asiatimes.com ^ | Sugust 3, 2021
Posted on 08/03/2021 8:24:28 AM PDT by elpadre
TOKYO – China is so keen to maintain control over its sprawling and expanding economy that it’s even willing to go communist.
For all the claims from Communist Party bigwigs that President Xi Jinping isn’t on an anti-wealth crusade, the losses are too jarring to dismiss as “capitalism doing its thing.”
Indeed, the more than US$1 trillion of market capitalization losses tied directly to Xi’s recent policies has China bulls mutating into China bears.
First, it was Jack Ma’s Ant Group getting stomped by Xi’s regulators. Then Didi Global and the $100 billion private tutoring sector got the boot. Next up is Tencent Holdings, China’s top social media and video game platform.
On Tuesday, state media derided online gaming as “spiritual opium,” clearly riffing off a famous Mao Zedong-ism.
That appears to answer investors’ questions about whether Xi’s crackdown on tech and tutoring companies will stop there. The emerging question is how much the blunt-force trauma inflicted by Xi’s regulators will cost China’s wider economy?
Jack Ma’s outspoken honesty in deriding Chinese regulators invoked a severe backlash that has left his future unclear.
A bridge too far?
Economist Scott Kennedy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies speaks for many when he worries that Beijing is going “too far” in ways that will damage growth in the short run and innovation in the long run. (continues at link) (Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com …