[throwaway2048]

They haven't seized them outright maybe, but they are owned by Chinese citizens and carefully managed by the government,

The CEO and founder of Huawei is a member of the communist party, the government also requires a large staff of military intelligence workers.

Do not assume the strong distinction in the west between private entities and the government exists in China.

In China if you are of any real size whatsoever as a company, the government is either taking a role in things directly, or you are going to be forced out.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Of course they're owned by Chinese citizens. That's why I chose them as examples, rather than other big companies with a large presence in China, such as Volkswagen or Apple.

> carefully managed by the government

That's not true. They make business decisions based on the profit motive.

> The CEO and founder of Huawei is a member of the communist party

That's not very meaningful. There are a lot of people who are members of the party.

> Do not assume the strong distinction in the west between private entities and the government exists in China.

I think that a lot of people in this forum (and other fora in the West) do not understand the basic economic reforms that China has gone through. There is a huge difference between how a private company like Tencent operates and how a state-owned enterprise operates. It has been government policy over the past few decades to allow the private economy to grow, and to allow it to operate according to profit considerations.

Companies and people in China do not have the same sorts of protections should the government decide to go after them, but it's not as if the government controls the decision-making of private companies.

> In China if you are of any real size whatsoever as a company, the government is either taking a role in things directly, or you are going to be forced out.

This simply isn't true. The Chinese government does not run Alibaba, and doing so would actually go against the direction of Chinese economic reforms over the past few decades.

[throwaway2048]

I never stated that these types of "private" enterprise aren't different than traditional Chinese state owned enterprise, they absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt are.

The Chinese government does not operate them directly, but it has a direct hand in how they are run in a way that simply does not have a parallel in the west.

An analogy might be an American company appointing high ranking government people (who are still active in government) to their board of directors, accepting special government run departments, and working closely with the government on goals and policy.

That sort of thing is entirely unheard of, outside of perhaps defense contractors in the USA, but even there, there is clear division between private and public interests.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> An analogy might be an American company appointing high ranking government people (who are still active in government)

It's not at all uncommon for high-ranking government and military officials in the US to sit on corporate boards right after they leave government. There's a well known revolving door.

American companies are also subject to very significant pressure from the government. See, for example, how the US government informally (and successfully) pressured all the major payment processors to cut off WikiLeaks in 2010, or how social media companies are now under significant pressure to censor content.

This sort of pressure, which exists to varying degrees in every country, is not the same as the government directly running a company or dictating its business plans. That is not, by and large, how things operate in China either in the private sector. I see the claim made all the time (for example in the first post I responded to) that all businesses in China are basically run by the government. I think the people making those comments don't know what they are talking about, and are basically advancing a paranoia about China which has become ever more intense in the US over the past few months.

[throwaway2048]

However the key difference is the amount of coercion, you aren't going to be shut out of the country, or business if you refuse to appoint government people in the USA, or do the government other favors.

The US government and private interests do indeed co-opt each other a lot, but its nowhere near the (implicit) threat of being run out of business (or worse) that it is in china.

[DiogenesKynikos]

There's the threat of significant regulation. I think there's a reason why Zuckerberg feel the need to go in front of Congress, rather than telling them to go bark up a tree. It's also quite amazing how quickly all the payment processors shut off WikiLeaks, based on pressure from US senators.

Companies can, however, be banned from the US for overtly political reasons. See Huawei and ZTE.

I agree that Chinese CEOs walk on thinner ice personally, and that they can be thrown in prison or worse much more easily. That's a general problem in China. However, the easy way in which Americans claim Chinese companies are run by the government is not true. It's also true that large US companies are thoroughly embedded in the government and vice versa (the massive defense sector, parts of the tech sector).