The rumor in China is that Jack Ma is part of Jiang Zemin's clique of politicians/sphere of influence. Alibaba's backed by and invested by Jiang's families.
Xi has been purging Jiang's people/influence on the Central Government for the last few years to strengthen his ruling. Originally he was going to leave Ma alone as he has proven himself to be useful.
But 2 things happened- 1. people start to idolize Ma the businessman over the party's absolute rule. 2. Perhaps as a result Ma is embolden to speak out against Xi's government directions.
So now Ma has to go. Ma knew this and that's why he resigned from Alibaba's Chairman position, but it was too late. Ant Financial, with its main backers from Jiang's gang, was put to a standstill. This is only the first step. Expect the party to eventually to take over the Alibaba group (国进民退). No private civilian will be allowed to gain this much power again.
“There is no so-called [Ma] era,” read a recent headline in the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, “but only an era that has [Ma] in it.”
Anyway, to quote House of Cards-
“Such a waste of time. He chose money over power, in this town, a mistake nearly everyone makes. Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after ten years. Power — is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who doesn’t see the difference.” - Frank Underwood
Ah it's just a false dichotomy. In reality these things go together. Can't have (real fuckoff) power without money; can't have (real fuckoff) money without power. If you don't have one but have another, you'll soon lose it.
Would love to get a transcript of exactly what he said at a forum a few months ago, from Quartz:
Speaking at a forum attended by some of China’s most powerful figures in politics and finance, Ma heavily criticized the “pawnshop mentality” of Chinese banks, and accused global authorities’ old-school financial regulation of slowing down innovation. The criticism eventually reached Chinese president Xi Jinping, who was furious about the remarks and personally ordered the suspension, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A couple of other interviews he’s been hammering away at the stagnant (according to him) Chinese banks, and the regulators basically snuffed him by forcing his Ant payment group to ‘stick to just payments’ (he wanted it to give loans via the system, becoming a type of bank in itself).
^ I can see how they would be afraid of this. I think Alibaba is trying to force sellers to only sell on Alibaba exclusively (not allowing them to sell on other sites if they want to sell on Alibaba). If Alipay gives loans, I could see how Ma might make it so that available credit is usable on Alibaba only, further tightening the hold. Jack Ma might be the one trying to be monopolistic here, but I’d love for someone with first-hand experience to speak to what’s going on over there.
Or maybe we’re all just sheep and Chinese insiders know how to shift stock prices with nonsense because they can and buy up shares. Those companies are increasingly being listed on global markets and all the CCP has to do is breath ‘eh, maybe no capitalism’, and the stocks move. SEC can’t stop that.
Basically Jack said that the banks are working in 'pawnshop mentality', not using the data collected to evaluate loans. With Ant you can get loans in 10 seconds. He also said the global financial regulation is for countries with financial sector, and China's problem is not about regulation, is about there is nothing to regulate.
The new regulation on P2P financing requires Ant to put 30% of the loans with its own money. I can see from Ant's point of view, their loan is super safe (with all the taobao data and AliPay data collected). Ant group will create a financial entity to put its P2P business under banking regulation.
Another interesting thing is that Ant's loans mostly go to TaoBao sellers (small businesses), with their data, which are super safe from their point of view. The problem is that from regulators' point of view, maybe it is not obvious or it is hard to regulate it with one exception.
bigger reason than Alibaba's market control is the fact that the Chinese government is absolutely allergic to unsecured debt. China over the last few years has desperately attempted, and with some sucess, cleaned up parts of its financial sector because the government fears few things more than a financial crisis, it's something they learned when they came out ahead in 2008/2009.
I remember reading https://marginalrevolution.com/ back around the time of the 2008 financial crisis. Tyler Cowen was emphasizing the futility of trying to regulate the financial system. The banks paid big money to hire the smartest guys; the regulators had to make do with who they could get. The Collateralized Debt Obligation genie was out of the bottle and you couldn't get it back in.
One has to wonder how that looks from China. The government of the USA looks impressively powerful, yet it lost control of the financial sector. Some players in the American financial sector believed in CDOs and lost their own money. Others saw it as just another scam, with private profits and socialized losses.
To Chinese eyes that probably looks like corruption with extra steps. In particular, the US government could retain some legitimacy with a "Wall Street" versus "Main Street" narrative. Sure, Uncle Sam got ripped off by bankers, but what can you do?
The Chinese government is worried that corruption will cause it to lose its legitimacy with the Chinese people. But the Chinese people won't let the Chinese government away with the "It is the Banksters not the Officials." line. They don't see the top people as two warring clans, with Bankers beyond the reach of discipline by Officials.
