The conditions that lead to billionaires through business - note the distinction from russian oligarchs - are generally pretty liberal. You still dont want billionaires actually in charge, but there is a correlation between economic freedom and social freedom.

I'd guess that they (the "West" / US and its allies) hoped that Chinese billionaires would be more amenable to the "Washington consensus" / neoliberal policies than the CCP.

Jack Ma is a member of the Communist Party of China.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alibaba-jack-ma-idUSKCN1N...

This is a classic power struggle between ideological and technocratic elements. Jack Ma vs Xi Jinping. Jack Ma, a communist party member, challenged party Chairman. As we can dispense with the notion that Jack Ma lacks the necessary wits, the actual interesting question is why did Jack Ma think it opportune to openly challenge Xi Jinping at this time?

In the US, this struggle is a non-issue as the ideological element (venture capital) finances and controls the technocrats (such as Jack Dorsey). We just however recently were treated to a purported “outsider” ideologue locking horns, via technocrat proxy of FANGs, with the ideological establishment. Given that this outsider also happens to (still) be the head of state in USA, I guess we need not wonder too deeply as to the logic of CPC reminding a prominent party member and fellow travelers of who still calls the shots in China.

There are 91 million members of the CCP. In a country that counts more than 1 billion inhabitants. It's laughably far from representative.

But the actual rubber stamper voting group is about 3000 people.

However, since there was never any real independent and strong opposition (the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan) the only power struggles were very much about succession, and again that's like a minor clash in a royal family, whoever wins, it's still feudalism.

... yes, you said that Jack Ma is a CCP member, but he was nowhere near close enough to Xi in any aspect to challenge him. He's a useful idiot who got a sector allocated to (IT, cloud hosting and web/online/in-app payments), got big thanks to no competition, and thought he has actual power.

How many Americans are members of D or R party organizations?

By membership I do -not- mean registration to vote for a party; meaningful participation in the political organization, from local office, all the way to national committee level, and of course actual elected and political appointments.

I don't have the numbers but wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be an even smaller fraction of total population than the Chinese single party.

Roughly take US as 1/3 of population of China, and then test expectation that 91/3 => ~30,000,000 politically active members of political organizations in US. Again, I don't have the numbers, but I would be shocked if actual party members in US even reached the 1 million mark, much less 30 million people. For fairness, let's throw in 18 million Americans that belong to unions. Let's make it 20 millions in total. That's still less than the required 30 million politically organized Americans to be at par with CCP.

[but p.s. /g! If we throw in the 18 million American millionaires, then we have a system that is a bit more representative than the CCP]

Billionaires can be held more accountable than government because they must continually compete for people's dollars.

Movements like the Chick-Fil-A boycott and #deletefacebook do hurt companies and billionaires and can force a change in behavior quickly. There's no feedback loop like that with the CCP, and the US gives citizens more power but having to wait 4 years to vote on a change is a very slow feedback loop.

> Billionaires can be held more accountable than government because they must continually compete for people's dollars.

I don't know what to answer that except that it's the quickest way to get a fascist regime that doesn't even try to hide it's fascist. Monopolies don't need to compete with people's dollars.

> Movements like the Chick-Fil-A boycott and #deletefacebook do hurt companies

None of these movements really hurt these respective companies.

We can and should break up monopolies, or structure taxes and regulations to be unfavorable to monopolies. Current government policies favor large corporations due to both tax incentives and regulatory capture.

Chick-Fil-A stopped donating to anti-LGBTQ groups. #deletefacebook did work but most users just switched to instagram so it had a minimal effect on revenue.

> We can and should break up monopolies, or structure taxes and regulations to be unfavorable to monopolies. Current government policies favor large corporations due to both tax incentives and regulatory capture.

And putting unelected billionaires in charge is going to do exactly that? No.

> #deletefacebook did work but most users just switched to instagram so it had a minimal effect on revenue

No it didn't. Neither case the bottom line of both companies was impacted in any meaningful way.

Putin was elected then used his power to remove term limits. President Xi did the same thing, and look at what Trump just tried.

It's important to have external checks to political power. It's pretty amazing that private companies (Twitter, FB, Stripe) were able to stand up to and effectively limit the power of the commander of the largest military on earth. That has almost never happened without bloodshed.

The US constitution is has worked pretty well, but it's just a document. History has not been kind to those nations that have centralized power by nationalizing companies. Doesn't that get us closer to fascism?

The thought was that billionaires would push for freedom and liberty (like Jack Ma).

The CCP will not be opposed.