China CCP to Nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group – Report (opens in new tab)

It's not sensationalizing the facts, it's minimizing the facts. It's a pure propaganda project meant to manipulate public opinion outside of the US. It's the Asian version of Radio Marti, or Radio Free Europe. Funded by the U.S. taxpayers, run by the U.S. government, to improve the image of the U.S. in the world, to strengthen friendly governments and to weaken government enemies.

It is an overt propaganda machine, but fully available for covert agencies to use as part of any project they wish. A great way to use it is to float a story, then get more legitimate outlets to report on the story using it as the source.

It's like BBC News, if the BBC didn't broadcast to British people and was explicitly conceived as a propaganda arm of the government. So not really much like BBC news.

https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propag...

The reason Radio Free Europe/Asia were founded was to broadcast the benefits of 'freedom' into communist-governed areas. You might think that we're qualitatively the good guys, and I'm all for freedom, but that's definitionally 'propaganda'.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/22/china-us-data-intellige...

Edit: misread your comment but the series is quiet good, not what you asked for tho from a neutral source.

About as believable as when Sally at work says there's layoffs coming - but she's the receptionist.

It's crazy how tied to a warped view of China people get.

Like, I have serious issues with China too, but the picture many people seem to have in their mind is just not modern China whatsoever.

I'd also agree that because many of China's educated upper class (political and economic) have been schooled or at least traveled or met foreigners from the US or other democracies, they understand many of the mechanics. However, I would completely disagree that even a bare majority of Chinese have much conception at all how western politics work. Even those who are educated in the US/Europe rarely understand politics except at a single point in time.

I would count myself as one who has a fair knowledge of politics and business in China having spent almost 2 decades traveling and working with businesses there. I have some understanding of their history, socialization and education, as well as, business practices. What I can say is that they are very different depending on where you are (Shenzhen/HK vs Shanghai vs Beijing vs Chongqing). They speak differently, they live differently, and they do business differently. Also, China's politico-economic environment has changed very significantly in the past 20 years often with political leaders. and Xi has been one of the more rapid/dramatic changes.

I've learned that I do not understand the inner workings of China/CCP... even the workings of the US political system over the last 4 years border on incomprehensible. I would say that some of the business people I have seen most taken advantage of are Chinese expatriates who invested back into their homes and had relatively large businesses taken from them, because they thought they understood - align your interests carefully with someone who is on the ground or even family can take everything (this wasn't a single instance).

Having seen my grandparents/parents/relatives escaping communist China and now my generation escaping HK, it has heavily influenced me on how even people who identified as Chinese and hoping for democracy and freedom for their own cousins in China are being played and lied to for multiple decades.

My people in HK are screaming that the West previous engagement policies have proven again and again to be ineffective. It's believed that the only way is to "distrust and verify" and not kowtow to their ways like what the West had been doing for the previous decades.

I do not claim to know everything about how the Chinese system functions and can only observe how my immediate network is being oppressed but still hope that there's a way to engage the CCP if at all possible.

So, it's not surprising the average Chinese person has a decent understanding of how a basic democracy works.

In some ways, China is also not THAT much different, either. But it is more different than pretty much every other major economy in the world.

I mean, for one, it does not even put on a charade of being a democracy. It pretends to be communist (economically), but in a lot of ways it is more capitalist than a lot of the West. And the scale of the government is enormous. It's much more different, and there's really not much of a reason for many people in the US to have a decent idea of how it works.

China's government does not affect our daily lives that much - at least not yet. And Americans (like most people) are mostly concerned with themselves.

It functions like a dictatorship functions. The dictatorship of the party.

> And it's actually a huge problem for the West that both government and citizens do not engage China seriously.

The West will mostly separate production within about a decade or two. It‘s not a problem at all.

We in America are much too obsessed with "one great man" theories of history. I also think we are inclined to underestimate the competency of Chinese governmental figures, which is structured very differently from the West.

> that could be partially out of fear (he could literally just liquidate a portion of his wealth and have someone else elected in your place through campaign contribution), but its more because of the incredible value someone like a Bezos, Musk, or Ma brings to your economy.

I think it is actually much more about the former than the latter.

That's a HUGE over exaggeration. Yes money matters, but only so much and it very much matters where that funding comes from. That's why McConnell still has a job despite his opponent spending three times as much. People knew that money was coming from outsiders trying to unseat him. Bezos or some other billionaire trying to pour an ungodly amount of money into a political campaign is more likely to backfire than help.

Perhaps in the China of the past, but I don't think the low-level bribery you see in places like Nigeria or India is incredibly common in China anymore.