So the Chinese government has to look several moves ahead. First come the CDOs. As the bubble builds the government finds that it is trapped: too many people are dependent on easy money for the government to pop the bubble. As the bubble inflates, the government tries to regulate its way out of trouble by deflating the CDO bubble. Here the Chinese government has second-mover advantage. It can see that the US government lost control and could not do anything, not even close. Eventually the bubble pops, leading to a financial crisis and the Chinese government gets the blame. It must have noticed that the US government didn't manage to shift the blame with long prison sentences for bankers, the US government had somehow lost control.
So I don't think that "absolutely allergic to unsecured debt." is quite it. My guess is that the Chinese government sees the US government losing control of the financial sector, years (ten? twenty?) ahead of the financial sector misbehaving and causing a government-shaking crisis. The Chinese government don't want finance building itself up as a separate (and irresponsible) power center. The American experience is that this happens slowly, little by little, but on a ratchet. A ratchet with a magic pawl that the government cannot lift. So the Chinese government has to nip it in the bud.
Reminds me of former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei.
He also disappeared for weeks with every one looking for him.
Turned out he was in a Chinese prison...
Okay this is not at all likely but wouldn't it be crazy if you know, given China's reputation, it's possible that Jack Ma could just be sitting tight out of public view letting the world assume that China killed him until they capitulate to his demands.
Very unlikely indeed. The government/party bigwigs he recently antagonize are not going to let an entrepreneur shame them publicly and let him get away with that. He's keeping or being kept out of public view until things are settled. I don't think they care what other countries assume and therefore there's no way for pressure to build up
"After reports speculating about Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s whereabouts, CNBC’s David Faber reported Tuesday that the billionaire is not missing, according to a person familiar with the matter. Instead, Ma has been lying low for the time being, Faber reported."
You're not thinking like an authoritarian enough. Some farmer living in Nepal might as well say, "Imagine driving a car just to buy a dozen eggs because you don't want to walk - isn't this a sign of mental illness?"
However, Americans do it all the time, not because they're exceptionally lazy or mentally ill, but because the driving infrastructure is so exceptionally good that there's no reason not to use it. Driving is just what you do every day, without much thinking, instead of something that must be deliberately planned and executed.
(Whether that's a net plus to America as a whole is, of course, a different question altogether.)
It's the same sort of person that gets offended by being compared to a children's cartoon and therefore has it and any mention of it banned from the entire country. So because this "Emperor" has seemingly lost "face" therefore the whole country must suffer.
There is a drama now happening on Youtube with former presitator of Kazakhstan, where his past subordinates now surface and dump their personal accounts of him.
As could've been imagined, none are positive of his personal ability. But the biggest insecurity of such people is to appear to be useless.
He very much understands that he surrounded himself with sharks, and able lieutenants while being on the borderline of mental development scale himself.
In many dumped secret recordings of him by one former official, he often explodes with "You would've been nobody without me!!!" whenever challenged with even an innuendo of "I could've done it without you."
What holds such people firmly in their chairs of power, is not their ability, but such shark pool of capable executors whose loyalty is conditional
I find this sort of flippant posturing and minimization much more disturbing than a higher-profile-than-usual disappearance.
Acting as if these horrific, nebulous governing systems can be reduced to the image of a Saturday-morning cartoon villain, an infantile mustache-twirler angrily shaking his fist at the TV screen.
It is not “offense”. A system does not get “get mad”. It constantly sniffs for the slightest hint of dissent, any figure that might even come close to nudging public opinion the wrong way, and grinds it to dust.
It’s no different from every other country’s power-seeking and preserving systems, just with a much more sensitive trigger-finger, and that seemingly excessive sensitivity and reactivity is simply because they can. Not because some CCP higher-up has a fragile ego.
In what world is an attempt to understand the actions of a governing body more disturbing than disappearing someone? The pondering of morality and underlying intentions are what fuel the entire "East vs West" debate.
Chalk it up to systemic casualties all you'd like, but let's not pretend as if that isn't reductive as well. Behind every system, there are decisions being made by human beings and it's not flippant to be cognizant of that.
That flippant posturing is the result of reading history books from the perspective of everyone who lived over the past several thousand years being backwards and evil.
It blinds people to the realities of power dynamics that still exist today and have not been at all lessened or subdued by progressivism one bit.
This needs to be viewed through the lens of the Communist Party's primary motivation: the persistence of the single-party system.
