China Tech Billionaires Ramp Up Donations As Beijing Cracks Down (bloomberg.com) 24
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: China's tech tycoons are discovering their charitable side as they come under mounting regulatory scrutiny from Beijing. In the latest example, Xiaomi co-founder Lei Jun handed over $2.2 billion of shares in the smartphone maker to two foundations, according to filings to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. That came after Meituan's Wang Xing and ByteDance's Zhang Yiming gave away parts of their fortune to charitable causes last month. The moves come as a crackdown on technology companies has intensified since November, when Jack Ma's Ant Group was forced to pull its giant initial public offering. It's a new era for the country's billionaires as China tightens regulations in areas from financial services and internet platforms to data security and overseas listings.
At the same time, the Chinese public is becoming increasingly concerned about inequality. In a speech in October, President Xi Jinping said the country's development was "unbalanced" and "common prosperity" should be the ultimate goal. "It's likely much more than coincidence that China's tech billionaires have begun to evince a strong charitable urge," said Brock Silvers, chief investment officer at Hong Kong-based private equity firm Kaiyuan Capital. "It could stem from deep patriotic feelings or Buddhist inclinations, but it appears to be strongly correlated to Beijing's recent regulatory crackdowns."
In June, Meituan founder Wang donated a $2.3 billion stake in the food delivery giant to his own philanthropic foundation. That came after China's antitrust watchdog announced an investigation into the company, and the billionaire posted a classical poem online that some saw as a veiled criticism of Beijing. That same month, ByteDance founder Zhang, China's fourth-richest person with a net worth of $44.5 billion, gave about $77 million of his own wealth to an education fund in his hometown. And in April, Tencent's Pony Ma, the second-richest with $56.7 billion, pledged to set aside $7.7 billion of the company's money toward curing societal ills and lifting China's countryside out of poverty.
At the same time, the Chinese public is becoming increasingly concerned about inequality. In a speech in October, President Xi Jinping said the country's development was "unbalanced" and "common prosperity" should be the ultimate goal. "It's likely much more than coincidence that China's tech billionaires have begun to evince a strong charitable urge," said Brock Silvers, chief investment officer at Hong Kong-based private equity firm Kaiyuan Capital. "It could stem from deep patriotic feelings or Buddhist inclinations, but it appears to be strongly correlated to Beijing's recent regulatory crackdowns."
In June, Meituan founder Wang donated a $2.3 billion stake in the food delivery giant to his own philanthropic foundation. That came after China's antitrust watchdog announced an investigation into the company, and the billionaire posted a classical poem online that some saw as a veiled criticism of Beijing. That same month, ByteDance founder Zhang, China's fourth-richest person with a net worth of $44.5 billion, gave about $77 million of his own wealth to an education fund in his hometown. And in April, Tencent's Pony Ma, the second-richest with $56.7 billion, pledged to set aside $7.7 billion of the company's money toward curing societal ills and lifting China's countryside out of poverty.
Bribery goes mainstream (Score:2)
Pretend this is different than campaign contributions in the west. It's not that very different, but pretend it is if that makes you sleep better.
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It's an easy and fun accusation, that immediately jumps to mind, but the truth of it depends on where the money is actually going. What kind of lifestyle do the high-level party members have?
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holy shit thats the most insightful thing I've seen in a while
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They don't need to campaign, China isn't a democracy. They also cracked down heavily on corruption, including jailing high level politicians.
More likely this is because the CCP is concerned about what has already happened in the United States, where wealth becomes super concentrated on a small number of individuals and large corporations crush the little guys.
Chinese capitalism is much more managed by the government. It's on a par with some European countries, but the mechanisms used are different.
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Nah.
China just wants wealth concentrated among the exceptionally few, the Party.
Xi Jinping's estimated net worth is US$1.5 billion... HE wants to control the organization/corporation crushing anyone in his way.
Power corrupts. It's rarely benevolent, stop pretending otherwise. The only reason it appears nice now it because it's had the trappings of respectability earned by servicing the western world with relatively cheap goods. Once that cash cow disappears, out come the knives.
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Pooh bear's net worth is a fraction of the capitalists? He doesn't seem to be doing all that well at taking their wealth.
that sudden case of instant benevolence (Score:2)
Re:that sudden case of instant benevolence (Score:4, Insightful)
You must be one of those people that doesn't understand where this kind of immense wealth comes from.
Hint: It's only tangentially related to what they pay their employees. It has more to do with what investors (especially in the stock market) think the company's shares are worth on any particular day.
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That immense wealth comes from graft. Who are you kidding? The examples of Chinese "leaders" who grew up essentially penniless and who did little or nothing in the private sector to create wealth suddenly have children tooling around in a Ferrari or Lambo while attending exclusive schools in western countries and buying assets outside of China. The Chinese media certainly pretends this isn't an issue, but we all know what's going on.
Classic communist kleptocrat wealth transfer from the "nong min" to the
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Oh, I agree if we're talking about Party members. But the post to which I replied was talking about CEOs that have become wealthy from the stock they hold in their company.
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They are a national security risk and are being eliminated, simple as that. That is the reality, their ego and their ability to pay for always being right no matter how wrong they are, to the enormous detriment of society.
Re: that sudden case of instant benevolence (Score:2)
As big as they are, the damage their ego can do pales to Pooh. Dictators like Pooh and Mao, or even US presidents, are still far more dangerous than billionaires.
You no give charity. Irregal! You Brade Runna (Score:1)
Business is a competing power center (Score:2)
Business is a competing power center to government. The Founders said, in the 1st Amendment, the very first sentence of the Bill of Rights, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". They recognized religion was a competing power center, and they refused to let it undermine their nascent government. They did not, however, recognize the threat of business. They could not have imagined the modern world, with businesses with annual revenues larger than most companies (if Walmart were [weforum.org]
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To some extent they did, and James Maddison in particular was concerned that innequalities in capitalism could lead to "a war of labor against capital" and "a war of capital against labor", echoing Adam Smiths concerned that if left unregulated, innequality could undermine the public good and the government.
What they didn't do however, was anything about it and unfortunately thats left a situation of "robber barron" capital with a government unable or unwilling to do anything about it out of a false belief
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Who would have thought? (Score:3)
Billionaires do have an altruistic side, all it takes for them to find it is a knife to their throat.
worthless (Score:2)