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Speculations such as these should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Consider that: * Jack Ma is himself a CCP member. * Before regulators stopped Ant's IPO,

Speculations such as these should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Consider that: * Jack Ma is himself a CCP member. * Before regulators stopped Ant's IPO, people were worrying about how Ant is a CCP ploy to take over the world, and a national security threat. Speculations about China have a tendency to view everything through the "CCP is evil and the only thing that's constantly on their minds is how to kill/jail/invade more" lens. As if all behavior in China is solely attributable to the CCP. This lens distorts things so much that a lot of the time you end up with nonsense.

nmfisher 6y ago
Have you lived in China? CCP membership means nothing. There are dozens, if not hundreds of government officials and corporate identities in prison (or worse, executed) who were party members. Global perceptions about Ant Financial are completely irrelevant to Jack Ma. This is all internal politics. Anyone who poses a potential threat to the party (read: Xi Jinping) is liable to disappear (even if only temporarily).
- FooBarWidget 6y ago
  > CCP membership means nothing. I know. But that's not the point. Not that long ago people were speculating all over the place that Jack Ma's CCP membership means that Ant is a wholly state-controlled company and a national security threat. The 180 degree turn of all the comments, shows that at the end of the day, people don't actually know anything about China, and therefore we should be critical of speculations.
  - someperson 6y ago
    Regardless of Jack Ma's CCP membership, any major firm in China has close ties to the government at every level of the organization (including the officially embedded Chinese Communist Party cell). The recent Jack Ma + Ant kerfuffle started after he gave a public speech that was mildly critical of the CCP's financial regulation. He probably should have known better given the current political environment in China, but alas.
    - rtx 6y ago
      He knows better, we would never know what pushed him to say that.
      - ladyanita22 6y ago
        He clearly doesn't.
  - simonh 6y ago
    That leaves us with a conundrum since the dealings of the ruling class in China are almost completely opaque. Speculation is often all we have, so yes of course we need to be judicious in what we believe, but we also need to keep open minds. Since there are many factions within the upper echelons of the CCP, many of these speculations may not even be contradictory. It's quite plausible that Ant group was planned as a stalking horse for Chinese state infiltration of foreign banking systems, and also that Jack Ma and Ant were seen as conflicting with power groups within the CCP who eventually took them down.
    - FooBarWidget 6y ago
      It is far more plausible that people are just deliberately looking for reasons to fit a 'CCP bad' narrative. X happens: "CCP is bad" Opposite of X happens: "CCP is bad" What is this, a children's story? Where is all the nuance? Reality can't be reduced to a simple "X is bad" narrative. This narrative overshadows the actual issues, and thus produces nonsense. Note that nearly nobody talks about the ACTUAL financial issue, which is that Ant's way of dealing with money is very dangerous and has the potential to cause a financial crisis. Yes I know the regulator's timing is suspicious. But to completely ignore the actual issue, or to casually brush it away as an illegitimate distraction, and instead to focus 100% on just the 'CCP bad' narrative, is just sensationalism, stereotyping and oversimplification.
      - MichaelZuo 6y ago
        You’ve hit on the fundamental problem of intellectual discussion. It’s impossible to competently discuss entities more sophisticated than oneself, by definition. If one comprehends all the competing and confounding factors involved in the actions of the CCP, for example, then they would at least be as sophisticated as the CCP, by definition. If not, then sooner or later reality intrudes. Of course it may be that no human is intelligent enough to actually comprehend all the dynamics within an organization of 100+ million. Therefore no one on this planet, even in China, fully understands all the factions, factors, reasonings, etc., of such an organization. And actions may happen for mysterious reasons because no one fully comprehends all the underlying reasons.
  - enaaem 6y ago
    The disappearance of Jack Ma only confirms that all big Chinese corporations are an extension of the party. You don't follow the party line, you disappear.
reddog 6y ago
>Speculations about China have a tendency to view everything through the "CCP is evil and the only thing that's constantly on their minds is how to kill/jail/invade more" lens. That's because they are unquestionably, unambiguously evil. The CCP has murdered more people than any organization in the history of the world -- more than the nazis, more than the bolsheviks. But unlike the nazis or bolsheviks, the CCP death count continues to increase every day.
- FooBarWidget 6y ago
  Regardless of the truth of your narrative, viewing EVERY SINGLE ISSUE through the "x is evil" narrative is guaranteed to produce nonsense. We're very close to "a traffic accident occurred? Oh it's because evil CCP forces drivers to run over innocent people"
  - acct776 6y ago
    I disagree we are near to that, and believe if we don't keep an eye on their tactics and society, we will have them exported to us, upon us.
    - FooBarWidget 6y ago
      That is a great attitude to justify a war by creating imaginary enemies. Are they a competitor and do they want to protect their interests? Yes. Export their governance model to you? No, why would they want to do that? China just signed the RCEP -- an initiative by ASEAN. Clearly their neighbors don't think they're going to invade make everyone their slaves.
      - ghostwriter 6y ago
        > Export their governance model to you? No, why would they want to do that? ever heard of Taiwan, Hong Kong? They are trying hard to keep away from this plague at the moment, if you haven't noticed. But please don't start another thread on how CCP claims their legitimacy over all chinese territories, because that would be indeed a true fairytale for children you mentioned above.

nmfisher 6y ago

Have you lived in China? CCP membership means nothing. There are dozens, if not hundreds of government officials and corporate identities in prison (or worse, executed) who were party members. Global perceptions about Ant Financial are completely irrelevant to Jack Ma. This is all internal politics. Anyone who poses a potential threat to the party (read: Xi Jinping) is liable to disappear (even if only temporarily).

