Every company in China is essentially state owned as they need to follow whatever Chairman Xi says.

Why does the IPO stopping imply independence? Is it strange if a parent org reins in a child org?

TikTok may be independent as a US company or more but the IPO stopping is not proof of it.

The way GP described it is like everything is tightly controlled. If the state controls Ant group, that would mean IPO was planned by the state, and you may already know Chinese government do regular long term plans, this incident wouldn't happen, also, it won't even happen in this way. It would be Ant group withdraw its IPO application instead. I won't say any business is fully independent in any country in this age. I am also not claiming Chinese business can be as independent as in US. It is definitely not state-owned as GP suggested.

> For those that are not aware of it - all sufficiently large corporations in China are actually more akin to State-owned enterprises

Please, how do you go from "State-owned" to "everything is tightly controlled." I am genuinely curious.

Because according to GP, Chinese government wants to 'control' everything, that's why they 'own' everything. If they don't control it, would it make any difference if a company is state owned or private owned. If I own 1000 companies, and one of them is going to do the biggest IPO, I probably will still watch this one closely.

I think I have become too political recently reading hacker news. Such a waste of time. I will not participate in any philosophy/political/ideology any more. Thanks for the reply.

EDIT: We all have a habit to use logic to understand events, but many times, we can bend events to fit our logic. It is so natural, and we don't even notice it. I don't believe the world is black and white, or labelling makes it easier to understand the world. Everywhere you go is just a bunch of humans. When we are happy we take time and try to understand differences, when we are not, we attack differences. It is how we develop and survive in the wild.

If Ant is 'essentially' state owned, whereas its action reflects the will of the state, then its action need not to be controlled through government regulation or Chinese SEC.

Ownership is much more powerful in an enterprise than outside government regulations in any cases.

> If Ant is 'essentially' state owned, whereas its action reflects the will of the state, then its action need not to be controlled through government regulation or Chinese SEC.

No. Not really. CCP is not a big uniform entity. There are different competing entities.

Also, ownership is different from control. I am not sure how this simple fact is overlooked.

1. I'm not sure what is your point, I'm sure there are representatives/lobbyist speak for Ant financial in the government, and there are stakeholders of Ant that have political influence.

2. No one claimed ownership is the same as control, but so it happens most of the time in the business world ownership implies control.

3. Like you said, ownership is different from control. Ant is not state owned, literally.