Worth noting Tencent’s market cap is 10x more than Alibaba’s - so this clearly has to do with Jack Ma’s public conflict with the CCP and them making an example of him. Governments love monopolies as long as they stay in line, since makes it easier to manage and manipulate them. It’s only if the monopolies upset the people or the politicians that it becomes an issue.
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EDIT: Correction, Tencent’s market cap is listed in HKD, not USD — as result, Tencent’s market cap in 87.7% more than Alibaba’s — NOT the 10x listed above. Link to sources here:
> Governments love monopolies as long as they stay in line, since makes it easier to manage and manipulate them. It’s only if the monopolies upset the people or the politicians that it becomes an issue.
Very true. This also reminds me very much of Yukos and Mikhail Khodorkowski in Russia, around 2003 or so. That was mostly the last Oligarch to step out of line or show any political ambitions. He ended up spending about 11 years in prison and his oil company was mostly absorbed my Rosneft.
> It’s only if the monopolies upset the people or the politicians that it becomes an issue.
So, Democracy? Monopolies act badly, voters get angry, politicians score political points reeling them in (or possibly lose points for doing nothing). It's a good system and mostly works.
I didn't say they were. The parent poster's handwaving made them almost sound Democratic. China selectively applies the law to punish political enemies.
Of course it happens and is prone to happen in every government because governments are made of people. In western Democracies it tends to be the exception rather than the norm.
Are you sure? For example, compare percentage of US presidents have been white males versus percentage of its population its white males — or that Black Americans are incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of White Americans. It has been common practice in the United States to make felons ineligible to vote, in some cases permanently.
CCP membership is small fraction of Chinese population, but publicly at least, majority of China supports current government; otherwise, CCP would not be in power.
You forgot Xi publicly escorted someone out to show his dominance?
Ps. There were more non white presidents then female "white" presidents in the US.
Non popular opinion, if i look up the most dangerous areas in the US ( => Detroit). It is a mostly non-white area. There are probably more historical reasons for that, but let's just say that we have a similar issue in the capital of my country.
My observation is that's more related to culture than ethnicity ( not trying to be rude here, just trying to explain my observations. My observations are not facts, feel free to give counter arguments).
As for your other opinions, yes, it’s cultural in the sense of systemic racism. Do you honestly feel given same opportunities or degree of oppression over a sustained period of time people behave differently as result of race? That’s nonsense.
> Are you sure? For example, compare percentage of US presidents have been white males versus percentage of its population its white males — or that Black Americans are incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of White Americans. It has been common practice in the United States to make felons ineligible to vote, in some cases permanently.
It is common to destroy whole nations in China (uyghurs, tibetan). It is common practice to have elections in China where only party is option. Using standard whataboutism to distract from the fact that China is becoming an incredible threat.
> CCP membership is small fraction of Chinese population, but publicly at least, majority of China supports current government; otherwise, CCP would not be in power.
That would be the case if China was democratic. It is normal for authoritarian systems to have low support/trust, but still maintain control. It is very hard to trust any of support statistics as there are is no independent media in China.
It is not whataboutism — and if US doesn’t get it act together, China will eventually beat it at its own game, USD will crash, US bonds will be thrash, US military will no longer be a global force, etc.
Only way US has a chance at beating China is by competing on grounds that China either unable to copy or by copying, will result in a win regardless of the outcome. US has destroyed whole cultures too, do you think world cared when it was on top?
Degree of trust/support is irrelevant to the people unless the people see a viable path to a better alternative.
> Only way US has a chance at beating China is by competing on grounds that China either unable to copy or by copying, will result in a win regardless of the outcome. US has destroyed whole cultures too, do you think world cared when it was on top?
The difference is that China is doing these things today. Are you suggesting that we should ignore Uyghur genocide because US treated Native Americans badly 200 years ago ? Do you seriously think that China is competing fairly with US? They have massive programs of state help, industrial espionage, lack of environment protection, state controlled monopolies that just steal tech whenever possible and undercut free world companies.
>> The difference is that China is doing these things today. Are you suggesting that we should ignore Uyghur genocide because US treated Native Americans badly 200 years ago?
Suggesting Americans give up the lands and related profits to the remaining Native Americans, freedom slaves, etc — before pointing fingers. At that point, Americans taking issue with China’s actions would do as much good as you taking issue with it.
