China’s playbook—that loyal capital will be treated nicely, but any perceptions of disloyalty or contention will be dealt with punitively—is one that we have seen over and over again across the world.
The most defining moment in Chinese business-state relations in recent memory was the public disappearance of Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of Alibaba, right before his fintech company, Ant Group, was poised for a massive public listing.
In late October 2020, Ant Group was valued at over $300 billion, larger than many of the largest banks in both China and the US. Its IPO, which was supposed to happen jointly between Shanghai and Hong Kong, could have been the largest in recent financial history. But then Ma vanished.
In the days leading up to his disappearance (on 24 October, …
Rohit Chandra is an assistant professor at IIT Delhi’s School of Public Policy and also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. Primarily a political scientist and economic historian, his academic work spans the areas of energy policy, state capitalism and infrastructure finance; he has spent the last decade studying the coal and power sectors.
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