Just going by appearances, the story at the time looked a lot like Jack Ma fleeing the country for a bit. One minute he was disturbing the tranquillity in China then the next he was picking up some Zen among the cherry blossoms.
It is interesting to compare-and-contrast Jack Ma and Elon Musk who seems to me the nearest analogue in the US. How their host countries treat them says a lot about the real cultural differences between Washington and Beijing. For all America's problems - at least up to Trump level annoying the politicians - it is safe to build wealth in the US.
China is still ruled by communism, the goverment has a majority share in every company.
That's bad for entrepreneurs, but also means that they can have the entire power of CCP behind them. There are tons of example where a small company started by stealing from western competitors then suddenly produced a huge pile of cash out of nowhere to bought those competitors and took over their marketshare in the west.
The boss of ARM China was fired by the company board, decided he has a different opinion on the matter, changed the locks to the office and just stopped communicating with the rest of the company. The chinese courts sided with him, then when SoftBank acquired them, the company staff just left, took all the IP and started a new company.
/Personally/, I’d attribute that more to authoritarianism than communism, but the two have been commingled since Lenin so it’s not necessarily an important difference.
AFAIK (“Seeing like a State”), that’s specific to the Leninist modality. I very well could be misinformed, but, the book mentions essentially a moment where democratic-socialism was co-opted by authoritarian communism (Leninism), so that’s what the world ended up with.
> Marxism–Leninism was the first official ideology of the CCP.
Mao Zedong Thought was some time ago and since then various directions the CCP has taken have been criticized as being un-Marxist and a betrayal of basic Marxist values.
The Authoritarian edge has always been there in the CCP, ebbing and flowing with the years .. but that part is distinctly un-(classical)-communism.
Like Capitalism "Twue Communism" has never really existed, even the big names in modern "communism" have said on the record that they represent authoritarian "on behalf of the people" (sort of) socialist control as a neccessary means on the way to a true workers paradise (barf) .. you know, a classic bait and switch to mask a system being just another variation of top down control.
That's not even in Leninism, no. Read Lenin's "State & Revolution" and you will definitely come away with a different impression -- he speaks openly about the abolition of the authoritarian state and a radical democracy... just not a parliamentary one.
Though clearly what happened in the USSR in the 20s was something different from what he wrote. What you saw in Russia in that period was a response to an ongoing civil war, followed by the rise of Stalin.. who, yes, really did believe in brutal authoritarianism.
All these Stalinist states (and I would classify China this way too) will pay lip service to Leninism as a way to seek ideological legitimacy. But their "official" readings of Marx and Lenin are very... creative... shall we say.
But it's 1:30am and I should no be getting into this argument.
For sure, there is more nuance that happens here. Some of what the early Soviet government authorized during the Russian Civil War with the Whites was not all that different from what Lincoln authorized for the Union during the American civil war. So I give some leeway to Lenin on that. For sure, Lenin never intended Stalin to get power. After all, Lenin made Stalin party secretary general or something like that, which was supposed to be a joke position with no real authority or minimal amount of power. Pretty much after the Russian Civil War, Lenin was pretty much perpetually sick and pretty much couldn't see his interpretation to the end. So, I do think had Lenin lived, the USSR would have been much different than what we saw, however I don't know if it would been much better, a little better or worst. That would take engaging in too many hypothetical of history. But I think it is fair to say, we can't graft what the USSR became under Stalin as to what the USSR would have been if Lenin would have lived.
I personally subscribe to the Trotskyist analysis that the root cause of the rot that led to Stalinism was the isolation of the revolution in one country, and nothing Lenin could have personally have done would have made a difference once the German revolution failed. They were politically and economically isolated, and unable to effectively administer governance, and if it hadn't been Stalin's brutal form of dictatorship, the state would have either fallen apart or some other "Socialism In One Country" dogma + authoritarianism would have entered the fray.
Stalin rose through the ranks by being a seemingly "competent" administrator who restored the power of the old Tsarist bureaucracy to "get things done."
But in general, Lenin gets a bad rap for the awful things his successor did.
You'll note that Putin admires Stalin but loathes Lenin. Even bizarrely singling Lenin out for his positions on Ukraine and the national question etc in his crazy speech justifying their aggression on the eve of their invasion.
It's a horrible tragedy of history in which millions died and all of eastern Europe fell under a terrible dark iron curtain which took the name "communism" but the name is effectively irrelevant. What it really was was a broken down highly authoritarian single party state that used the badge of "socialism" to lend itself legitimacy while doing very awful things in the name of Russian nationalism, certain individuals, the Party, etc. etc. Kleptocratic clique under the guise of a revolutionary state.
As we can see in China today the actual economic political model doesn't even matter. They'll use the name "communism" even when what they're doing is absolutely savagely market driven, or something else, like the quasi-theocracy in North Korea.
What they labelled as socialism in the East bears almost no resemblance to what socialists in the West advocated. But the label of "communism" will forever be marred by what these people did.
EDIT: A good classic book on this topic is "Leninism under Lenin" by Marcel Liebmann (https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/908-leninism-under-leni...) -- now, whether that old book can stand the test of time now that more historical records from that period are open, I don't know. I'd be curious to see a (non-ideologically motivated) Russian historian with access to records from the Revolution take it apart.
Thanks for the book recommendation, I will definitely check it out! I personally enjoy reading Russian history, it is fascinating and highly complex. It is also just revealing on how much society ideologically focuses on certain sets of history. Like in Russia, focusing on Stalin as the ultimate baddie of Russia. While Stalin sure as hell wasn't a good guy. There isn't a whole unique to his form of brutal-ism compared to the Tsarists before the USSR. The KGB of the time were doing essentially the same things the Tsarist secret police were doing before them. Many of the Tsars were also extremely brutal. Russia really just had gotten a bad hand of leadership for most of the past 1,000 years.
The reason why communism is always associated with authoritarianism is mainly the process by which it is introduced: it is impossible that all citizens agree that a state becomes communist so it has to be introduced by force. And once you get this power over the lives of all your citizens, you don't want to give it back (which also makes sense because they could overthrow communism).
The only societies where communism works without authoritarianism are communes like the Longo Maï where people come by choice, not by force.
> The reason why communism is always associated with authoritarianism is mainly the process by which it is introduced: it is impossible that all citizens agree that a state becomes communist
All new systems are introduced by force, even capitalism. Do you think that at one point in the past everybody in Britain decided that the state should be capitalist and so everyone, on their own accord, moved from communal land so it can be passed in to private hands?
As a counter-example, the fall of communism in Eastern bloc was (mostly) a very peaceful process. A notable exception was Romania where the ruler was particularly cruel but in several other countries the system changed without one shot being fired, even though surely there were quite a few proponents of the old regime.
The institution of whatever came after the fall of communism was done by force, just like the institution that came before it, for the reason you describe: it's impossible to get literally everyone in an entire country to agree on a government, so the government must be imposed by force.