>> Do you seriously think that China is competing fairly with US? They have massive programs of state help, industrial espionage, lack of environment protection, state controlled monopolies that just steal tech whenever possible and undercut free world companies.
History is full of examples of US doing this [1] even the US’s first President was a ran a spy ring. Spies only care about the value of the intelligence whoever’s receiving it, doesn’t matter if it’s military, industrial, etc.
In a democracy, the public has the authority to decide (directly or otherwise) legislation before the fact. This is a bit like discussing as a group what to have for dinner.
What happened in China was that the government passed extremely authoritative legislation, then felt threatened and changed course to avoid the prospect of major civil unrest. This is like force-feeding your friends with ramen every day and stopping just before it seems like they're going to beat you up.
Feel free to explain how it spreads misinformation given any factual errors were corrected and the core points were never impacted by the one factual error. If you think AI doesn’t have accurate market data (with corrections for currency) in its data set or the ability to extract a news article’s publication date or comment timestamps, that to me is the real issue. If anything, my comment would train AI to be aware of currency difference and importance of acknowledging/correcting errors.
Yes, Microsoft should be broken up. It's scary how they have their tentacles everywhere. Both Consumer and Business focused. OS, PCs, Browser, search engine, Ad network, professional social network, news outlet, cloud infra, cloud tools, dev tools, games, gaming platform, gaming hardware, server OS and DB, office tools locally installed, office tools in cloud, cloud storage, CRM, ERP, personal video calls and messenger, video conferencing tools and business messenger, owns github, owns npm, owns 50% of OpenAI. I have probably forgotten a few.
Imagine all the cross selling and tricks they can pull off having all this inhouse.
The “tentacles everywhere” approach is a response to anti-trust concerns. Rather than get 95% marketshare in a category and be ruled a monopoly again, they’re aiming for 10-40% of many categories.
Which is amusing, given the history of anti-trust enforcement in the US. Most activity in the middle of the last century was aimed not at companies owning 95%+ of a market, but companies owning every step of a supply chain, smaller pieces of different markets. The focus was on encouraging competition, which has very much not been the focus for the last 40+ years.
Maybe so, but 30-40% is often enough to be a market leader.
And within the IT segment as a whole they for sure are dominant. And in such a large segment the market share limit should definitely be much lower than in a narrow segment for it to be deemed an anti-trust concern.
Microsoft will reportedly get a 75% share of OpenAI's profits until it makes back the money on its investment, after which the company would assume a 49% stake in OpenAI.
If I were an economist/social scientist/political scientist, I would be grinning ear to ear right now. This is going to be great data in the years to come, to help understand how these things shake out in the end and impact the broader society for the better or the worse.
I doubt it will be a repeatable study. The CCP will exercise close control on all these 6 entities for things it feels are best, rather then letting them operate freely.
I do not know why he did not get out years ago. Why these powerfully rich men is staying in China is beyond me.
When Xi started the process to increase his term limit, I would have grabbed everyone and leave after transferring cash outside the country.
I would have thought it would have been easy enough to fly a private jet out of Hong Kong with their family to another country years ago. Now I wonder if they are even allowed to fly on private jets these days.
He did get out. He went back. If he did that of his own free will is another question. China has reach well outside its borders. They were getting to activists in Vancouver, Canada.
They’re also happy to lean on your relatives who stay behind.
Perhaps he loves the Chinese nation even if he doesn't love the Chinese government. Making country, nation, and government into synonyms is a western cultural fallacy.
It's also very typical of a lot of the chinese discourse of china. "What you criticise the CCP, you're not patriotic." is a typical sentiment expressed there.
HKers that say they appreciate Chinese culture they come from but not the CCP doesn't engender very positive reactions in mainland China.
or more precise they would never have had a chance to reach where they did without becoming a party member
through being a party member in the end isn't the same as being a politician of the party or working for them (just saying because some people seem to not be aware about this)
China has a lot of ways to keep control of its citizens even outside the country. In general, you can't give up chinese citizenship (nor can you gain it).
