sounds like a capitalist dictatorship to me…

People need to stop defining stuff by whether or not it works the way you want it to work. We still call a capitalist system “capitalist” if it’s broken for the same reason we still call a box a box if the bottom has given out and it can’t hold anything.

Private ownership of capital is allowed at the discretion of the communist party in China.

This is similar to how weed was "illegal" for decades in the US. Note the quotation marks. "illegal" is different from illegal.

Saying china is "communist" is different then saying china is communist.

Yes it’s an authoritarian capitalist society.

State ownership of capital is legal in the US.

Basically all economies are at least a little bit mixed. We label them based on whichever principles are predominant.

Capitalism doesn’t exclude the government from owning capital. Communism does exclude the private ownership of capital.

Yes, but if we want to be that pedantic, we should also specify that Xi is a person and not an economy. The person you replied to above did not say that China has a communist economy, they called Xi a communist.

If someone is heavily influenced by Marxist-Leninist ideology, calls themself a communist, and leads a communist political party, it is reasonable to call them a communist.

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