The comment you are referring to wasn't referring to the difficulty in getting everyone to agree on a form of government, but on how it is impossible to create a large-scale communist economic system without imposing it. This is due to how is it necessary to confiscate property in order to redistribute it in a communist system, which naturally has its opponents, as those who have worked for property believe they have earned it. Almost all of the Soviet states transitioned to market economy democracies without any conflict at all, so your assertion for the need of force is completely wrong. The transition was natural as the people naturally preferred a market economy system, which had led to an underground market economy being created during the Soviet days, known as the second economy of the Soviet Union.
> The comment you are referring to wasn't referring to the difficulty in getting everyone to agree on a form of government, but on how it is impossible to create a large-scale communist economic system without imposing it.
That is correct, and I was pointing out that it isn't specific to communism: any government or economic system will have at least 1 person who doesn't like it, but the system being created nonetheless requires imposing it by force, and maintaining it by force, which nearly every government does to this day.
> The comment you are referring to wasn't referring to the difficulty in getting everyone to agree on a form of government, but on how it is impossible to create a large-scale communist economic system without imposing it. This is due to how is it necessary to confiscate property in order to redistribute it in a communist system
And my original comment clearly shows that capitalism also had to be imposed for what once was communal needed to be confiscated in order to be redistributed.
> Almost all of the Soviet states transitioned to market economy democracies without any conflict at all
Indeed, a state capitalist society transitioned to market capitalism. Nothing needed to be taken from any one person but the state. Not really a new system, just new owners.
I'd argue that that is not a good counter example. There is a reason why those that implemented the system used in USSR called it state capitalism. So for the factory worker in that regard little did change. The factory just got a new owner. Don't get me wrong, a lot did change, but in this regard little did.
That's simply false, capitalism is the natural order, people looking out for their own interests and working with others only when both parties agree to. Communism is forced labor/partnership, and requires disappearing all those who don't want to be part of the system and/or using extreme force to get dissidents to comply. Capitalism simply lets those who don't want to participate pave their own way.
I'd agree it's basically just a form of authoritarianism. Then again, different regimes have simply adapted communism to their own interpretation. You get North Korea with their Chuch'e, the Chinese call theirs "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics", you had Ba'athism in Iraq. But yeah, communism in its pure, traditional form these are not.
>communism in its pure, traditional form these are not.
Achieving communism necessarily entails authoritarianism because you need an authoritarian state to seize the property of existing landholders and business owners, and to prevent the creation/operation of new private businesses.
While 'goverment has a majority share in every company' is very likely not true, but CCP does have control over the the companies whenever they want.
They would force CCP member into the board and setup CCP organizations within the companies. Anyone who deals with China's companies would need to understand this. You are always dealing with CCP behind it
I know it's not a dichotomy but I think these days I'd take that model over the opposite where behind every politician is a company and with government you are always dealing with companies behind it.
Which communist regime has not been nationalist authoritarian? Yes, in theory it is different thing but somehow in practice it always ends up like this.
Well, there is authoritarianism and then there ‘a spy in every phone, internet Great Wall, re-education camps, social credit score’ authoritarianism no?
Labels like these are arbitrary anyways. It's just about what is explicitly said vs what happens in the shadows.
Take "fines" for example. They are the cost of doing business and never actually dissuade the behavior (in the USA). This in effect allows the government to act as a shareholder (fines = dividends) under the guise of domestic legal enforcement.
Then they turn around and protect the same corporations intellectual and physical property abroad.
That's the autocratic Leninist party model, which is what enabled them to defy predictions that economic liberalization would lead to political freedoms.
They are solidly state capitalist since Deng, and since Xi I would classify them as far-right revisionist and even possibly fascist, with a strong focus on order, aesthetic, collective responsibility towards nation, and restoring the homeland, where homeland is defined on ethnonationalist not civic nationalist lines.
It's safe to build wealth in PRC, plenty of 10-100 millionaires.
It's also safe to build OBSCENE wealth in PRC, but it comes with more political caveats. Like not trying circumvent regulators by launching irresponsible fintech.
Which system is better depends on how much you value checking billionaires.
And? They can financial engineer a few 100 million out of country and have generational wealth stashed abroad or be a boring billinoaire in PRC. Flashing extravagant lavishness is frowned upon, maybe settle for a 300 ft yacht instead of a 600ft mega yacht like a RU oligarch or Arab crown prince. They're billionaires they can get pretty much what they want, not upper-middle class family from tier1 city trying to figure out how to wire >50kUSD to pay their kids rent and tuition.
Chinese transferring wealth out of China to buy American and Canadian real estate is actually a popular way of protecting themselves and laundering money from non-legit enterprises in the mainland.
They're rubber stamp deputies who are selected/invited to NPC because they're important entrepreneurs, which correlates to being billionaires. But they don't influence shit, they know their place, enough to waste a week or two a year at two sessions. Which is precisely the original point - it's safe to build obscene wealth in PRC... close to 1,000 billionaires know how to not be politically retarded vs the minority that don't. Last available IIRC stat was ~15% of billionaires in PRC end up in jail (corruption/CCDI). I don't know that number for US is, but probably too low.
Someone in US congress can earn millions from their offices. But that is amateur money compared to the vast swaths of the Chinese economy controlled by China's red families. Even Wen Jiabao's mom was in on it with a massive jewelry empire (heck, I remember being surprised she was still alive in the 2010s), and the Chinese government only gave credibility to the story that outed this by blocking the NyTimes over it.
Not saying the US model is the best, but having a fascist state like China would be worse. To quote Churchill: democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.
Oh yeah the US is so much better, a place where the largest source of bankruptcy is medical bankruptcy, people need to go into massive debt to get a college degree to have any chance of a middle class life and unless you have something that can make the elites even more extremely wealthy than they already are (programmer, engineer) then your chances of getting them to part with any of their wealth is slim to none.
This is such a beautiful life isn't it? Im not saying China is any better, but come on man. Have some empathy for all the people that have been crushed by this system whether its the poor, the people on the receiving end in Gaza/Iraq/Iran/Pakistan/Venezuela or just the people unlucky to not be born at a competitive level.
I understand the feeling, but on the other hand I don't think these are good examples because these people have gotten filthy rich and it's not clear to me if we actually need such accumulation of wealth. There's probably a healthy cap somewhere, the same way power is capped in the government.
Jack Ma didn't just try to build wealth like your average mid sized software or HVAC company. He built a monopoly and the company was fined for it and eventually broken up [0]. He obviously didn't like this and left the country to do billionaire things.
To me there's nothing 1984 or dystopian about this. The guy was building a company that was hurting the people. If anything we need more of this in the US.
I'm not sure it is safe to build wealth anywhere, anymore, although the US is the country I chose to register my company in, because it is probably the safest. Still, I have my reservations. Petty theft like shoplifting is being increasingly normalized and justified in the US (see train package theft), and enforcement of property law is slipping, see how home owners can lose their home to "squatting". This is a very slippery slope which I hope doesn't go the way of the Bolshevik revolution, but anything is possible.
Being a Venetian banker or Chinese tea exporter wasnt that safe. What about prospecting for gold in Colorado river valleys where bears hang out? Moving trains of camels thru the Sahara? Chasing whales around for years at a time without going home.