In a single-party system, you can't allow dissent or you will end up with multiple parties, if enough of the dissenters agree with each other.
When someone speaks against the government in China, particularly someone with a high profile like Jack Ma, the government is worried that other people might agree with him, and they might form a movement that demands change and challenges the party's policies.
If the party allows this to happen, that would mean they recognize the legitimacy of political action originating outside of the party. That would be an existential threat to the single-party system.
(Also, the last time the party allowed public dissent, it grew out of control and turned into the Tiananmen Square protests. The party's current leaders remember that time well, and the lesson they took from it is that allowing dissent was a serious miscalculation.)
Don't even accidentally look for pics of Tiananmen massacre. There are some truly gruesome ones which remind all viewers, fight tyranny in any way, shape or form that one can get away with. History will judge the vile.
Readit News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25636761
The rumor in China is that Jack Ma is part of Jiang Zemin's clique of politicians/sphere of influence. Alibaba's backed by and invested by Jiang's families.
Xi has been purging Jiang's people/influence on the Central Government for the last few years to strengthen his ruling. Originally he was going to leave Ma alone as he has proven himself to be useful.
But 2 things happened- 1. people start to idolize Ma the businessman over the party's absolute rule. 2. Perhaps as a result Ma is embolden to speak out against Xi's government directions.
So now Ma has to go. Ma knew this and that's why he resigned from Alibaba's Chairman position, but it was too late. Ant Financial, with its main backers from Jiang's gang, was put to a standstill. This is only the first step. Expect the party to eventually to take over the Alibaba group (国进民退). No private civilian will be allowed to gain this much power again.
https://time.com/5926062/jack-ma/
“There is no so-called [Ma] era,” read a recent headline in the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, “but only an era that has [Ma] in it.”
Anyway, to quote House of Cards-
“Such a waste of time. He chose money over power, in this town, a mistake nearly everyone makes. Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after ten years. Power — is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who doesn’t see the difference.” - Frank Underwood
https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/083456-000-A/china-the-disappe...
Speaking at a forum attended by some of China’s most powerful figures in politics and finance, Ma heavily criticized the “pawnshop mentality” of Chinese banks, and accused global authorities’ old-school financial regulation of slowing down innovation. The criticism eventually reached Chinese president Xi Jinping, who was furious about the remarks and personally ordered the suspension, according to the Wall Street Journal.
https://qz.com/1946723/theres-no-place-for-a-jack-ma-in-toda...
A couple of other interviews he’s been hammering away at the stagnant (according to him) Chinese banks, and the regulators basically snuffed him by forcing his Ant payment group to ‘stick to just payments’ (he wanted it to give loans via the system, becoming a type of bank in itself).
^ I can see how they would be afraid of this. I think Alibaba is trying to force sellers to only sell on Alibaba exclusively (not allowing them to sell on other sites if they want to sell on Alibaba). If Alipay gives loans, I could see how Ma might make it so that available credit is usable on Alibaba only, further tightening the hold. Jack Ma might be the one trying to be monopolistic here, but I’d love for someone with first-hand experience to speak to what’s going on over there.
Or maybe we’re all just sheep and Chinese insiders know how to shift stock prices with nonsense because they can and buy up shares. Those companies are increasingly being listed on global markets and all the CCP has to do is breath ‘eh, maybe no capitalism’, and the stocks move. SEC can’t stop that.
Transcript: https://sfl.global/news_post/mayunshanghaiwaitanjinronglunta...
Translation: https://interconnected.blog/jack-ma-bund-finance-summit-spee...
The new regulation on P2P financing requires Ant to put 30% of the loans with its own money. I can see from Ant's point of view, their loan is super safe (with all the taobao data and AliPay data collected). Ant group will create a financial entity to put its P2P business under banking regulation.
Another interesting thing is that Ant's loans mostly go to TaoBao sellers (small businesses), with their data, which are super safe from their point of view. The problem is that from regulators' point of view, maybe it is not obvious or it is hard to regulate it with one exception.
relevant read: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/11/china-takes-step-aga...
One has to wonder how that looks from China. The government of the USA looks impressively powerful, yet it lost control of the financial sector. Some players in the American financial sector believed in CDOs and lost their own money. Others saw it as just another scam, with private profits and socialized losses.
To Chinese eyes that probably looks like corruption with extra steps. In particular, the US government could retain some legitimacy with a "Wall Street" versus "Main Street" narrative. Sure, Uncle Sam got ripped off by bankers, but what can you do?
