Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Balancing Art in Hitting Rich Tycoons
Posted: December 12, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art for being an emperor, balancing art, China, Obama, U.S., Xi Jinping 13 Comments
Xu Xiang, the aggressive private fund manager regarded as China’s George Soros, pictured at the time of his arrest last month on suspicion of insider trading. Photo: SCMP Pictures
SCMP’s report today titled “Dead, detained or missing: the new normal for China’s business world” gives the impression that the newspaper seems surprised that Chinese President Xi Jinping hit hard on financial tycoons. It is ignorant that in an empire with a wise and honest emperor that is quite normal.
A key part of China’s art for being an emperor is the balancing art. The emperor allows various sections of the community to be strong but no section shall be too strong to hurt the interests of other sections or even control the empire.
When big moneys in the financial sector have pushed the market sharply down and hurt retail investors, the emperor stands out for the interest of retail investors to maintain a balance between big moneys and small retail investors.
When officials become too strong and use their power to conduct corrupt activities and even collude with rich businessmen, the emperor comes out to hit hard on them to protect the interests of common people.
SCMP quotes Feng Lun, chairman of China’s privately-owned Vantone Holdings, as saying, “If he wants to kill you, he can; if he wants to keep you alive, he can.” Yes, in CCP Dynasty, the emperor does have such power.
However, in order to maintain such absolute power and conduct good governance, the emperor shall have the skill to maintain balance among various sections. He has to make his officials powerful to carry out his policy and orders, but has to restrict them by his mass line policy to allow common people to supervise officials.
He wants the private sector to grow in order to make his country rich and provide jobs for his people, but he does not allow businessmen to collude with officials so that they will be too strong to control his empire. In addition, he maintains a strong state-owned sector to keep balance between private and public sectors.
He tells businessmen to pay attention to the social benefits of their business and set targets on increase in common people’s income to maintain balance between business owners and their employees.
Perhaps, people outside China do not really understand China and do not even know that the China at present is a CCP empire, i.e. the empire of the Chinese Communist Party. No wonder, China has too long a history and too different a culture from Western one for Westerners to understand.
However, they may understand Xi Jinping’s balancing art in his diplomacy. When the U.S. began its rebalance in Asia to contain China, Xi began to set up a close de facto alliance with Russia to strike a balance of strength in the world.
Obama’s rebalance goes nowhere. Russia and Central Asian countries have taken Chinese side, but only Japan and the Philippines take U.S. side while all the rest refuse to take side between the U.S. and China. Meanwhile the Chinese-Russian alliance is causing troubles to the U.S. in Ukraine, Middle East and the South China Sea.
After all, China has 2,000 years of the development of the art for being an emperor while the U.S. has none.
In terms of balancing art, Obama is a primary school pupil while Xi is a postgraduate.
Comments by Chan Kai Yee on SCMP’s report.
Full text of the SCMP report can be viewed at http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/1890470/dead-detained-or-missing-new-normal-chinas-business
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Without a doubt Obama is a small kid compared to Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping is an engineer and experience administrator by training. He was prepared by Deng Xiaoping himself for 30 years for this job. Obama was only a failed Brooklyn lawyer of barely three years without any administrative skill whatsoever, not even administrative skill to run a small law firm. He spent much of his precious time as drug addicts and then a very long self-discovery process. This is hardly the stuff to make a leader. As a lawyer in America, he is trained to find legs loopholes in the law system, not uphold the law. After all the job of a corporate lawyer is not to run the company, but to cover its wrong doings. And Obama does not seem to get past this occupation. The way he handles the SCS crisis bears the signature of a corporate lawyer, International law loopholes, dismissing opponent valid claims, making cases to garner supports to gain sympathy, even producing false claims. Only the audience is not little-educated American, but International dignitaries. According to American documentary maker, Michael Moore lawyers are part of the cultural problem in America, how could they be the solution? Not enough in wrecking America, Obama set his sight on larger targets. With TPP, American lawyers could roam freely on member nations. So far so good for the American lawyers. It’s going to be a new messy Americanized society in the horizon.
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China should cherish President Xi’s commitment to subdue corruption, implement economic reform and make the country prosperous. Once in a blue moon we may see an upright statesmen like PM Lee Kuan Yew and President Xi Jinping come to light. Although President Xi still has his remaining 10 year term, the changes and implementation of China’s policy has been remarkable and exceptional good in arresting Crooks from Tigers down to Flies.
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If private entrepreneurs are going to get punished for becoming rich and powerful, then surely there is no incentive to be ambitious. Every business leader will be afraid of the CCP. This only reinforces the common belief that in order to be successful in China, you need ties (or blood relations) with powerful government officials. And even if you have such connections, every 10 years a new faction may get into power and you will be ruthlessly persecuted on corruption charges.
Perhaps this is the reason why such a huge amount of talent leaves China to live and work abroad. The likes of Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, etc. thrive in US, but they would be stamped out in China.
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Private entrepreneurs are encouraged to become rich by fair means. They are punished for getting rich by foul means. China can become so strong and catch up and even surpass the U.S. because it can give play to Chinese people’s talents. I wonder whether you really understand Xi’s balancing art to enable both talented people to become rich and common people to be well off. If you want to become rich at the expense of other people, you had better leave whether you are talented or not.