Fair, I think. We had protestors storm the centers of government, attempting to overthrow it, after the last election. So many similarities if you only look.
Whats old is new again, just with more enshittification(in your example instead of gladiators storming the capitol we got lard butts one of which died by heart attack)
Wonder if some of this is just people needing more and more of a 'thrill'. The US culture is one of auspicious displays of wealth or exceptionalism that things like doing train robberies, drifting in crowded times square, or outrunning cops for the 'likes' is the latest fad.....maybe im overthinking it and its just a lack of parenting.
The last blurb in the article is the most damning part.
"Ma spends much of his time abroad, especially in Japan where he is a visiting professor at Tokyo College, a research institute run by the University of Tokyo"
Jack Ma has no hope for China, as evident by his action. The long internal post may have been requested by the Chinese government, or his staff, to somehow rally Alibaba's failing image. But Jack sees the real pictures on the ground in China. And he chooses Japan.
And the young in China knows it too. That's why the young are laying flat. and sneaking through Mexico into US. and fleeing to Cambodia and Myanmar for work.
No, NEET stands for "Not Employed, Educating, or Training" and Hikikomori translates literally to "Pulling Back In". Both phenomena result in the individual abdicating his productivity in deference to pursuits such as resolving crises and introspection.
Tang Ping on the other hand is a phenomenon where the individual only produces as much as his environment demands of him. If he contracted with his employer to work 9 to 5, he will work 9 to 5 and not a second more. If his work description is producing Powerpoint slides, he will produce Powerpoint slides and only Powerpoint slides. If he is remote work, he will quit rather than come into the office. He will then use the freed up time and energy on other pursuits he deems worthy.
The Soviet work ethic was "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work". It wasn't about doing the bare minimum for your job, it was about finding creative ways to do much less than the bare minimum.
So Tang ping is quiet quitting, i pretty much do the same 95% of the time.
The boss pays me from 9 to 5 so once its 5 and no important deadline i stop at 5 and live my life.
Tanping is just slacking. Tanping kids still work. But it's still the same phenonmenon as the developed world, PRC single kids who grew up with silver spoon and high expectations realizing that they're pretty mid, and can't out compete their "betters". So they slack and take life easier. It's basically the normal distribution in every western workplace. Workers with prospects still grind to work their way up the (involution) rat race . Western media portrays it as big deal, but it's not even western "antiwork" work level of subversive.
Emerging PRC analogues to NEETs/Hikikomori are "full time kids". TLDR is high savings rate and culture = kids live with parents and do bumfuck while looking for jobs they think are their level. Some will settle for employment beneath them, some will live off their parents dime if their parents can support it. Cause is PRC went from single digit to 60% tertiary rate in last 20 years, there's too much talent/competition last few years as graduating classes got larger and larger but not enough jobs uni kids want.
I think it's a bit more serious than that. Those self same "mid" kids would've had no problems meeting expectations if they'd been born 10 or 20 years ago because China was experiencing one of the most unprecedented growth periods in history.
If growth stalls but expectations of what "success" looks like in life remain the same then inevitably the more rational amongst them will look and see that just achieving a "normal" life seems incredibly difficult.
Those same mid kids would likely work a medicore blue collar job but be able to afford real estate after a few years of saving while the market was low. Some of them might be lucky and have first mover entreprenured their way to being million/billionaires despite not being very bright (like Ma). Same lament as kids in west when their parents worked mid jobs and could raise a family. Dual income young professional households who can't buy a house while their parents without degrees have multipe + land in cottage country. Now PRC kids dealing with same shit kids in west are, academic inflation + increase cost of living + easy speculative R/E wealth is gone. Meanwhile no one wants to do "hard" work because they spend too much time in school to do manual labour. They want top 10% income air conditioned office jobs befitting their degree.
I'm not saying it's not serious, it's also not particularly special to PRC. Like the few tanping kids I hear about IRL in PRC are like your typical western kids with comfortably wealthy boomer parents who can afford to fuck around because they got safety net/inheritance down the line. Everyone else grinding while joking about tanping, like antiwork folks in the west bitch about their conditions, but eat continue to eat shit all the same.
the difference is that there isn't 1 billion people in the west -- US (330M) + Europe (500M) still isn't close. lots of space in the US to move to, also.
and the ability to be extremely vocal about it -- which could get you sent to jail or otherwise ruin your life via social credit scores.
point is, the kids in China have it notably rough.
> a phenomenon we see in the entire developed world, or possibly the entire world
No. The difference is the talented and otherwise ambitious are being sacrificed by an older generation to an exceptional degree in China. That's happening elsewhere, too. But because the political systems are not dictatorships, they're able to adapt.
Only because there is a term for it in Chinese, it doesn't mean this problem unique to China in any way. And it also didn't start in 2022 when "quiet quitting" became popular, it's a tale as old as time.
Just a best guess: I think essentially he's been officially hobbled in China but not technically under house arrest, so-to-speak. There's not much future for him in China. His wealth is likely a key-stroke away from being confiscated and he knows it.
The young in China are so disillusioned, they are buying gold in droves this year [1] (instead of putting it in bank, or invest in stock market or real estate)
Of course he has no hope. I recall he suddenly disappeared for a long time after criticizing the Chinese government. It seems entirely possible he was held against his will for forced reeducation. Hard to believe in the country that does that to you.
Alibaba co-founder and Chair: China, Jack Ma, AI and basketball
And while smart and sympathetic, I cannot help to think that Alibaba is a company of the past belonging to a time of a certain US-China order that is no more. The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving, fearless, and aggressively deep tech than what Alibaba aspires to be.
Alibaba was fast moving, fearless and aggressively deep tech, you don't survive the world of Chinese e-commerce if you aren't. They were decapitated and neutered by the Chinese state when they started to show signs of upending the existing order, specifically building a competing financial system (Alipay/Ant) and daring to call out Chinese economic orthodoxy.
From what I heard from engineers working for Alibaba, my understanding is that they are fighting with their own bureaucracy structure for quite long time to make any effective decision, at same time facing fierce compitition from JD and PDD. At some stage they released new prodect to compete with PDD every few months while still keep losing in their core e-commerce bussiness till now. All these were before government cracking down their financial business.
Most of the people I know in the industry think Alibaba is one of the least efficient big tech company in China compare to e.g Tencent, Baidu, Bytedance, Huawei. They all have somewhat similar bureaucracy burden as big corp but not at the level of Alibaba. Their problem is much complex than pointing the finger at Chinese government to explain everything.
Is that why the search has gone to absolute crap? I’ve switched to Amazon basically for everything I used to get from AE because of the anti search / advertising search. I’d rather pay more and not waste the time.
I heard they switched to fully use a recommending system for search (don't know how it works today but feels like that's still the case), which means there is there is no real search happening and you query is used as a hint, not a search query (which relativeness matters more).
At that time PDD is promoting the idea you buy what they think you will buy. PDD's search is barely functioning at that time and their bussiness model is solely relying on recommending system.
Though I'm not sure how much Alibaba's decision is affected by PDD because the story I heard is more driven by their internal politics. I feel like that's really a weird product decision for Alibaba and to me doesn't make a lot of sense.
