http://www.economist.com/news/business/21642188-alibaba-runs-regulatory-ruckus-love-rocks
No one would call China a free market or anything close to capitalist, but one firm has recently challenged the oversight of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) and seems to have come out close to victorious. Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce firm, it notorious for being ardently opposed to copious entanglement with the government and Communist Party. Jack Ma, the chairman, has stated that he wants the firm to be regarded as a global player, and he has opened up relationships with American groups in order to encourage more transaction. The latest brawl with regulatory institutions has been over a document from last July that cites that Alibaba is not doing enough to fight fake goods sold through its sites. The document was conspicuously not released until after Alibaba's initial public opening on Wall street, and now they face mounting class-actions suits in the United States. This would be enough to shut up almost any Chinese firm, but Mr. Ma has continued to challenge the regulators ruling and even denounce the document as false. After sitting down with officials from SAIC, Mr. Ma has somehow convinced them to retract the document, citing that it was only the minutes from that meeting last summer. And still Mr. Ma doesn't call himself a "red capitalist".
The internet has caused a lot of problems for Communism, and I believe that this is certainly not going to be the last altercation the State has with firms over what to do with emerging industries. These conflicts are a signal of the creeping capitalism that may be the Communist Party's undoing if they fail to fuel their booming development. But I think they'll run out of coal before that.
3 comments:
I don't think China is that far from Capitalism actually. The Communist Party is just in name only, how they are operating these days are very much of a Capitalist country, with most of their production and services lie on the private sector. What we call Maoism or Socialism dont really exist in China anymore.
Regarding Alibaba, I have always regarded Jack Ma as a very ambitious man, and Alibaba is certainly here to stay, after their historically IPO last year.
Mr. Ma regards Alibaba as a global innovator that happens to be in China. He wants Alibaba to serve 2 billions consumers and millions of small companies worldwide. And to make this possible,Mr. Ma has signed a partnership with Lending Club, a peer-to-peer platform based in San Francisco, to extend credit to American firms buying Chinese goods on its site.
This step does prove that Mr. Ma does not want to get involved with the Chinese government nor is he scared of the government.
I wonder if Mr. Ma would ever move his firm if entanglement with the government becomes too much. Could he even?
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