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America’s “free market” system is a bit of a “Law of the Jungle” where the strong exploit the weak, and they get away with double standards, or, even murder. China, like Russia, should not be like the decadent U.S.
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I have visited Russia and the USA. Trust me, the quality of life in Russia is decades behind USA. Although cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg have everything you need, try going to Rostov-on-Don or Chelyabinsk or any other tier-2/3 city.
In fact, China’s current system (a stable functioning one party system where leadership changes every 10 years) is more competitive than Russia’s so-called democracy where Putin and Medvedev work hard to ensure profits for their oligarch friends.
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Disruption of old industries and vested interests drives technology and innovation forward. Consider the example of Travis Kalanick (CEO of Uber) and Shawn Fanning (developer and co-founder of Napster), both of whom made significant impacts on society but one could argue that they did so illegally and at a cost to common man.
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I believe you are confused between proper & improper Or right & wrong. The improper road to wealth creation via corruption is wrong. Not stealing and Not Seeking Self benefit especially those in authority are proper and to be rightly praised and exemplified. If what you said makes any sense, you might as well start a petition and bring back All those tigers in prison.
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If you really notice, the time of talents keaving China is a thing of the past. Many talents has indeed returned to China. Alibaba’s Jack Ma is one of them. In the US he is a mere teacher of no significance living in cheap apartment, returning to China he is now a power to be reckoned. A few years back, a former Chinese dissident in Australia, Shi Zhengrong returned to China to found the largest photovoltaic in the world. While in Australia, he was nobody. Despite his qualification, he couldn’t find jobs, he tried a failed take away shop, even tried to commit suicide. But after approached by Chinese government to build photovoltaic industry in China, he became successful. A proud Australian, he returned to Australia to become Australia’s fourth richest man, according to Australian newspaper anyway. Still he was unappreciated in Australia. His doom came when he was hit by bias US protectionist policy. Had he been wise enough to stay in China he might survived.
These people has no blood relation or ties to powerful government officials. On the contrary, those who are probed somehow have ties to corrupt officials. These kind of scums exist in every countries in the world with many influencing government policies, putting their interests above people’s welfare. Aren’t greedy corporation the cause of US economic woes? Asking corrupt senate to bail them out. If the US senate was proper and not self-serving, these people should be prosecuted, not bailed with taxpayer money. In Indonesia where I live, these kind of people are the scrouge of economic reforms, protected by strong political parties and military officials, making reforms treacherous and impossible.
These people should not only be prosecuted ruthlessly, they should be prosecuted with extreme prejudice along with their government official accomplices.
Chinese business people are often shunned and ridiculed by the West for rivalry attitude. The fact that Western media gives specific individuals unusual attention makes me wonder if they have ties not only to corrupt officials, but to foreign interests as well. After all it is not uncommon arrangement.
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Shi Zhengrong returned to Australia despite being successful in China and under appreciated in Australia. I thought he (along with the entire board of Suntech) was barred from leaving China. He was persecuted for using the bankruptcy law. The cost of failure in China is too high and he did not have any government contacts to save him.
The return of talents is a myth, More talents leave every year than those who choose to return. For example, college professors from US who return to China get high salaries and bureaucratic positions for comfortable retirement and often abandon their research program on returning.
Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent exist because Amazon, Google and Facebook are not allowed to function in China. Jack Ma often accompanies Chinese president on foreign trips and he knows that he is well protected by Chinese government. Companies like Xiaomi exist because of poor IPR protection so they can rip off Apple products. Most of these successful Chinese companies are protected by government and get special monetary treatment from local governments when they scale up. This is why local government debt in China is so high.
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Actually, Suntech is an Australian company. And even if it was not allowed to leave China, how could it be listed in NYX?
Yeah, that’s original, returning talents is myth. Why would want to flee paradise? If only you now what paradise really means. Being cheap labour in a place that shunned you is not living in paradise. And it doesn’t not only apply to Chinese. Many Asians returning to their home countries as economic conditions improves. Many opportunities are presented upon returning, they don’t have to stuck like on the profession they don’t like. It doesn’t only the Chinese or Asians. Many Westerners also tried to go to China or other Asian countries even if they don’t like the place at first. Many are seeking to marry Asian girls in the condition to enter the country. But of course there are untalented bunch who find it better in the West.
Jack Ma may be a high profile figure now, but once he built Alibaba with no certain future. Many rich people in China were once factory workers, in which Western media loves to point out their past in order to ridicule their lowly back ground. In contrast, American rich people were rich kids given privileged. Elon Musk is an example of a rich kid who had privilege over Yahoo when he started Google. Basically, he stole Yahoo market. He even exposed less-know-before Yahoo founder Taiwanese Jerry Yang, in the hope that Yahoo users would switch to Google upon knowing Yahoo’s Asian founder. Yahoo’s survival is only attributed to large Asian users.
Amazon, Google and Facebook would not exist in the first place without US elite connection. They grew on monopolistic environments. Even if they were allowed in China, I doubt they can make it all. Wallmart was repeatedly fines for their attempted American practice of monopoly. That’s why they tried and failed to lobby Chinese government to adopt some ‘certain Western business model’, which of course contradicts China’s anti-corruption drives.
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Long live the the CCP dynasty and the good emperor. The corrupt rich should be punished.
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Very good news. Xi must be ruthless against those knaves.
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