That explains so much! Alibaba search randomly adds items I've previously bought to totally unrelated searches, so it does feel like a bad recommender system.
> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving, fearless, and aggressively deep tech than what Alibaba aspires to be.
Being all of that is exactly why Jack Ma got beat down by the party. The party doesn't want fast moving, fearless, aggressively deep tech, they want control, compliance, and stability.
I think the main reason alibaba got beat down was because it was moving from "tech" into finance offering unregulated loans and jack ma criticizing regulators did not help at all.
And alibaba was not "deep tech", more like derivative tech. It's just a ecommerce site. It takes a lot of technical expertise to operate that at a large scale for sure, but at the end of the day, it's not the kind of fundamental tech free from sanctions that the chinese government wanted to pivot its tech industry to.
Alibaba is like Amazon, they are known for commerce but have branched out into so many other things, they even have or had a quantum computing effort. Most Chinese companies work under the ask for forgiveness rather than permission creed, because I think that’s how the only way they can do anything at all as the government itself moves slowly, if your project is successful it will be blessed after the fact as always the true way (eg wepay and Alipay started like that). Ma’s mistake was in at least not pretending it wasn’t like that.
> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving
Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell.
"The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies. It found that the share of total market capitalization held by state-controlled enterprises, in which the government holds a stake of 50% or more, rose to 50% by the end of 2023, the highest proportion in five years"
I don't know man, from the outside looking in it seems like despite this arrangement, the people doing the day to day work are fiercely competitive and they want it all. This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy?
Maybe state ownership will collapse it all, maybe the coming demographic implosion will do it. But it does not seem like your daddy's communism....more like a capitalism-communism fusion that combined with nationalistic pride and a desperation to account for all the over production might lead to surpassing what the soviet union could only dream of.
No state owned enterprises in the history of the world has the quality you've just described - fiercely competitive, nationalistic pride, desperation.
China is now Soviet Union, but with horrendous demographics, mind-numbing debt, and wealth flooding out of the country. China is old and broke. China is fucked.
Unless you want to keep your head in the sand and pretend this is the soviet union all over again, you better start paying attention to how fast they are iterating.
>China is now Soviet Union, but with horrendous demographics, mind-numbing debt, and wealth flooding out of the country. China is old and broke. China is fucked.
Yeah this is the Peter Zeihan thesis but you know what, it might take a while for this to play out and in the meantime, China may not leave the arena until after they have taken out a large chunk of the western incumbents.
You're really gonna take a statement from a CEO that it's important for the government to intervene in order to protect his profits at face value? Elon's made some stupid decisions in the past but I don't think he's stupid enough to be honest. Not lobbying for protectionist measures even if they aren't needed would probably be some sort of corporate malpractice.
When it comes to getting advice on where the EV market is going, I am definetly going to listen to the guy who is the leader of EVs in the US. Would I take relationship advice from him? Probably not, but we are talking about the EV market here.
I - that's a truly stunning mindset I don't have words. Why would you consider the market leader of a market a reliable source for information on the market? Maybe this is obvious to me coming from a world where all banks have their own analysts and all but the idea of trusting a market leader is just insane. Information asymmetry is so important to capitalism he's obviously not going to provide the full picture. There are entire university departments dedicated to coming up with clever estimates for how much drugs cost to develop to justify high prices. This sounds like, would you trust a pharma CEO if they were providing advice on where the pharma market is going? Or a tech CEO on where the tech market is going? Elon is, as you clearly stated, the leader of EVs in the US. Why would you take his advice on the EV market!? The base assumption is that he's going to be quite strongly motivated to stay leader of the EV market, why would you think he cares about giving you accurate advice?
>Why would you consider the market leader of a market a reliable source for information on the market?
You seem to be ignoring how they literally created and led this market over the last 15+ years. I get how you are so blinded by your hate of one man that you completely ignore the facts on the ground but do you have to make it so obvious?
> Maybe this is obvious to me coming from a world where all banks have their own analysts and all but the idea of trusting a market leader is just insane. Information asymmetry is so important to capitalism he's obviously not going to provide the full picture.
This would be a plausible statement if it hasn't been disproven time and time agin over the last 10 years. See the entire short industry that got burned by their analysts. I was there on day 1 of the /r/Realtesla a subreddit dedicated to pushing the thesis of following industry experts and analysis. In 2019 they were convinced that Tesla was structurally bankrupt.
The hard lesson I learned after years of failed predictions based on analysis is that banks and analysts only have a snapshot of a current moment in time and do not consider the fast moving nature of innovation led companies.
They have gotten this wrong with many tech companies but especially Tesla. Just to give you one example: all the analysts and shorts were certain that Tesla would fail in 2018 due to their live up to the minute counts of materials going in and out of the factories. They had live video feeds of everything happening outside the factory. They failed to predict Musk using a loophole in California laws to set up a giant tent and get production levels increased. That changed the entire calculus.
Musk has repeatedly proven the analysts wrong and so I'd ask why would you continue to trust them? Their motivation is to get people to pay their fees yet it seems as if they suffer no major consequences for continually getting it wrong.
Going back to what Musk said(which you obviously didn't even bother reading): "If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he said. "They're extremely good."
You might be able to make the argument that he is self serving in his comments but this quote is a poor hill to die on.
I mean, if you're just going to ignore the core point then I guess feel free. The disconnect seems to be that you think it's somehow reflects poorly on Elon that he's good at his job! Being self serving is good, controlling information to maximize your leverage is good, these are good things. Especially in a competitive market! The stupid decisions I'm referring to tend to be ones like buying Twitter or tweeting nonsense that causes him to lose control of the narrative. I don't care whether he actually thinks that not having trade barriers means Tesla will be wiped out, all that matters is that lobbying for trade barriers is the right move for the business. Also what's your obsession with trusting people? Why would you trust analysts? Or any source of information? Every source of information is biased, incomplete, and useful.
They've been massively increasing their defense spending, though you're right, it's not a majority of GDP.
In addition, they've been trying to massively increase their military capacity, but throwing money at it only does so much: you also need young men, and there's not that many that think being in the military is a great idea, and people aren't having kids any more. At least in the old Soviet Union, there was no lack of young men being raised.
The money has already been made by those in power and the only way to make more is to follow the government gravy train. For the last decade that has meant batteries, EVs, semiconductors, displays are all so heavily subsidized (factories are built with free government loans) that doing anything else (other than buying property) makes no sense. That doesn't mean the people aren't motivated, smart, and ingenious, but they won't be making back the $T in loans.
The lie flat movement is a legitimate movement that touches upon the same problems the youth are experiencing elsewhere around the world but it appears to be a fizzling movement everywhere. Even the US equivalent of quiet quitting and utter hopelessness is waning in the US with the slow demise of the far left and right.
Its easy to see this in the US. Ignore the news and Twitter and look at results. This election cycle Justice Democrats: the poster child of the progressive left has no choice but to just defend their existing seats having already lost one and some of their top stars nearly losing their seats last cycle.