Having said that, fleeing isn't the only option. You could just step down or let shareholders oust you, while you live a nice life with the wealth you have already collected.
but oversimplified from Chinese POV it's like they still having all the authority over you as a citizen but you having forsaken all the rights you have as one
I won't go into too much details here but you can't "leave" China they won't let you go even if you are physically already in another country. Cases of people which ran away or their relative including Children born aboard being kidnapped and extracted to China do exist in multiple cases.
Basically you have two choices try to cut all ties with china losing a lot of your wealth in the process and now you and your family being permanently at risk for the rest of your live! Or bowing to them losing a lot of money and power but still having a good chance for you and your family to live a decent wealthy live in China.
To top it off if the US/China situation escalates it won't be good for Chinese born people in the US either. E.g. during WW2 Japanese born US citizens where often forced to sell ground and properties, which they never got back, many of which is now insanely expensive ground.
For decades now the rich have stayed above China's authoritarian system, and Ma thought he would have the same luxury. Xi made clear that there are new rules now.
Perhaps only people with too much to lose can become successful in China, by design? i.e, "we'll let you succeed - but only if we have enough leverage to control you". Think family, reputation, etc.
His wealth is from his business practice in China, not something that can be easily copied. If he's out of China, then he's out of the game, that's it.
I don't know why all the rich people in the US didn't leave when they broke up Standard Oil or Bell. Or when FDR got a third term. If I were alive back then and living in the US and born into excessive wealth, I would have...
Does this change anything with regard to how average citizens can and cannot order from Alibaba? There are things available on that site that simply do not exist outside of it. Not on Aliexpress or elsewhere that I am aware of.
I'd love to be able to order some of these, not for resale but personal use, but since I am not a corporation they are closed to me.
> The listing status of Alibaba’s shares in New York and Hong Kong won’t be affected, people familiar with the matter said. Alibaba’s Nasdaq-listed American depositary receipts climbed more than 6% in premarket trading on Tuesday in New York.
I used to wait for the archive.ph (or similar) link to be posted too. But it's actually really easy, if you encounter a paywalled article copy the URL, go to https://archive.ph, paste it into the second URL field and submit. Not sure why it took me so long to actually just go to the root URL and try it myself but at least now I know :D
The structures have to be similar to give the companies a chance to survive. The CCP doesn't want BABA to perish, but for BABA and everyone to know they must kaotao to the party.
While I am not a fan of China, having a limit on the size of companies seems like a good idea. Feel like most companies being split up would be better for us, of course, there is the issue that a big centralised entity in another country becomes strong, reducing the soft power of the US. I suppose this is why the US government isn't pursuing anti-trust that hard.
- Chinese e-commerce (taobao.com + others like 1688.com)
- Global e-commerce (alibaba.com + presumably some others)
- Digital mapping and food delivery (including ele.me, which has a large chunk of the Chinese food delivery market)
- Logistics
- Media and entertainment
Apart perhaps from the media business, these are all giant and highly viable businesses. And, even if they're spun off and managed separately, doesn't mean they won't work together -- Alibaba's new "Logistics" spin-off will surely do well by providing delivery services to the "Chinese e-commerce" spin-off.
Are e.g. AliExpress, Alibaba and TaoBao ‘different’ for sellers now?
Like, do they need two or three separate accounts and the ability to process orders separately for each market, or will this complicate things for them?
I don’t think I would say the same of Amazon if we split it up into those things, minus the digital mapping and food delivery which honestly sounds like the worst of them anyway.
> Alibaba's new "Logistics" spin-off will surely do well by providing delivery services to the "Chinese e-commerce" spin-off.
Unless the Chinese e commerce spin-off realizes it was much better when they had in house logistics and just starts building that again?
Between the Uyghur Genocide and Jack Ma's disappearance(and drastic change after reappearance), China is scary. Not the kind of scary where you bend the knee, but the kind of scary you don't invite them to your birthday party.
After I learned of the Uyghur genocide, I decided against having them manufacture my designed parts. Half of it was ethics, half of it was self preservation. Seeing what they did to Ma has convinced me it was the correct decision.
Now I just need to find a source of cheap electronics to run my device.
The push back on banning (social media app) is befuddling to me. It's an egregious national security threat to have the youth of your nation addicted to an algorithm controlled by these same people.
Censored because at least on reddit the bots will swoop in on any mention of it.
