I muttered 'fuck' under my breath when I read the news this morning. Not many news can make me swear anymore these days.

As an immigrant from Hong Kong, SCMP is one of the few remaining HK media that follows a centralist approach to news regarding China. Other HK medias have already picked their sides, similar to MSNBC and Fox news in US.

This buyout will be a major loss to press freedom in HK, and a loss of a rational voice to outsiders. SCMP will probably become another mouthpiece for China's central government.

I don't for a second believe China/Alibaba will 'maintain editorial independence.' To be successful in China, you need to have connections (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi) . It is much of a 'you scratch my back, I scratch yours.' I am willing to believe Ma is a decent man, but how can a newspaper stay independent when its owner has to play this game?

I don't believe they'll maintain editorial independence either. But the reason is not so much guanxi as the need to cower to the will of the central government, especially on anything relating to national image and social stability. It's not a 'scratch my back I'll scratch yours' situation, but rather a 'central gov says scratch my back and I will or god knows what's going to happen to me'.

That said, there is another angle to this that I think worth mentioning. Ma and his partner claim their motiviation for the takeover is to counterbalance the bias they see in western media coverage on China, and I see no reason to doubt that. However, it doesn't mean they can't have other motivations, and a leader of a high profile Chinese company like Alibaba may have ideas or motivations that are better left unsaid until the time is right. If they were buying the newspaper to give more voice to government critics, do you think they would come out and say it?

As someone with only passing familiarity of the concept of "guanxi," is it even possible to grow a business to that size in China and be that successful without being corrupt or participating in/facilitating corruption? Or at that level of the game is it entirely possible to succeed with "legal" forms of guanxi?

Seems like a cultural concept where to get ahead it is very much "damned if you do, damned if you don't" because of what I imagine is an inherently escalating nature to it.

guanxi and corruption is not the same. you hard to do thing without guanxi (kind of good relationship). guanxi is part of chinese culture, more like, long term relationship.

Can you elaborate on what guanxi entails?

Guanxi really just mean "relation". In this context, it means long term business relations alloing for trust and mutual respect, where each part knows that the other part will return favors and keep the relation balanced. It also, as a side-effect, facilitate corruption, but it does not imply it. The Chinese have a long culture of managing social relations, so this side is very developped, but you have the same in higher society in Europe.

Yahoo owns 15% of Alibaba, making them a major shareholder. What do they say about their assets being used to limit a free press and spread Chinese government propaganda?

From the NY Times:[1]

The Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet giant, is making an ambitious play to reshape media coverage of its home country, taking aim at what company executives call the “negative” portrayal of China in the Western media.

As the backbone of this effort, Alibaba agreed on Friday to buy the media assets of the SCMP Group, including one of Hong Kong’s most influential English language daily newspapers, The South China Morning Post. The company is acquiring an award-winning newspaper that for decades has reported aggressively on subjects that China’s state-run media outlets are forbidden to cover, like political scandals and human-rights cases.

Alibaba said the deal was fueled by a desire to improve China’s image and offer an alternative to the biased lens of Western news media outlets. While Alibaba said the Chinese government had no role in its deal to buy the Hong Kong newspaper, the company’s position aligns closely with that of the Communist Party, which has grown increasingly critical of the way Western news organizations cover China.

Of course, the South China Morning Post isn't 'Western' at all. Apparently it's Chinese media they are really concerned with.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/12/business/dealbook/alibaba-...

> Yahoo owns 15% of Alibaba, making them a major shareholder.

I saw a saying somewhere that said if you owe the bank five hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank five hundred million dollars, you own the bank.

Similarly, Alibaba's value is so much absurdly higher than Yahoo's that the 15% ownership stake is a burden to Yahoo-as-a-business. People have been writing for a while about how it would be immediately profitable for Alibaba to buy Yahoo outright in an all-stock deal, as it would take fewer shares of Alibaba to buy all of Yahoo (Alibaba holdings included) than Yahoo currently owns.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-02/yahoo-is-lo...

So, long story short, I can't see why Alibaba would care one way or the other what Yahoo thinks.

It's about time the powerful people in China starting to realize how the rest of the world sees China has direct impact to them, and use their newly acquired wealth to improve that.

For normal people, I see it being a positive change in the long run, using money to influence public opinion is much better than using guns. Once part of the ruling class acquire enough media-savvy to influence the public, they will start pushing for more democratic form of government, because that gives them more power.

Huh? The current situation seems to be working pretty well for the ruling class over there. They control the media, and thus local public perception. How exactly would more democratic forms of government benefit them?

Contrary to popular belief, the CCP is not ruled by a single paramount leader anymore, and not everyone shares the same vision or benefit from the same policies. There are forces pulling the government to different directions, just like different special interest groups shape US policies.

If a small group of people, especially the newly minted tech and industrial elites (as opposed to traditional military and party elites), learnt the more western way of influencing public opinions, they will use it as a competitive advantage over their political competitions.

The assumption is that the ruling class already doesn't have their hands all over the government and businesses?

Coverage in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/12/business/dealbook/alibaba-...

Interesting picture of Jack biting into [an] Apple.

The photographer said "hey eat an apple, it'll make you look like even more of an asshole"

it's from october.. jack ma helped promote Washington apples in China:

http://www.thepacker.com/news/alibaba-promotion-features-was...

Alibaba - the new Yahoo!

I think Alibaba is the Chinese Amazon, and Tencent is the new Yahoo! I am not an expert in this but I always thought Yahoo should copy the heck out of Tencent.