[itmayno]

“ It's cracking down on private Internet companies that acquired too much power through network effects.”

Sounds like smashing to me. Smashing down on private companies and innovations. Smashing down on private wealth and power. Smashing down on freedom and growth. You can tell the dictator is getting desperate if he stops the train of innovation.

[mcguire]

That makes the assumption that "innovation" is consumer facing internet technology.

[itmayno]

Alibaba isn’t just consumer facing internet technologies, look up the vast b2b stuff it does. And other types of companies have been smashed as well like evergrande or Wanda.

Also, do you really think innovation will come from state companies? In that case, why didn’t 1980 China or 1980 Russia thrive?

[TheDong]

> Also, do you really think innovation will come from state companies? In that case, why didn’t 1980 China or 1980 Russia thrive?

You need a stronger argument to prove that state-associated companies can't innovate.

There's also plenty of counter examples too. The internet itself was largely created via DARPA, a US state-sponsored research agency. Ditto for the space station and most other space-related achievements prior to SpaceX.

I think the more nuanced, and boring, view is that a well functioning state can innovate, and so can well functioning private companies.

This comment probably isn't the place for it, but I do think for-profit companies will tend towards different sorts of innovation than for-the-public-good government agencies... but yeah, not for this comment.

[vajrabum]

DARPA doesn't do research or development. They fund it.

[muyuu]

Chinese mandarins don't believe all innovation is the same, and they also believe some of it may be deallocating capital from industry that brings capital influx into the country.

It's totally consistent with their long term plans since the 90s or so.