Ignoring the age issue in the far right (not enough young people replacing the dying elders in the movement), we have repeated losses in special elections due to their stance on abortion indicating their current plan of action is not in sync with where the country is. That does not look long term promising for the movement. Either they move left or they will continue to cede power at all levels of the government.
This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy?
Exactly. The OP didn't know any English teachers in China, or else they can verify that Chinese workers in private enterprises nap on the job/play on their phone/waste a ton of time, to get through the long working hours.
Interestingly I’ve heard this observation about American managers in US multinational businesses in Europe, that they seem to performatively do the long hours, for the sake of their own managers view of them, but that little of it is actual productive time.
I’ve not really observed it myself, and I’d suspect that part of it might be very different styles or ways of working. But maybe there’s a grain of truth there.
No one doubts that Chinese people work incredibly long hours. They do so because there’s been a strong link between input and output. The harder you work, the wealthier you get. That has been incredibly motivating … so far. In an economy that isn’t growing quite so fast, people might not see the same returns for their labour that they did between 2001-19. They might not work as hard.
That’s speculation though. What we do know is that the CCP is changing the way of managing the economy. Between 1992 and 2019 they leaned heavily on the private sector for growth. They would do anything they needed to help private enterprise succeed. That approach paid rich dividends, it’s obvious.
Xi Jinping is going a different way now though. He reckons he knows better than Deng, the architect of the Chinese economic miracle. His approach is to pick winners and losers. It may succeed because he’s picked good horses so far - EVs, solar panels, AI, semiconductors. And state led capitalism has had success in China, with major players like Huawei doing well despite major headwinds.
Because of this shift in approach you can’t extrapolate from the success of 2001-19 and say China’s future success is inevitable.
If you define hard work as intellectually challenging work, there absolutely is a strong link between hard work and wealth in China. Even the corrupt bureaucrats have to pass a difficult exam to become bureaucrats.
Which one and why is cheating nepotism not as widespread as with everything else? In a company or functioning democracy in competition, if you nepotism, you kill the company..
> Only if the person picked via nepotism isn’t competent.
It'd be interesting to know how much this phenomenon would explain the stability of otherwise culturally ossified regimes that stood for four or five centuries before collapsing, where government was built almost entirely out of extreme nepotism in which the ruling potentate had 50 or 60 kids to choose from, and thus had a shot at picking the most capable from the, er, top of the class.
Or the most ambitious /ruthless pick themselves, taking the old man and/or their dangerously competitive siblings out of the picture.
Either way there is a little more competition involved then what we normally think of with a modern family unit.
No drugs at private schools? The machinery catering to wealthy parents is good at 3 things, placatting parents, preventing scandals, creating interelite connections. It's not good at educating, no matter how expensive. There is simply put absolutely no incentives to work
Those seem like pretty critical skills to teach someone in the ruling elite actually.
Doing those things at scale is ‘work’ even if it isn’t what most people consider work.
Learning how to sweat a pipe is useful if that’s what you’re going to need to do to put food on the table.
Learning how to placate powerful sponsors, not get caught doing naughty things, and networking among other power brokers is how you put food on the table as a ruling elite isn’t it? Or at least avoid being burned at the stake.
And not something they’re going to teach effectively at your neighborhood public school.
You would be astonished how many people want to live a calm and good life, with making money as just one mean, and hence secondary, if you would come out of your capitalist bubble.
There is an argument to be made then when a country is on the rise and developing rapidly there is a sense of PMA(Positive mental attitude) among the people. Maybe you are just projecting American stagnation on Chinese?
Aren't you presenting a false dichotomy here? Perhaps they are having their cake and eating it too, so to speak. Not to comment on the supposed economic malaise of the moment.
Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!
It's a bit hilarious that there are attempts to convince people on a board for hackers and startup founders that state owned enterprises are great and amazing!!
I used to think it’s open mindedness but I think it’s more hubris.
The other day a guy was complaining about being in jail for a time and how unfair it was that he had a criminal record. Lots of open minded people praising him.
Then a new user called him out for trying to get with a 12 year old. Yikes.
Regardless, China figured out some formula that has been incredibly successful the last couple decades. While I have doubts about this approach being sustainable, hindsight is 20/20 and we can’t predict the future.
The "formula" was capitalism, introduced by Deng Xiaoping, which lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty.
However, Deng also introduced China's 1-child policy (decidedly not capitalism), which is now beginning to seriously strain the system. The future is indeed uncertain.
Sure, then by all means share your evidence or data for a successful foreign state owned enterprise vs private enterprises in that country and other countries
Aramco’s not a perfect example, as it was built up as a private corporation, and only nationalized as a relatively mature corporation. It also has a state-sanctioned monopoly on a very low-cost, high-price commodity. On the other hand and to be fair to Aramco, the Venezuelans managed to make a mess of their state oil monopoly.
I think it’s good to be clear headed and acknowledge empirical evidence when it’s there. Context is useful in understanding the mechanisms of society!
“This thing goes against my orthodoxy therefore I refuse to see it” is exactly the sort of attitude that gets you far away from success.
For the record, I was merely saying it’s possible for a state owned enterprise to do things quickly, even if in practice most of them don’t. So much of the world is just about having the right kind of people at the right place, and that’s true in the public sphere and the private one.
I invite you to share your evidence that all private enterprises are strictly superior to any state owned enterprises, as that is clearly the stronger (and less likely to be valid) position.
I mean the topic of this thread is basically on how we have a bunch of well performing, pretty fast Chinese companies. This is happening despite these companies having a lot of buy-in from the state (down to outright ownership).
One might start trying to say "well a bunch of money from the state isn't enough to consider it a state owned enterprise", but then the contention is a bit more specific than just about being state owned.
This is sound analysis sans ideological bs. The system lacks a self-correction mechanism.
The profit driven system is supposed to self-correct. We see this today, with Boeing for example (yes /s).
Now beyond snark, we can ask is the same thing happening to us that happened to the "commies" with the 'defense and national security' establishment raising troubling doppelgangers of "state industry" from the body of "market driven" neo-liberal capitalist societies?
So, we see issue is not really "ownership" but rather establishments ..
In fairness, there is a good chance Boeing is self-correcting now. After deaths and lawsuits. If it were a governmental entity, it’s plausible that would not happen and the company would continue as before.
At least that’s the idea, I think. May as well steel man the argument.
Eh, Boeing is a defacto state owned enterprise. Check out their board composition if you don’t believe me.
Or are you more complaining about the lack of honesty in these defacto situations?
In China, any company larger than a tiny one is state controlled anyway - someone from the CCP needs to have a board seat, and everyone knows what happens if you anger the party.
Considering the the stated goals of the Chinese government and past actions, I can’t see how anyone would consider the state owning a major share of a Chinese company to be either a net negative or neutral at best.
What is the irr for Softbank's investment in Alibaba? If given another chance would they do it again? I believe the answer is yes, so there is no lack of risk capital. Is China willing to pay for talent? Absolutely. Given these two factors I think China can climb the technology ladder. Just a question of time.
However this doesn't mean China's GDP will get back to fast growth. Its economy is constrained by demand, not supply. Anyone who has experience with Chinese elders would know how thrifty they are no matter how much wealth they have.