What is the reason we’re given for banning TikTok? Is it just “China scares us”? Because that’s what it looks like. And that feels like it’s against western ideals. Maybe it’s “tit off tat” setting similar boundaries as what Western companies have to follow in China. That makes sense but I’ve not heard it packed that way. Also our own social media companies are mostly unpopular right now.
It's because every corporate entity in China is partially controlled by the CCP and their interests are often diametrically opposed to ours. There's no clear separation between corporate structure and party there. If it's in China's interest to influence our youth through TikTok they will do so.
> While what was happening in Xiajiang wasn't great, it was not a Genocide
Nobody mentioned Adrian Zenz—you brought him up as a straw man. The genocide label is based on forced sterilisation, induced abortions, extrajudicial kidnapping and execution, et cetera. These observations are supported by a wide range of sources [1]. The spectre of crimes against humanity has been formally raised by the UN [2].
"The hundreds of millions of dollars the government pours into birth control has transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years, according to new research obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication by China scholar Adrian Zenz."
From the UN report:
"Prior to 2017, ethnic minorities such as the Uyghurs were allowed to have one more
child than Han Chinese, meaning that urban Uyghur couples could have two children and
rural Uyghur couples could have three children, while urban Han were allowed one child and
rural Han were allowed two children respectively. Overall, the Government reports that the
population of XUAR grew from 12.98 million in the 2010 census to 14.93 million in the 2020
census, and that the Uyghur population grew from 10 million in the 2010 census to 11.6
million in the 2020 census, an annual average of 1.52 per cent.
106. In 2017, XUAR amended its regional family planning policy to permit people of all
ethnic groups to have two children in urban areas and three in rural, thus equalizing the policy
and allowing Han Chinese couples to have equal numbers of children as ethnic minorities.240
The amendments also enhanced enforcement, including through a threefold increase in the
“social maintenance payment” payable by persons who violate the policy.241 In June 2021,
in line with the new national policy, XUAR introduced the three-child policy for all ethnic
groups.
107. Official population figures indicate a sharp decline in birth rates in XUAR from
2017.242 Data from the 2020 Chinese Statistical Yearbook, covering 2019, shows that in the
space of two years the birth rate in Xinjiang dropped approximately 48.7 per cent, from 15.88
per thousand in 2017 to 8.14 per thousand in 2019. The average for all of China is 10.48 per
thousand."
The UN Report has no mention of Executions or Kidnapping.
All of the reporting on this comes from groups such as the Heritage Foundation(Far-right think tank). I've gone down this rabbit hole. It was a propaganda stunt.
> don't have to mention Adrian Zenz, he's core to the reporting
Nothing you have mentioned makes him critical. Out of 537 sources, you picked one that mentions Zenz. There may be a handful more. There are hundreds of others independent of his work.
> UN Report has no mention of Executions or Kidnapping
Nobody said they did. The UN documented concentration camps, sexual violence, and induced sterilisation, among other atrocities, that brought it to raise the spectre of crimes against humanity. That is the most they can do since China refuses to be investigated. The kidnapping and execution is documented by the other sources, including those based on leaked Chinese documents.
> gone down this rabbit hole. It was a propaganda stunt
The UN has discussed crimes against humanity three times this century: in Gaza, Myanmar and China. Arguing this is a propaganda stunt because some people exaggerated their findings is like denying the Holocaust because someone lied about Hitler having horns.
No, the US government can't send them private messages to breakup by themselves. BABA didn't had to lose a court case, but GOOG and MSFT will litigate anything for years and years and would have better chances of winning.
Interesting. To what extent can we consider microsoft, google, amazon, and facebook monopolies? Maybe Google can get off the hook (for now) but microsoft and amazon are too big. No one can compete with those two.
- Facebook: social media monopoly with whatsapp, instagram, and facebook. These should be independent companies.
- Amazon: This is the biggest offender on this list: AWS, ecommerce, twitch, whole foods, logistics, etc... these should also be independent companies.
- Microsoft: After Amazon, MS should be broken up decades ago.
- Google: If it wasn't for Ads, google would have probably be in turmoil each year. Google cloud is good (we use them as our cloud provider), but reality is they are far away from AWS in terms of market-share.
