China’s Economic War Preparations: Yesterday and Tomorrow
Inside the New IPO Laws
China’s Warfare Trajectory
China 2020: The Great Hoarding
China 2021: Raising the Drawbridges
What to Do About China’s New Phase
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China is a bad place to be a billionaire. Just ask Jack Ma, founder of Ant Group, who suddenly went missing for three months in late 2020 after he criticized the Chinese financial system, characterizing banks as operating with a “pawnshop mentality.”
His Shanghai IPO, slated for the next day, was supposed to have been the world’s biggest. Instead, the listing was blocked. And Ant Group lost $76 billion in market value.
Whether Ma was detained or forced into house arrest during that time is murky. But what is crystal clear is that Chinese companies are operating at the whims of their leader, President Xi Jinping. Not the other way around, as is the case here in the US.
From the BBC:
“There are [Communist] party committees there to remind the companies… that the party ultimately has power, even over powerful individuals like Jack Ma,” says Samantha Hoffman, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
This control extends to secrecy, she says.
“Not only is a company responsible to do what the party demands, but they also can’t admit to doing that if they’re asked.”
This has been China’s MO for years now, so it’s not surprising that a new set of regulations out of Beijing over Chinese listings on US stock exchanges is being interpreted by US media as “a crackdown on Chinese tech companies.”
As is often the case with mainstream-media analysis of Chinese behavior, however, this interpretation is not only wrong; it also misses the entire point of the new regulations. Which is unfortunate, as they’re quite significant.
China’s new Wall Street IPO regulations are designed to protect China and its economy from international sanctions and retaliation for acts of warfare it currently anticipates carrying out. Economic, military, cyber, or otherwise.
Not to punish Chinese tech companies. Although it may seem that way to those who can’t see beyond the day’s earnings report.
On Wall Street, money is religion. In China, the CCP is religion.