That's because there are no safeguards and failsafes to keep authority in check.
When Winnie the Pooh orders you to jump, your only permitted responses are Yes or How high? unless you want to be deleted (no, not killed, deleted) from the face of the planet and any and all records known to China.
Same goes for Russia and other authoritarian regimes.
There's one in the city where I live. Her fortune is a company (you have all heard its name) so in a certain sense her wealth is putting a number on a large number of voters' jobs.
Recently the company decided it needed a plot of land, located in the middle between there of its sites. It got that plot.
Call it an oligarch or call it well-paid voters' jobs. I think the later is truer.
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
Seeing Jack Ma come out like this makes me think things are very grim in China and I been obsessively following it for years.
Historically, no country has survived without paying its government workers for more than 24 months.
China has just entered its 16th month. so roughly 8 months remaining. coincidentally the new US president will be announced around then.
So far the actions of Israel, Russia's confidence suggests Trump re-election. China appears to be waiting and speed running its military re-armament but I wonder if decades of neglect can be overcome within just 3 quarters...
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 274 ms ] threadIt is interesting to compare-and-contrast Jack Ma and Elon Musk who seems to me the nearest analogue in the US. How their host countries treat them says a lot about the real cultural differences between Washington and Beijing. For all America's problems - at least up to Trump level annoying the politicians - it is safe to build wealth in the US.
That's bad for entrepreneurs, but also means that they can have the entire power of CCP behind them. There are tons of example where a small company started by stealing from western competitors then suddenly produced a huge pile of cash out of nowhere to bought those competitors and took over their marketshare in the west.
https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-th... https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ousted-arm-china-...
> Marxism–Leninism was the first official ideology of the CCP.
Mao Zedong Thought was some time ago and since then various directions the CCP has taken have been criticized as being un-Marxist and a betrayal of basic Marxist values.
The Authoritarian edge has always been there in the CCP, ebbing and flowing with the years .. but that part is distinctly un-(classical)-communism.
Like Capitalism "Twue Communism" has never really existed, even the big names in modern "communism" have said on the record that they represent authoritarian "on behalf of the people" (sort of) socialist control as a neccessary means on the way to a true workers paradise (barf) .. you know, a classic bait and switch to mask a system being just another variation of top down control.
Though clearly what happened in the USSR in the 20s was something different from what he wrote. What you saw in Russia in that period was a response to an ongoing civil war, followed by the rise of Stalin.. who, yes, really did believe in brutal authoritarianism.
All these Stalinist states (and I would classify China this way too) will pay lip service to Leninism as a way to seek ideological legitimacy. But their "official" readings of Marx and Lenin are very... creative... shall we say.
But it's 1:30am and I should no be getting into this argument.
Stalin rose through the ranks by being a seemingly "competent" administrator who restored the power of the old Tsarist bureaucracy to "get things done."
But in general, Lenin gets a bad rap for the awful things his successor did.
You'll note that Putin admires Stalin but loathes Lenin. Even bizarrely singling Lenin out for his positions on Ukraine and the national question etc in his crazy speech justifying their aggression on the eve of their invasion.
It's a horrible tragedy of history in which millions died and all of eastern Europe fell under a terrible dark iron curtain which took the name "communism" but the name is effectively irrelevant. What it really was was a broken down highly authoritarian single party state that used the badge of "socialism" to lend itself legitimacy while doing very awful things in the name of Russian nationalism, certain individuals, the Party, etc. etc. Kleptocratic clique under the guise of a revolutionary state.
As we can see in China today the actual economic political model doesn't even matter. They'll use the name "communism" even when what they're doing is absolutely savagely market driven, or something else, like the quasi-theocracy in North Korea.
What they labelled as socialism in the East bears almost no resemblance to what socialists in the West advocated. But the label of "communism" will forever be marred by what these people did.
EDIT: A good classic book on this topic is "Leninism under Lenin" by Marcel Liebmann (https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/908-leninism-under-leni...) -- now, whether that old book can stand the test of time now that more historical records from that period are open, I don't know. I'd be curious to see a (non-ideologically motivated) Russian historian with access to records from the Revolution take it apart.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1975/xx/liebman.html
The only societies where communism works without authoritarianism are communes like the Longo Maï where people come by choice, not by force.
All new systems are introduced by force, even capitalism. Do you think that at one point in the past everybody in Britain decided that the state should be capitalist and so everyone, on their own accord, moved from communal land so it can be passed in to private hands?
That is correct, and I was pointing out that it isn't specific to communism: any government or economic system will have at least 1 person who doesn't like it, but the system being created nonetheless requires imposing it by force, and maintaining it by force, which nearly every government does to this day.
And my original comment clearly shows that capitalism also had to be imposed for what once was communal needed to be confiscated in order to be redistributed.
> Almost all of the Soviet states transitioned to market economy democracies without any conflict at all
Indeed, a state capitalist society transitioned to market capitalism. Nothing needed to be taken from any one person but the state. Not really a new system, just new owners.
Since we're already knee-deep in nitpicking terminology, this is describing the general philosophy of anarchism, not capitalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
Also, what is natural in me owning a factory on the other side of the world when I never left the city I live in?
Achieving communism necessarily entails authoritarianism because you need an authoritarian state to seize the property of existing landholders and business owners, and to prevent the creation/operation of new private businesses.
They would force CCP member into the board and setup CCP organizations within the companies. Anyone who deals with China's companies would need to understand this. You are always dealing with CCP behind it
Take "fines" for example. They are the cost of doing business and never actually dissuade the behavior (in the USA). This in effect allows the government to act as a shareholder (fines = dividends) under the guise of domestic legal enforcement.
Then they turn around and protect the same corporations intellectual and physical property abroad.
They are solidly state capitalist since Deng, and since Xi I would classify them as far-right revisionist and even possibly fascist, with a strong focus on order, aesthetic, collective responsibility towards nation, and restoring the homeland, where homeland is defined on ethnonationalist not civic nationalist lines.
It's safe to build OBSCENE wealth in the states.
It's safe to build wealth in PRC, plenty of 10-100 millionaires.
It's also safe to build OBSCENE wealth in PRC, but it comes with more political caveats. Like not trying circumvent regulators by launching irresponsible fintech.
Which system is better depends on how much you value checking billionaires.
In the USA you can transfer it out of the country if you want to.
https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3212414...
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/china-s-rich-are...
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-banks-waits-072...
https://harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog/getting-money-out-o...
https://www.afr.com/world/asia/smurfing-strangers-how-china-...
https://agbrief.com/news/china/24/01/2024/china-tightens-con...
https://www.uschina.org/china%E2%80%99s-capital-controls-cho...
https://www.ft.com/chinese-capital-controls
At low levels people buy politicians, at high levels politicians shake down the wealthy.
"why buy the cow for the milk?" etc. etc.
This is such a beautiful life isn't it? Im not saying China is any better, but come on man. Have some empathy for all the people that have been crushed by this system whether its the poor, the people on the receiving end in Gaza/Iraq/Iran/Pakistan/Venezuela or just the people unlucky to not be born at a competitive level.