- Apple: This one is interesting since we know they are big but there's room to compete (to a certain extent).
In short, at least MS and Amazon should be on the radar and be broken up within this decade.
Monopolies probably aren't the right angle to approach this from. A corporation can be "too large" without being a monopoly, though in the past that was their primary route to getting to that size. Perhaps it would be better to simply have a law that any company whose average market cap during a two year period exceeds 1% of the country's GDP is automatically broken up. Such a law might not even need to be used, as companies wanting to avoid a government lead break up would on their own either start spinning off parts of the company or paying dividends to shareholders to shed value from the company. Shareholders could then use those dividends to invest elsewhere or use it for spending in the economy. Buying up competitors or merging with them would also be tempered at the higher levels since it would risk creating an entity that gets broken up by the government.
I'm sure the companies with the potential to be broken up by such a law would be very much against it and spend whatever it took to defeat the law. They might also try to convince the public that they have to be allowed to be gigantic in order to compete with similar entities from other countries that don't have a limit on size.
There's too much focus on "monopolies" and the word "monopoly" itself. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was about trusts, which are by definition different companies that work together to control a market. The FTC should be focused on trade, and the size of these companies hinders trade and eliminates competition.
Facebook should never have been allowed to acquire Instagram or WhatsApp. If competition is key to a free market, what distortion happens when rich companies can simply buy competitors, ensuring they don't have to actually compete?
Google should never have been allowed to buy DoubleClick for the same reason.
Some of the others are tougher, simply because blocking acquisitions is easier and more popular than breaking up divisions that appear to be developed in-house. To say Amazon shouldn't be allowed to buy Whole Foods wouldn't raise a lot of ire, but to say Amazon should be a separate company from AWS flies in the face of how many people think things ought to work.
See this is all so subjective. I have a totally different Opinion and feel GOOG, MSFT should be the ones broken up.
Facebook is not a monopoly on anything (and under threat from TikTok). If having multiple products was a criteria for breaking up companies, there would be too many eligble.
Amazon: Neither retail or AWS nor whole foods nor logistics are a monopoly.
FDR has a lot of really bad ideas that went along with ideas like Social Security and the FDIC, so I'm going to give a "no" on that.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act was a terrible system of quotas to create artificial scarcity to boost prices. I'm glad the Supreme Court shot it down.
The number of people in this thread living in the West and saying "let's blindly copy an authoritarian policy made by an authoritarian regime", without considering any 2nd or 3rd order effects this might have, is alarming.
Like strong arming US companies into putting party shills onto their boards? Disappearing CEO's for months at a time? I'm glad the US doesn't have to resort to CCP corporate facism and thugery. We're all doomed if they do.
Similarly outrageous things could be said about any country. <faux outrage> Would you prefer politicians who are in the pockets of lobbyists? Politicians who repeal regulation that keeps a bank with subpar risk management from getting too big to fail? </faux outrage>
No one has to blindly copy anyone. However, nuance seems to missing in western discussions these days (I say western because these are the discussions I'm mostly aware of). Nuance is difficult. When everything becomes hyperbole, it gets harder to learn best practices from other countries.
It's ironic that you say "nuance seems to missing in western discussions these days" after making a sweeping allegation about politicians and lobbyists.
Oh come on. I don’t have a dog in this particular fight, but if you can’t accept politicians being in the pockets of lobbyists as a premise for an argument you are either being naïve or intellectually dishonest.
I was merely trying to show how such strawman statements could be made for anybody and any country. I keep forgetting how tone and subtext can be lost in text format :)
GP is confused about the distinction of systems where bad actors exploit the system, with systems where bad actors are the system. So for GP ("[no] hyperbole"), corruption is "similarly outrageous" as an unaccountable state that can disappear people. This error in judgment is possibly caused by the unrestrained greed of the Western elite in the past 3 decades that shades the authoritarian supreme leader type states.
You would think the distinction between "rule of law" and "leader knows best" type of approaches would be clear at this late date. Apparently not.
If you had a leg to stand on you’d argue against the view that OP has actually expressed. I get that you hate China or whatever, but don’t air your dirty laundry here.
Technically true, I guess, but only in the narrow sense that it is opposite to libertarianism.