The problem with the US is that the class interests of those whose consensus is important in lawmaking is aligned with the interests of the ultra-wealthy.

Nor do I buy into the mythos that "lawfulness" is something universally applied in the United States. Laws, procedure, delay always play a large part when the interests of people with large capital are threatened, but lawlessness is the norm in many relations that impact ordinary people, like that weird clocking in rule that your boss at your retail job has instituted that is actually illegal under labor law or when the Federal gov't decides they will no longer enforce redlining law by going undercover to investigate racial discrimination.

But the actual rubber stamper voting group is about 3000 people.

However, since there was never any real independent and strong opposition (the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan) the only power struggles were very much about succession, and again that's like a minor clash in a royal family, whoever wins, it's still feudalism.

... yes, you said that Jack Ma is a CCP member, but he was nowhere near close enough to Xi in any aspect to challenge him. He's a useful idiot who got a sector allocated to (IT, cloud hosting and web/online/in-app payments), got big thanks to no competition, and thought he has actual power.

I don't know what to answer that except that it's the quickest way to get a fascist regime that doesn't even try to hide it's fascist. Monopolies don't need to compete with people's dollars.

> Movements like the Chick-Fil-A boycott and #deletefacebook do hurt companies

None of these movements really hurt these respective companies.

That being said, the example I'm giving here is actually a lot more than just a utility company - there is also a profitable R&D arm that did a lot of work on LTO and LiFePO4 that found its way to market, as well as has a successful construction arm.

It also did consulting work for the Three Gorges Dam in China notably but also a lot of other projects.

There is also an electric bus project that is in current development with a partnership with Volvo and Novabus as well as a Chinese/Italian/American/Quebec electric motor manufacturing joint venture, that has shipped a few dozen buses locally and is being considered for international orders.

So, I think that it can fairly be said that nationalized companies can be successful beyond simply utilities and natural resource exploitation.

Unless they come up with robots or start opening up immigration (which will be a hard sell), you are going to have old single men competing for whatever economic avenues they can find. Single men living in dense urban zones in poverty is guarantee for unrest. ex) Syria

PRC is Qing Dynasty 2.0 and it will be divided up by foreign powers when its weak. Sort of like how NATO & EU prevents Russia from retaking its former satellites permanently and this is exactly why Putin is in Crimea, Georgia, and now Latvia (massive open terrain allows fast ground, air invasion of Moscow and this has always been the central core of Russia both past and the present security policy).

This time, it will not be allowed to unify. The West, China's neighbors who are after its loot, will simply allow all 55 minorities to declare independence, and massive civil war is a real possibility between competing regions.

If you understand China, they are forced to follow Beijing. People from South are more westernized and business minded. The southern coastal provinces are best poised for economic recovery and could be the favored state.

When the smoke clears, a unified Korea is in the best position to take over because of its soft power in the region.

Nobody forced people to become America, people put it on themselves to become American. This is the power of culture and China simply played its hands too early and were caught stealing chips. Figuratively and literally

But I firmly support the whole idea of eliminating poverty with the accumulated wealth. Essentially a form of compensation by transferring some wealth.

Now the one child policy has been relaxed, but it will take a while before extra kids are available to work, and at this point it’s sort of a cultural norm to have one kid (plus prohibitively expensive to raise two kids and provide them decent resources).

China suffers brain drain to the West. Many of Chinese Ph.D students and scientists I know curse the day Xi Jing Ping declared himself to be the emperor, and is actively moving their families out of China as quickly as possible after 2018.

China has had very little luck in advanced semiconductor or airplane engine productions

Which so far translates into ability to outcompete robots on cost and not much else.

Uncle Xi is killing China. After Mao the whole political model was "collective" so no one could become so strong he would become an Emperor, Xi changes that by removing the two term (10 Yrs) rule of leadership. The CCP had one thing for legitimacy, economic growth. For 30 years China become richer and freer. In 2007 even people in HK were proud to be Chinese. That is not the case anymore. China peaked internationally in 2017.

Post-Xi China whenever that occurs will be a large poor country surrounded by enemies without easy access to global markets. It is impossible to use any Chinese product without the possibility of the use of slave or child labour within the supply chain.

China is more likely to return to Warlordism than become rich.

TL:DR - China became richer and freer post-Mao and now that process has reversed and China is becoming less free and poorer.

Firms will leave China once democracies around the world make a multi-lateral trade agreement and put our money elsewhere that's aligned with our core beliefs including or primarily free speech, say India. Get the agreement in place, have it come into effect in 2 years ahead of time, provide investment grants or loans to businesses (globally if they're aligned with democracy/free speech) who want to manufacture whatever will fill a gap in production for what the 80% of what consumers buy currently from China.