To me there's nothing 1984 or dystopian about this. The guy was building a company that was hurting the people. If anything we need more of this in the US.
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/07/07/tech...
Being a Venetian banker or Chinese tea exporter wasnt that safe. What about prospecting for gold in Colorado river valleys where bears hang out? Moving trains of camels thru the Sahara? Chasing whales around for years at a time without going home.
Today is way better.
"Ma spends much of his time abroad, especially in Japan where he is a visiting professor at Tokyo College, a research institute run by the University of Tokyo"
Jack Ma has no hope for China, as evident by his action. The long internal post may have been requested by the Chinese government, or his staff, to somehow rally Alibaba's failing image. But Jack sees the real pictures on the ground in China. And he chooses Japan.
And the young in China knows it too. That's why the young are laying flat. and sneaking through Mexico into US. and fleeing to Cambodia and Myanmar for work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
Tang Ping on the other hand is a phenomenon where the individual only produces as much as his environment demands of him. If he contracted with his employer to work 9 to 5, he will work 9 to 5 and not a second more. If his work description is producing Powerpoint slides, he will produce Powerpoint slides and only Powerpoint slides. If he is remote work, he will quit rather than come into the office. He will then use the freed up time and energy on other pursuits he deems worthy.
Emerging PRC analogues to NEETs/Hikikomori are "full time kids". TLDR is high savings rate and culture = kids live with parents and do bumfuck while looking for jobs they think are their level. Some will settle for employment beneath them, some will live off their parents dime if their parents can support it. Cause is PRC went from single digit to 60% tertiary rate in last 20 years, there's too much talent/competition last few years as graduating classes got larger and larger but not enough jobs uni kids want.
If growth stalls but expectations of what "success" looks like in life remain the same then inevitably the more rational amongst them will look and see that just achieving a "normal" life seems incredibly difficult.
I'm not saying it's not serious, it's also not particularly special to PRC. Like the few tanping kids I hear about IRL in PRC are like your typical western kids with comfortably wealthy boomer parents who can afford to fuck around because they got safety net/inheritance down the line. Everyone else grinding while joking about tanping, like antiwork folks in the west bitch about their conditions, but eat continue to eat shit all the same.
and the ability to be extremely vocal about it -- which could get you sent to jail or otherwise ruin your life via social credit scores.
point is, the kids in China have it notably rough.
No. The difference is the talented and otherwise ambitious are being sacrificed by an older generation to an exceptional degree in China. That's happening elsewhere, too. But because the political systems are not dictatorships, they're able to adapt.
Or directly written by them under his name..
The young in China are so disillusioned, they are buying gold in droves this year [1] (instead of putting it in bank, or invest in stock market or real estate)
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240221-youth-appetit...
Could have been written simply out of fear as well. No matter where he goes, he's not safe from the CCP, so better try and stay in their good graces.
https://www.nbim.no/en/publications/podcast/alibaba-co-found...
Alibaba co-founder and Chair: China, Jack Ma, AI and basketball
And while smart and sympathetic, I cannot help to think that Alibaba is a company of the past belonging to a time of a certain US-China order that is no more. The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving, fearless, and aggressively deep tech than what Alibaba aspires to be.
Anyway. If you listen to the Tsai interview he seems more concerned about US regulators than Chinese.
Most of the people I know in the industry think Alibaba is one of the least efficient big tech company in China compare to e.g Tencent, Baidu, Bytedance, Huawei. They all have somewhat similar bureaucracy burden as big corp but not at the level of Alibaba. Their problem is much complex than pointing the finger at Chinese government to explain everything.
At that time PDD is promoting the idea you buy what they think you will buy. PDD's search is barely functioning at that time and their bussiness model is solely relying on recommending system.
Though I'm not sure how much Alibaba's decision is affected by PDD because the story I heard is more driven by their internal politics. I feel like that's really a weird product decision for Alibaba and to me doesn't make a lot of sense.
I spend many hours trying to make sense of it. Usually I fail and buy elsewhere.
Truly an impressive feet of stupidity.
Someone should do a paid search engine for it. $50 per month seems well worth the preservation of sanity.
Being all of that is exactly why Jack Ma got beat down by the party. The party doesn't want fast moving, fearless, aggressively deep tech, they want control, compliance, and stability.
And alibaba was not "deep tech", more like derivative tech. It's just a ecommerce site. It takes a lot of technical expertise to operate that at a large scale for sure, but at the end of the day, it's not the kind of fundamental tech free from sanctions that the chinese government wanted to pivot its tech industry to.
Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell.
"The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies. It found that the share of total market capitalization held by state-controlled enterprises, in which the government holds a stake of 50% or more, rose to 50% by the end of 2023, the highest proportion in five years"
[1] China's favored state-owned companies squeeze private sector https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-s-favored-sta... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-state-owned-devel... [3] https://www.thinkchina.sg/not-everything-has-be-run-state-th...
Maybe state ownership will collapse it all, maybe the coming demographic implosion will do it. But it does not seem like your daddy's communism....more like a capitalism-communism fusion that combined with nationalistic pride and a desperation to account for all the over production might lead to surpassing what the soviet union could only dream of.
China is now Soviet Union, but with horrendous demographics, mind-numbing debt, and wealth flooding out of the country. China is old and broke. China is fucked.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izvdO-zdlKg
Unless you want to keep your head in the sand and pretend this is the soviet union all over again, you better start paying attention to how fast they are iterating.
>China is now Soviet Union, but with horrendous demographics, mind-numbing debt, and wealth flooding out of the country. China is old and broke. China is fucked.
Yeah this is the Peter Zeihan thesis but you know what, it might take a while for this to play out and in the meantime, China may not leave the arena until after they have taken out a large chunk of the western incumbents.
Nio Loses $35,000 A Car. https://www.carscoops.com/2023/10/nio-loses-35000-a-car-that...
BYD lost its EV crown to Tesla after just one quarter as China’s EV market slumps https://fortune.com/asia/2024/04/03/byd-loses-ev-crown-to-te...
The EU just got a step closer to hitting Chinese EVs with additional tariffs—and may even apply them retroactively https://fortune.com/2024/03/07/eu-nears-hitting-chinese-evs-...
I'd rather listen to Elon in this regard, this is one thing he does have experience in.
[1]:https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
>The EU just got a step closer to hitting Chinese EVs with additional tariffs—and may even apply them retroactively
The EU having no major tech giants to call their own has pivoted to regulation and tariffs against both China and the US.
You seem to be ignoring how they literally created and led this market over the last 15+ years. I get how you are so blinded by your hate of one man that you completely ignore the facts on the ground but do you have to make it so obvious?
> Maybe this is obvious to me coming from a world where all banks have their own analysts and all but the idea of trusting a market leader is just insane. Information asymmetry is so important to capitalism he's obviously not going to provide the full picture.
This would be a plausible statement if it hasn't been disproven time and time agin over the last 10 years. See the entire short industry that got burned by their analysts. I was there on day 1 of the /r/Realtesla a subreddit dedicated to pushing the thesis of following industry experts and analysis. In 2019 they were convinced that Tesla was structurally bankrupt.