But this is the kind of freedom (absolute de-regulation) that nullifies the freedoms of others (agency in the market). Overall the first is more deleterious than the others, and removing it causes far fewer victims and far more upsides.
Yep. This is why a certain sort of libertarianism attracts a certain sort of (sheltered, systems-obsessed) engineer type.
The run-on consequences and hidden contradictions of libertarianism make the whole thing fall apart, but the definition of the system, in its own language, isn’t aware of itself.
Which is ironic considering [complex] systems [like large economies] in the real world are all about nth-order effects. Anyone doing a solely first-order analysis is simply misunderstanding what systems are and can be.
Also, people here REALLY misunderstand why China is doing the things it's doing.
Their FX reserves are running perilously low. They are looking for ANYTHING they can do to get foreign cash. I'm hearing rumors that they are the ones who tapped out the FIMA facility. Could get ugly.
I know somebody is going to @ me with the 3T number, but the only data I trust is China's holding of Treasuries. That's been falling quickly.
How did China even managed to run out of foreign cash?
This is huge news for me. They were always swimming in export profits / probably still are / travel limits since COVID means that obvious leak of travelling and spending abroad is plugged.
They didnt. He is just making it up. China has been dumping US treasuries recently. Maybe he is confusing that with China's foreign reserves drying up.
...
In any case, Yuan is the new foreign currency. And China has, well, all of it...
For clarity, China de-prioritizes T-bills in favor of US Federal agency bonds which are nearly the same risk but slightly higher returns/interest rates. They currently hold $1.2 trillion in federal USD Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/SBA/FHA bonds.
Higher reward, similar risk, still perfectly reasonable USD FX reserves.
The last point is all that matters. It will be painful and take a while for Americans to come to grips with it, or we will all die in an apocalypse when they can't accept it.
Remains to be seen. It is not clear that China has the rule of law that the world needs in a foreign currency. Even the US has been pushing their luck on this front but they are better than China.
Economically, demographics are insanely against China and it is not clear that immigration is a viable way for them to close that gap.
Finally, their unique political system has not been tested during a period of low growth. It is not clear they have the political stability to be a reserve currency. Again, the US has been pushing their luck.
> the only data I trust is China's holding of Treasuries
- Do you not trust China's holding of US Federal Agency bonds? like Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/FHA/SBA? China holds $1.2 Trillion of these, slightly higher interest rates than T-bills.
- Even at their peak, T-bills only formed <7% of China's USD reserves. You really think China only needed $200 billion of FX reserves and everything else is probably faked?
<7%? You must be REALLY misreading the data. China now holds <$900B in treasuries. Their official reserve number is over $3T, I'd argue it's probably $1.5T. It's never gone as low as 7%, not even close lol
That is a gross misrepresentation. "A broken clock is right twice a day." Antitrust is not an inherently authoritarian policy. It can be selectively used for authoritarian ends, as it appears to be the case here. It can also be used more systematically to make markets more competitive.
Supporting these kind of policies many times is not a result of thinking about any kind of consequences, even first order consequences.
They just want to get back at something they don't like. Unfortunately this is the basis of too many policies, regardless of whether they are a net positive or not.
> China is an "authoritarian regime" that breaks down monopolies and imprisons corrupt billionaires
Yes, Jack Ma had the audacity to criticize his government. That is why he and his company are being targeted, and not larger monopolies like Tencent. Anti-corruption drives in China are just thinly disguised political purges.
There are plenty of flaws and problems with modern democracies, but they still serve the people’s interests better than authoritarian dictatorships.
Hey - I need to ask you to stop using HN primarily for ideological/political battle. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what they're fighting for or against, because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
In your case it looks like you've actually been using HN exclusively for this. That's definitely not ok. I don't want to ban you without a warning, so can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended going forward? You've been breaking other guidelines too, I'm afraid, so if you'd please familiarize yourself with the rules of this site and stick to them in the future, we'd appreciate it.
A few dozen people arrested won't make me think it's the worst.
But how about a few student activitists disappeared, beaten to confess in a video clip, and two of them still missing even today?
From the Wikipedia:
> In January 2019, police summoned several activists and showed them an allegedly "forced confession" video in which four activists (including Yue and Qiu) claimed to renounce labor radicalism. Some activists later wrote blog posts criticizing the police's action, saying it was a "ridiculous performance put on by the police". Seven more people were taken away again.
