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).

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> Of course it may be that no human is intelligent enough to actually comprehend all the dynamics within an organization of 100+ million.

"The knowledge of some principles easily compensates for the ignorance of some facts", a.k.a. you really don't need to know how shit tastes to keep away from it, you just need to know what it looks like.

What if the ‘shit’ you mention was capable of self organization and self-modification and self-evolution towards goals, and through techniques, that may confound your senses?

In fact this example is a bit humorous because there is a type of fruit called the ‘miracle berry’ that is sold commercially to trick the taste receptors on human tongues, turning sour foods into sweet tasting foods temporarily.

I am sure if it doesn’t already exist one day products will be created to do so for the entire taste spectrum and beyond that all the human senses...

Genuinely beneficial things may be disguised as harmful and vice versa in such an environment. And then we would be back to the original point.

> What if the ‘shit’ you mention was capable of self organization and self-modification and self-evolution towards goals, and through techniques, that may confound your senses?

What if we could see how phenomena draw projections in the fourth dimension and reveal that the same underlying traits of these self-modifying and self-evolving entities? a.k.a. we can play imaginary worlds infinitely deep.

But the bottom-line of the previous comment was that people are conceptually-reasoning beings, and we can build and refine meaningful ideas and abstractions that help us to properly orient ourselves in the world. The proof of that would be the fact that you and I are interacting here on HN, and neither of us comprehends the full complexity of the systems (and relations between them) that provide us this ability.

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.

He knows better, we would never know what pushed him to say that.

He clearly doesn't.

>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.

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"

Yes, the "X is Evil and Evil do what Evil does" kind of reductive and anti-intellectual arguments here are disappointing.

I'll offer an alternative, although admittedly simplistic lens to understand the actions of the CCP:

To pull their population of 1.4 billion people out of poverty. To which political stability is essential.

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.

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.

> 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.

Neither of those cases have got anything to do with CCP wanting to export their governance model or invade foreign countries. This is apparent if you look at the historical context of the issues in those areas.

China isn't in Hong Kong because they're afraid of democracy. Under British rule, Hong Kong never had democracy in the first place. In 2014, CCP offered a limited form free elections for Hong Kong -- that's more democracy than under British Hong Kong. Why would they do that if they want to destroy democracy? The Hong Kong opposition shot down the proposal because they wanted more concessions. Unfortunate, because if it was accepted, it could have paved way for more democratization down the road.

As for Taiwan, the conflict exists because it's a leftover of the Chinese civil war. At the end of WW2, the Chinese Nationalist Party fled to Taiwan -- a part of the [People's Republic of China]'s predecessor, the [Republic of China]. Officially, both Taiwan and China claim to be the legitimate goverment of the whole of China -- this is the One China Principle. Heck, Taiwan' s modern-day flag is the exact same as that of the Republic of China.

Ever heard of Macau? It's democratic, part of China, and is doing fine under One Country Two Systems.

Whether anyone thinks Hong Kong and Taiwan should or should not be independent is besides the point, as well as totally irrelevant. The CCP has issues in those areas because they are, or used to be Chinese terrority. These issues are not new, and have been there since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, back when the CCP was small and weak and in no position to invade anybody.

But these issues persist because many mainland Chinese people care. Unity is and has been a Chinese core value for thousands of years. The issues don't persist because the CCP is evil and want to destroy democracy. Even if Hong Kong and Taiwan were under a seperate communist rule, the CCP would still have issues with those areas.

The narrative that China is an expansionist invader is based on the twisting of half-truths, for the purpose of painting a "China threat" in order to justify spending more money on the military industrial complex. China has not fought a war or shot a bullet outside its borders for more than 30 years. In fact, if you take out the People's Republic's map, and compare ot to the maps of the last 2 predecessors (the Republic, and the Qing dynasty), you'll see that the People's Republic's map is smaller.

>Under British rule, Hong Kong never had democracy in the first place.

British Hong Kong has elected local council and officials that are given power and budget within their constituency. The small council was disband just after 1997. Hong Kong had far more democracy than it ever had under China.

And China did not do away with the local elections, nor have they plans to do so. The 2014 proposal was to allow more options for electing the Chief Executive.

Local elections also exist on the mainland.

Anyway, this is still irrelevant. The point still stands: the above doesn’t indicate in any way that China is an expansionist invader out to crush democracy.