The hard lesson I learned after years of failed predictions based on analysis is that banks and analysts only have a snapshot of a current moment in time and do not consider the fast moving nature of innovation led companies.
They have gotten this wrong with many tech companies but especially Tesla. Just to give you one example: all the analysts and shorts were certain that Tesla would fail in 2018 due to their live up to the minute counts of materials going in and out of the factories. They had live video feeds of everything happening outside the factory. They failed to predict Musk using a loophole in California laws to set up a giant tent and get production levels increased. That changed the entire calculus.
Musk has repeatedly proven the analysts wrong and so I'd ask why would you continue to trust them? Their motivation is to get people to pay their fees yet it seems as if they suffer no major consequences for continually getting it wrong.
Going back to what Musk said(which you obviously didn't even bother reading): "If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he said. "They're extremely good."
You might be able to make the argument that he is self serving in his comments but this quote is a poor hill to die on.
In addition, they've been trying to massively increase their military capacity, but throwing money at it only does so much: you also need young men, and there's not that many that think being in the military is a great idea, and people aren't having kids any more. At least in the old Soviet Union, there was no lack of young men being raised.
If you just want English language go for SCMP: https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/lifestyle/article/3194858/l...
The money has already been made by those in power and the only way to make more is to follow the government gravy train. For the last decade that has meant batteries, EVs, semiconductors, displays are all so heavily subsidized (factories are built with free government loans) that doing anything else (other than buying property) makes no sense. That doesn't mean the people aren't motivated, smart, and ingenious, but they won't be making back the $T in loans.
This is all news to me.
Ignoring the age issue in the far right (not enough young people replacing the dying elders in the movement), we have repeated losses in special elections due to their stance on abortion indicating their current plan of action is not in sync with where the country is. That does not look long term promising for the movement. Either they move left or they will continue to cede power at all levels of the government.
Working long hours isn't necessarily efficient.
I’ve not really observed it myself, and I’d suspect that part of it might be very different styles or ways of working. But maybe there’s a grain of truth there.
That’s speculation though. What we do know is that the CCP is changing the way of managing the economy. Between 1992 and 2019 they leaned heavily on the private sector for growth. They would do anything they needed to help private enterprise succeed. That approach paid rich dividends, it’s obvious.
Xi Jinping is going a different way now though. He reckons he knows better than Deng, the architect of the Chinese economic miracle. His approach is to pick winners and losers. It may succeed because he’s picked good horses so far - EVs, solar panels, AI, semiconductors. And state led capitalism has had success in China, with major players like Huawei doing well despite major headwinds.
Because of this shift in approach you can’t extrapolate from the success of 2001-19 and say China’s future success is inevitable.
Which is less likely (one would hope) than via other methods, but the correlation is not as strong as we’d all like.
It'd be interesting to know how much this phenomenon would explain the stability of otherwise culturally ossified regimes that stood for four or five centuries before collapsing, where government was built almost entirely out of extreme nepotism in which the ruling potentate had 50 or 60 kids to choose from, and thus had a shot at picking the most capable from the, er, top of the class.
Or the most ambitious /ruthless pick themselves, taking the old man and/or their dangerously competitive siblings out of the picture.
Either way there is a little more competition involved then what we normally think of with a modern family unit.
Training makes up a lot for stupidity and other gaps.
At some point, it doesn’t matter enough, but that can go quite awhile.
Doing those things at scale is ‘work’ even if it isn’t what most people consider work.
Learning how to sweat a pipe is useful if that’s what you’re going to need to do to put food on the table.
Learning how to placate powerful sponsors, not get caught doing naughty things, and networking among other power brokers is how you put food on the table as a ruling elite isn’t it? Or at least avoid being burned at the stake.
And not something they’re going to teach effectively at your neighborhood public school.
Seems like a clear link.
We're talking about "the people doing the day to day work are fiercely competitive and they want it all".
Do you really think those people's main goal is "to live a calm and good life".
Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!
There have been far many more economic and capital systems on this rock than just American capitalism.
The other day a guy was complaining about being in jail for a time and how unfair it was that he had a criminal record. Lots of open minded people praising him.
Then a new user called him out for trying to get with a 12 year old. Yikes.
However, Deng also introduced China's 1-child policy (decidedly not capitalism), which is now beginning to seriously strain the system. The future is indeed uncertain.
For some reason I thought it was a quasi-private company owned partially by the government.
You may find insight after reflecting on why a non-American knows this detail about the USPS while you don't.
I'm wondering why you know an obscure fact about postal service in a country you don't live in?
“This thing goes against my orthodoxy therefore I refuse to see it” is exactly the sort of attitude that gets you far away from success.
For the record, I was merely saying it’s possible for a state owned enterprise to do things quickly, even if in practice most of them don’t. So much of the world is just about having the right kind of people at the right place, and that’s true in the public sphere and the private one.
One might start trying to say "well a bunch of money from the state isn't enough to consider it a state owned enterprise", but then the contention is a bit more specific than just about being state owned.
We did get to the moon with "state owned enterprises" anyway...
But it's extremely unlikely, given how often the opposite occurs instead in historical data.
They can ... until they don't and there's no market correction in place anymore to keep them in check.
It's going to take another decade to feel this effect but it'll be there in full force.
The profit driven system is supposed to self-correct. We see this today, with Boeing for example (yes /s).
Now beyond snark, we can ask is the same thing happening to us that happened to the "commies" with the 'defense and national security' establishment raising troubling doppelgangers of "state industry" from the body of "market driven" neo-liberal capitalist societies?
So, we see issue is not really "ownership" but rather establishments ..
At least that’s the idea, I think. May as well steel man the argument.
Or are you more complaining about the lack of honesty in these defacto situations?
In China, any company larger than a tiny one is state controlled anyway - someone from the CCP needs to have a board seat, and everyone knows what happens if you anger the party.
The more important question is if it is worth it, since money spent is zero sum.
Also, we could use more zero sum that redistributes wealth towards huge masses, even if that means some billionaires will have fewer billions...
However this doesn't mean China's GDP will get back to fast growth. Its economy is constrained by demand, not supply. Anyone who has experience with Chinese elders would know how thrifty they are no matter how much wealth they have.
When Winnie the Pooh orders you to jump, your only permitted responses are Yes or How high? unless you want to be deleted (no, not killed, deleted) from the face of the planet and any and all records known to China.
Same goes for Russia and other authoritarian regimes.
Recently the company decided it needed a plot of land, located in the middle between there of its sites. It got that plot.
Call it an oligarch or call it well-paid voters' jobs. I think the later is truer.
They should punish billionaires that cross the people, not the government.
Historically, no country has survived without paying its government workers for more than 24 months.
China has just entered its 16th month. so roughly 8 months remaining. coincidentally the new US president will be announced around then.
So far the actions of Israel, Russia's confidence suggests Trump re-election. China appears to be waiting and speed running its military re-armament but I wonder if decades of neglect can be overcome within just 3 quarters...
Good thing democratic countries regularly build up their foes in the name of market forces. Couldn't have worldwars without that..