FooBarWidget 6y ago
> CCP membership means nothing. I know. But that's not the point. Not that long ago people were speculating all over the place that Jack Ma's CCP membership means that Ant is a wholly state-controlled company and a national security threat. The 180 degree turn of all the comments, shows that at the end of the day, people don't actually know anything about China, and therefore we should be critical of speculations.
- someperson 6y ago
  Regardless of Jack Ma's CCP membership, any major firm in China has close ties to the government at every level of the organization (including the officially embedded Chinese Communist Party cell). The recent Jack Ma + Ant kerfuffle started after he gave a public speech that was mildly critical of the CCP's financial regulation. He probably should have known better given the current political environment in China, but alas.
  - rtx 6y ago
    He knows better, we would never know what pushed him to say that.
    - ladyanita22 6y ago
      He clearly doesn't.
- simonh 6y ago
  That leaves us with a conundrum since the dealings of the ruling class in China are almost completely opaque. Speculation is often all we have, so yes of course we need to be judicious in what we believe, but we also need to keep open minds. Since there are many factions within the upper echelons of the CCP, many of these speculations may not even be contradictory. It's quite plausible that Ant group was planned as a stalking horse for Chinese state infiltration of foreign banking systems, and also that Jack Ma and Ant were seen as conflicting with power groups within the CCP who eventually took them down.
  - FooBarWidget 6y ago
    It is far more plausible that people are just deliberately looking for reasons to fit a 'CCP bad' narrative. X happens: "CCP is bad" Opposite of X happens: "CCP is bad" What is this, a children's story? Where is all the nuance? Reality can't be reduced to a simple "X is bad" narrative. This narrative overshadows the actual issues, and thus produces nonsense. Note that nearly nobody talks about the ACTUAL financial issue, which is that Ant's way of dealing with money is very dangerous and has the potential to cause a financial crisis. Yes I know the regulator's timing is suspicious. But to completely ignore the actual issue, or to casually brush it away as an illegitimate distraction, and instead to focus 100% on just the 'CCP bad' narrative, is just sensationalism, stereotyping and oversimplification.
    - MichaelZuo 6y ago
      You’ve hit on the fundamental problem of intellectual discussion. It’s impossible to competently discuss entities more sophisticated than oneself, by definition. If one comprehends all the competing and confounding factors involved in the actions of the CCP, for example, then they would at least be as sophisticated as the CCP, by definition. If not, then sooner or later reality intrudes. Of course it may be that no human is intelligent enough to actually comprehend all the dynamics within an organization of 100+ million. Therefore no one on this planet, even in China, fully understands all the factions, factors, reasonings, etc., of such an organization. And actions may happen for mysterious reasons because no one fully comprehends all the underlying reasons.
- enaaem 6y ago
  The disappearance of Jack Ma only confirms that all big Chinese corporations are an extension of the party. You don't follow the party line, you disappear.

reddog 6y ago

>Speculations about China have a tendency to view everything through the "CCP is evil and the only thing that's constantly on their minds is how to kill/jail/invade more" lens. That's because they are unquestionably, unambiguously evil. The CCP has murdered more people than any organization in the history of the world -- more than the nazis, more than the bolsheviks. But unlike the nazis or bolsheviks, the CCP death count continues to increase every day.

FooBarWidget 6y ago
Regardless of the truth of your narrative, viewing EVERY SINGLE ISSUE through the "x is evil" narrative is guaranteed to produce nonsense. We're very close to "a traffic accident occurred? Oh it's because evil CCP forces drivers to run over innocent people"
- acct776 6y ago
  I disagree we are near to that, and believe if we don't keep an eye on their tactics and society, we will have them exported to us, upon us.
  - FooBarWidget 6y ago
    That is a great attitude to justify a war by creating imaginary enemies. Are they a competitor and do they want to protect their interests? Yes. Export their governance model to you? No, why would they want to do that? China just signed the RCEP -- an initiative by ASEAN. Clearly their neighbors don't think they're going to invade make everyone their slaves.
    - ghostwriter 6y ago
      > Export their governance model to you? No, why would they want to do that? ever heard of Taiwan, Hong Kong? They are trying hard to keep away from this plague at the moment, if you haven't noticed. But please don't start another thread on how CCP claims their legitimacy over all chinese territories, because that would be indeed a true fairytale for children you mentioned above.