[aerosmile]

Does it make sense to have strong principles and not be guided by financial incentives alone? Sure. But would it make more sense to have a solid regulatory framework to start with, as opposed to being loosey goosey for a very long time and then course correcting in a way that evaporates billions in value overnight from domestic and foreign investors?

Countries and companies have a lot in common. Consider this analogy: would you want to join a company that has an excellent business model and is poised for strong growth, but the CEO is a nut case and has done several mass layoffs that have completely blindsided internal and external people?

I, for one, am happy that China is tripping over itself and will give us a bit more room to breathe and figure out our own mess, so that when the inevitable takeover of Taiwan and all the other shit storms happen in the future, we'll be at least a tiny bit more prepared.

[sudosysgen]

It's not possible to have a solid regulatory framework from the beginning. You can't predict the advance of cutting edge tech. Sure, you can do it earlier, but never from the start.

Also, billions of dollars of value didn't disappear overnight. No jobs are or will be lost, and very little utility is lost, except being able to sign up for 1-2 weeks.

I'm not absolutely thrilled by the rise of China either, but we gotta stop lying to ourselves. Not every single action by the Chinese government is a stupid and reckless calamity that will cause untold harm. We're often blind to the good and to the utility of these decisions, and on the balance a government that's not scared of the stock market is going to be more effective assuming they're competent to begin with.

[throwaway4good]

It is worth noting that SMIC, the main Chinese semiconductor fab is up considerably on a day where the rest of market crashes:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/0981.HK?p=0981.HK&.tsrc=fin-...

Possibly reflecting China's (new) policy to focus on what it considers "hard tech", instead of social media, fintech, e-commerce.

[aerosmile]

> No jobs are or will be lost, and very little utility is lost, except being able to sign up for 1-2 weeks.

Contrast that with the quote from the article:

"Shares in Tencent plunged 9.0% in Hong Kong on Tuesday amid widespread market jitters over Chinese regulatory crackdowns on high-growth sectors, including online platforms and, most recently, private tutoring. Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index (.HSI) fell 4.2%."

The stock price may not correlate with short-term budgets, but it absolutely has an impact on long-term budgets. So what the investors will be asking themselves now is: "Is this disruption just a short blip on the radar, or did we just witness a long-term change of the Big Tech landscape in China?" Getting on the shit list of the Chinese government sounds like a long-term problem to me.

[thaumasiotes]

> Contrast that with the quote from the article:

Shortly after the quote you pulled:

>> Beijing-based tech consultant Zhou Zhanggui said investors were over-reacting

Zhou Zhanggui is right. Suspension of account creation has basically no impact unless it fails to come back in August as advertised.

[sudosysgen]

Tencent is not a cash starved company, and these stocks will recover at least mostly if not fully.

[blueblisters]

> I, for one, am happy that China is tripping over itself and will give us a bit more room to breathe and figure out our own mess, so that when the inevitable takeover of Taiwan and all the other shit storms happen in the future, we'll be at least a tiny bit more prepared.

A China with a stable regulatory regime is probably preferable over a China that is prepared to do short-term self-harm in return for its long-term strategy objectives. This just reinforces that there is no transparency in policy-making, and there is no room for capital to act as a tempering voice. Moreover, Taiwan's economy is heavily linked to China - China is Taiwan's biggest trading partner. If China has no regard for domestic or foreign capital and industry, it almost certainly doesn't care about disrupting Taiwan economically and forcing it to submission without firing a bullet.

OT: I see a lot of Chinese experts rationalize recent moves by saying it's all foreshadowed in CCP's public policy goals and so on. If that was the case, I would expect at least domestic investors to have priced-in the impact of the recent changes well ahead of time.

[yorwba]

> I see a lot of Chinese experts rationalize recent moves by saying it's all foreshadowed in CCP's public policy goals and so on. If that was the case, I would expect at least domestic investors to have priced-in the impact of the recent changes well ahead of time.

That's assuming domestic investors were paying attention to public policy goals (probably not true for many small-time speculators) and able to predict which companies would run afoul of regulations (hard even for well-informed institutional investors). The second draft of the new personal information protection law has penalties up to 5% of revenue in severe cases https://www.cods.org.cn/c/2021-06-24/14270.html (Article 65) but once such a fine is issued for the first time (assuming this part makes it into the final law) I bet the company in question will have its stock price tank, even though the possibility of regulatory action is public knowledge. The hard part is knowing if and when it'll happen.

[lmm]

The notion of designing a stable regulatory regime upfront is a mirage. It's how you get these giant corporations that pay no tax thanks to their double Irishes and have "independent contractors" instead of employees so they can avoid paying their social responsibilities.

The legal/regulatory regime should be reasonable and predictable, but that should mean human judgement rather than blindly following coded rules like a smart contract. If you're a corporation that's large enough to be impacting society, you should expect society to have a say in what you're doing, and that means that as you do new and surprising things, there will be corresponding regulatory changes.

[birdyrooster]

All we can do now is hope the Taiwanese don't ratify their constitution to get rid of their claims to mainland China. If they can manage to stay the course, the US will remain unentangled with Taiwan's fate.

[birdyrooster]

Amend*