The Chinese government is worried that corruption will cause it to lose its legitimacy with the Chinese people. But the Chinese people won't let the Chinese government away with the "It is the Banksters not the Officials." line. They don't see the top people as two warring clans, with Bankers beyond the reach of discipline by Officials.
So the Chinese government has to look several moves ahead. First come the CDOs. As the bubble builds the government finds that it is trapped: too many people are dependent on easy money for the government to pop the bubble. As the bubble inflates, the government tries to regulate its way out of trouble by deflating the CDO bubble. Here the Chinese government has second-mover advantage. It can see that the US government lost control and could not do anything, not even close. Eventually the bubble pops, leading to a financial crisis and the Chinese government gets the blame. It must have noticed that the US government didn't manage to shift the blame with long prison sentences for bankers, the US government had somehow lost control.
So I don't think that "absolutely allergic to unsecured debt." is quite it. My guess is that the Chinese government sees the US government losing control of the financial sector, years (ten? twenty?) ahead of the financial sector misbehaving and causing a government-shaking crisis. The Chinese government don't want finance building itself up as a separate (and irresponsible) power center. The American experience is that this happens slowly, little by little, but on a ratchet. A ratchet with a magic pawl that the government cannot lift. So the Chinese government has to nip it in the bud.
"After reports speculating about Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s whereabouts, CNBC’s David Faber reported Tuesday that the billionaire is not missing, according to a person familiar with the matter. Instead, Ma has been lying low for the time being, Faber reported."
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/07/guo-wengui-chinese...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/18/guo-wengui-...
Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness?
I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.
However, Americans do it all the time, not because they're exceptionally lazy or mentally ill, but because the driving infrastructure is so exceptionally good that there's no reason not to use it. Driving is just what you do every day, without much thinking, instead of something that must be deliberately planned and executed.
(Whether that's a net plus to America as a whole is, of course, a different question altogether.)
There is a drama now happening on Youtube with former presitator of Kazakhstan, where his past subordinates now surface and dump their personal accounts of him.
As could've been imagined, none are positive of his personal ability. But the biggest insecurity of such people is to appear to be useless.
He very much understands that he surrounded himself with sharks, and able lieutenants while being on the borderline of mental development scale himself.
In many dumped secret recordings of him by one former official, he often explodes with "You would've been nobody without me!!!" whenever challenged with even an innuendo of "I could've done it without you."
What holds such people firmly in their chairs of power, is not their ability, but such shark pool of capable executors whose loyalty is conditional
president + dictator?
I remember some proclaiming that his resignation was nothing but an act...
If Jack Ma can speak up, what's to stop the next richest guy from speaking up? It's dissent all the way down. You need to nip it in the bud.
Furthermore, if the fortune of a billion people rests on your authority, virtually all ends justify the means.
Acting as if these horrific, nebulous governing systems can be reduced to the image of a Saturday-morning cartoon villain, an infantile mustache-twirler angrily shaking his fist at the TV screen.
It is not “offense”. A system does not get “get mad”. It constantly sniffs for the slightest hint of dissent, any figure that might even come close to nudging public opinion the wrong way, and grinds it to dust.
It’s no different from every other country’s power-seeking and preserving systems, just with a much more sensitive trigger-finger, and that seemingly excessive sensitivity and reactivity is simply because they can. Not because some CCP higher-up has a fragile ego.
Chalk it up to systemic casualties all you'd like, but let's not pretend as if that isn't reductive as well. Behind every system, there are decisions being made by human beings and it's not flippant to be cognizant of that.
It blinds people to the realities of power dynamics that still exist today and have not been at all lessened or subdued by progressivism one bit.
In a single-party system, you can't allow dissent or you will end up with multiple parties, if enough of the dissenters agree with each other.
When someone speaks against the government in China, particularly someone with a high profile like Jack Ma, the government is worried that other people might agree with him, and they might form a movement that demands change and challenges the party's policies.
If the party allows this to happen, that would mean they recognize the legitimacy of political action originating outside of the party. That would be an existential threat to the single-party system.
(Also, the last time the party allowed public dissent, it grew out of control and turned into the Tiananmen Square protests. The party's current leaders remember that time well, and the lesson they took from it is that allowing dissent was a serious miscalculation.)
I imagine that the horrors of such violence would weigh heavily on the mindset of scared decision makers.
Maybe it all comes down to fear. Fear of death during an uprising, for one.
Therefore you reduce this situation to “he said bad thing, therefore he got jailed, therefore whoever jailed him is a bad thing”
Repeat, amplify, and you got yourself a brainwash