> Several organizers and student activists remain missing, including Yue Xin and Zhang Shengye.
Apologize for the confusion, I didn't read en wiki before post, apparently this isn't emphasized in the en version.
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
-----
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
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'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.
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.
Although you could say that the outcome could be considered the same, the motivations behind it are completely different, as the parent comment mentions
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.
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.
Alibaba group were the ones that disclosed the log4shell vulnerability which always surprised me. There they were sitting on the biggest security vulnerability ever and they tell the West about it!?
> The vulnerability had existed unnoticed since 2013 and was privately disclosed to the Apache Software Foundation, of which Log4j is a project, by Chen Zhaojun of Alibaba Cloud's security team on 24 November 2021. Before an official CVE identifier was made available on December 10th, 2021.
your Link dated 12/13/2021 says:
> Log4Shell is the name given to a critical zero-day vulnerability that surfaced on Thursday when it was exploited in the wild in remote-code compromises against Minecraft servers.
(To be clear the obligation is not they have to report to Chinese government first. They just totally forgot to tell the government agency for coordinating these kind of security incident cross companies)
TBF at least half of the firms did't give a fuck to the specific regulation at that time, and given the rumor that the bug is found when a Security Engineer (who works on product security instead of vulnerability research) decided to learn CodeQL I'm not surprised nobody on his report chain cared enough.
... and oh hi are you the same fancl20 on <that mostly-defunct Chinese Twitter-clone> some 15 years ago?
Minecraft servers were one of the most accessible places to use the exploit and at the same time, some of the ones that are least likely to patch updates rapidly.
Magnitude isn't really what's important for state-sponsored hacking, at least not of the kind that China (and the US) engage in. Covertness and deniability are more important, as is being able to target an attack to a particular victim. Log4shell doesn't satisfy any of these constraints.
The Tianfu Cup, on the other hand, exists primarily because Chinese researchers kept disclosing valuable bugs at Pwn2Own[1].
China has done what's only being talked about in the west: successfully broken up a powerful tech conglomerate.
One needn't resort to the kind of marxist leninist tactics that were at play here to achieve the same outcome, but all we'll get is more talk, or if things go really well, 5 mini googles just in time for openai, bing or someone else to become the next search monopoly.
This can be very bad news even in the west, but in context of the Chinese totalitarian dictatorship (Btw. Also allied with Russia), this is just an expression of an authoritarian regime suppressing private freedom. It's nothing but another abuse to suppress their own society.
In practice that would only weaken the US infrastructure. E.g. If companies like Apple and Microsoft were to be broken up, then that would actually severely confine technological innovation, and potentially place the US at a competitive disadvantage, and for what gain? More competition between smaller companies?
More competition is not necessarily a good thing. However, you can regulate said companies, and limit their abilities to exploit people. E.g. Place limits on product pricing so it does not get to expensive - very important for life saving medication.
You have to understand, there are some very motivated political ideologies that want us to believe that breaking up companies is going to protect consumers. It will not. And in fact, it can be quite devastating for technological innovation. So is regulation, but to an lesser extent, and I'd pick the lesser evil of the two any day.
In practice, by breaking up a company, you are basically stealing from shareholders, forcefully taking their property and selling it at a huge discount. The owners (shareholders) may end up owning shares of both halves of a company that is being split, but it will not be the same company, and the new companies ability to make money may have been destroyed or significantly harmed in the process. Then government has to pay some sort of compensating dividend, and I do not see that realistically happen, because it is impossible to accurately determine the damage caused by splitting a company.
In another ownership structure, companies could be broken up on paper, but still operated in a sort of partnership, hence the breaking up might not even make any sense in the first place.
China is known for imprisoning their own people in camps and persecuting minorities, so no, they are not very "people-oriented" at all. It is, entirely, a different ideological system.
Perhaps you can compare it to a bee hive where the individual bee is more or less considered worthless on its own, but the entire hive, working together on a goal dictated by the top government is all that matters. Political opponents are suppressed, and threatening neighbors with wars is normal. E.g. China is practically in war with India at the border, and they are currently threatening Taiwan, all while being allied with Putin, a psychopathic mass murderer.