CCP could easily prevent this redirection of resources by allowing free speech and having elections.

Xi is just a little red guard grew up from the culture revolution the only economic solution solution was follow Mao's "Nationalize" way.

As part of the 'pivot to Asia' initiated by Obama, America has helped many neighbors of Israel make peace with it formally. Iran vs. Saudi Arabia is the only other major engagement in the region. America will also likely extricate itself from Afghanistan completely in order to focus its resources on containing China.

"Objective Nonpartisan Insightful", really now! I think your source needs to learn how to write non-editorial English.

Regarding covid, Taiwan did very well, despite being very close to China.

- The government responded quickly, tracing everyone who entered Taiwan to control for spread of covid.

- The civil society took it seriously, with the experience of SARS.

Taiwan beat covid because the society has trust in science and the government [1].

[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/how-taiwans-unlikely-digital-min...

P.S. your link has a very pro-Beijing tone throughout:

- It calls India and Australia as the vassal states of the US, and framing China's actions towards Australia as sending a warning to other vassal states.

- The numbers cited there are not comprehensive: when measuring space launches, not counting SpaceX.

doesn't change the fact it's shit

He's responsible for the abomination of misinformation that is gnews and gtv which has been consistently spreading absolute bogus regarding the pandemic, the election, and politics, for a really long time.

Yes, Guo is right about some things every now and then, and yes he without a doubt knows more about the inner workings of CCP than 99.9% of people.

But let's not give him more credit than he deserves, he's not a fucking prophet. Let's not build another political cult of personality around an eccentric billionaire. If you take a look at gnews/gtv, a Guo cult of personality really is the only description you can think of.

Pick a random guy from the street of Shanghai Beijing Guangzhou, any college educated person, they'll prefix the same.

> the CCP lying/withholding information on the transmission and the origins of the virus;

This was largely accepted as a fact of any government handling an emergency. CCP of course is worst at this.

> billionaires being kidnapped/murdered after conflict with the CCP

Think about it, if this is true, how Mr. Guo still milking money from his cult followers. It's either that he is producing nonsense that CCP doesn't care, or he is protected by “deep state” or Trump? You probably want to accept the fact that Mr. Guo is producing junks, otherwise you are leaving with a worse alternative...

That doest' mean we should praise the CCP (at least not in its current form!), though. Far from it!! Now that people have a decent life standard, they should, and probably will, raise against injustices being committed by the governing party.

Maybe they don't want a democracy modelled on the West, and that's ok!! We need to understand that there may be other ways to govern a country as big as China. But everyone in China definitely wants to be given a fair go to live their lives as best as they can, and to have at least a level of freedom that lets them live a happy life without causing problems to others (after the last few days, even the most avid defender of free speech in the US seems to agree a level of moderation in the public discourse is required, the only point of disagreement seems to be in how much).

It is really painful to see China moving back to authoritarianism in this way after a couple of decades in which it looked like they were embracing, slowly but surely, more freedoms and human rights. Let's hope that they find a way out of this instead of incessantly criticising them as if they were the devil all the time!! I honestly believe that even the CCP highest party members want to see the improvement of the Chinese people's lives, it would be completely irrational to believe otherwise... they are just humans like all of us... the problem cannot that they are evil!! The problem is that they have misguided fears of what may happen if the people is given too much freedom and try to mercilessly prevent their fears from becoming reality (like, you know, a revolutionary government taking power by force, which is the worse that could happen anywhere, even in China).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China

The only set of charts that matches your description re: Americans viewing China favorably is the first set of charts, which is in response to question 8b, do you view China _unfavorably_, for a worldwide survey broken down by country.

Question framing matters a lot on surveys, particularly for questions outside people's daily concerns. you'll get dramatically different distributions on the questions "do you view china favorably" or "do you view china favorably"

I will answer that: no it shouldn't. You can have a certain level of engagement even when you strongly disagree with another country. Showing aggressive behaviour, specially taking into account the history of agression and colonisation by the West as recently as 50 years ago, will not do anything at all to make life better to the victims of Chinese prosecution. By engaging with the Chinese, the EU may at least have some leverage to politely request that the Chinese , as sovereign people, start displaying a little more respect to other cultures within their own borders.

- Non compulsory voting - first past the post - superpacs - the electoral college

All contribute to an oligarchy, not a democracy. The US system seems to be designed to “feel” like a democracy while actually preserving the power of moneyed interests and land owners. It’s crazy to me that the UK has less if an oligarchy despite still having a monarchy.