[adventured]

It is not illegal for foreigners to own part of Chinese companies. It's generally illegal for a single foreign entity to own a controlling interest. Softbank and Yahoo invested into Alibaba relatively early on. It was incorporated in China. Their positions represented the majority of shares in the business, just not individually.

[dnomad]

> It's generally illegal for a single foreign entity to own a controlling interest.

This is also not true. China, like all developing economies that have reached the global stage, allows WFOEs and FICEs [1]. There's significant taxes involved but these taxes are being decreased all the time .

(It's quite remarkable the stuff people believe about doing business in China. Really have to wonder where these ideas come from.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholly_Foreign-Owned_Enterpris...

[Catsing_Cats]

There are severe restrictions on WFOEs. For all practical purposes they're useless for running a domestic tech business.

Really recommend this write up on VIEs and Alibaba: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/conferences/2017-imo/Documents/M...