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>"The government has been actively extorting international companies into "joint" ventures. These ventures essentially require "treats" (as an insider told me)

>"The government has been actively extorting international companies into "joint" ventures. These ventures essentially require "treats" (as an insider told me) every several months. These treats would be manufacturing processes, engineering drawings of proprietary IP, or technical training for their engineering staff." That sounds like something that a patriot would do. They want the knowledge for the country so they play to get it. >"Boards of Directors can't ignore the scale of the Chinese market, but it comes at the cost of essentially giving away your business prospects [..]" So, they want the markets but don't want to pay the price. Nobody is forcing them to go to China. >"many Chinese investors are desperate to get their money into foreign investments" Sure, they did well and now they want out, human nature. Unfortunately, capital controls is what China economy needs if they want to keep growing. Without capital controls the growth of the last 20 years would not be possible. Even without special insight, I'm sure that Xi and his mates want more control not less, and that there is a lot of corruption and unfairness in the country, but you shouldn't put, in the same bag, that with the policies that are the reason of the economic success of China.

bko 9y ago
> Unfortunately, capital controls is what China economy needs if they want to keep growing. Since when did benefits to "China" surpass benefits to individuals living in China? The state should serve the people, not the other way around.
- RobertoG 9y ago
  "The state should serve the people, not the other way around." That depends on your political views, but in my book, sure. The only measure of economic success for a country should be the improvement of the lives of their citizens. China's current economic strategy have lifted more than 500 millions of people from poverty. A change of that magnitude have never happened before in history. Do you know how they talk about poverty in the world improving in the last years?. Normally it's not mentioned but it's basically China. About the capital controls, from the NYT article: "The government sets a $50,000 limit on the money Chinese citizens can move out of the country in a year, [..]" It seems to me that the people that feel constrained by this are not the majority of the people in China.
  - derefr 9y ago
    > It seems to me that the people that feel constrained by this are not the majority of the people in China. They would be insofar as most people aren't performing the action of "investing" their money at all, but are rather handing it off to money managers (e.g. mutual funds) to invest. Those money-managers are then limited by the the capital controls—not at the $50k level, but still at a level low enough that it prevents prevent globally-efficient investment to best grow private citizens' wealth.
- eternalban 9y ago
  > The state is run by the Communist Party. "It's good to be rich", indeed, but apparently "enjoy the good life in China" is the unspoken addendum. The people who got rich in China did so in context of a national strategic plan, devised and put in place by the Communist Party. It seems disengenuous to adopt a Randian position after the fact. This same plan was supported by "partners" in the West. It is equally disengenuous ("tricky") for Western companies to complain about "treats". Those "treats" were, undoubtably, part of the agreement between the Communist Party and Western elites.

bko 9y ago

> Unfortunately, capital controls is what China economy needs if they want to keep growing. Since when did benefits to "China" surpass benefits to individuals living in China? The state should serve the people, not the other way around.

RobertoG 9y ago
"The state should serve the people, not the other way around." That depends on your political views, but in my book, sure. The only measure of economic success for a country should be the improvement of the lives of their citizens. China's current economic strategy have lifted more than 500 millions of people from poverty. A change of that magnitude have never happened before in history. Do you know how they talk about poverty in the world improving in the last years?. Normally it's not mentioned but it's basically China. About the capital controls, from the NYT article: "The government sets a $50,000 limit on the money Chinese citizens can move out of the country in a year, [..]" It seems to me that the people that feel constrained by this are not the majority of the people in China.
- derefr 9y ago
  > It seems to me that the people that feel constrained by this are not the majority of the people in China. They would be insofar as most people aren't performing the action of "investing" their money at all, but are rather handing it off to money managers (e.g. mutual funds) to invest. Those money-managers are then limited by the the capital controls—not at the $50k level, but still at a level low enough that it prevents prevent globally-efficient investment to best grow private citizens' wealth.
eternalban 9y ago
> The state is run by the Communist Party. "It's good to be rich", indeed, but apparently "enjoy the good life in China" is the unspoken addendum. The people who got rich in China did so in context of a national strategic plan, devised and put in place by the Communist Party. It seems disengenuous to adopt a Randian position after the fact. This same plan was supported by "partners" in the West. It is equally disengenuous ("tricky") for Western companies to complain about "treats". Those "treats" were, undoubtably, part of the agreement between the Communist Party and Western elites.