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Businesses China

China Will Reportedly Break Up Ant Group's Alipay, Force Creation of New Loans App (cnbc.com) 67

Beijing plans to break up Ant Group's Alipay and create a separate app for the fintech giant's loans business, according to a Financial Times report on Monday. CNBC reports: Regulators previously ordered Ant to split the businesses of AliPay from lending businesses Huabei and Jiebei. They now want the credit businesses to be split into an independent app as well, according to the FT. According to the plan, Ant will turn over user data underpinning loan decisions to a new credit scoring joint venture, the FT reported, citing people familiar with the process. The JV will be partly state-owned, the report said. Reuters said in early September that state-back firms are set to take a sizeable stake in the credit-scoring joint-venture, with Ant and Zhejiang Tourism Investment Group owning 35% each of the venture.

Ant will not be the only online lender in China affected by the new rules, according to the FT. [...] In April, regulators ordered Ant Group to revamp its business, including restructuring into a financial holding company as well as creating more separation between its payment app Alipay and its credit products. In that same month, Chinese regulators also slapped Alibaba with a massive 18.23 billion yuan (about $2.8 billion) fine in its anti-monopoly investigation of the tech behemoth due to alleged abuse of its market dominance.

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China Will Reportedly Break Up Ant Group's Alipay, Force Creation of New Loans App

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  • by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @06:36AM (#61794933)

    This is what happens when you get "too big for your britches" in China.

    Cue the wu mao dang.

    • by quenda ( 644621 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @06:40AM (#61794937)

      There was a time when the US regulators took on powerful oligopolies for the public interest.
      AT&T and IBM did quite well afterwards.

      • Please supply your Alipay information so I can transmit your .5RMB. Oh wait.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Oh boy a 50 cents retort?!

          Boy do you have a small penis and sore throat.

          • Oh boy a 50 cents retort?!

            Boy do you have a small penis and sore throat.

            Sorry bucko, it's less than 10 cents.

            You should learn to check the exchange rate before shilling.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Which raises an interesting question. Is China in the middle stages of capitalism, like the US was when it broke up big monopolies, headed for late stage capitalism similar to what the US has?

        Or is this something different, something uniquely Chinese?

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Marxism, the ideology created by a German, popularized by a Russian, implemented properly for the first time in history on national level by a Georgian and who's methods were copied by Chinese is... "uniquely Chinese" or "late stage capitalism".

          In case anyone wondered just how disconnected modern Marxists in the West are from reality, this post is an excellent example of the sheer depth of insanity such people suffer from.

          • by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @07:28AM (#61795005) Homepage

            China isn't nationalizing the companies, so it's not exactly Marxism in the traditional form. It's much closer to fascism, in terms of notionally private ownership of companies but fine-grained management from a government that enforces traditional virtues (no sissy men in their media!) and an ethnic nationalism.

            The fact that China got to full-blown fascism from the left rather than the right shows that the horseshoe theory might not go far enough... or that the usual diagnosis of fascism as a right-wing phenomenon is wrong.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Fascism is just as much of an outgrowth of Marxism as Communism, but in the other direction. Whereas Communists effectively totalize Marxism to people rather than just properly as Socialists do, Fascists instead move Marxism to concern only people and not property.

              I.e. Socialists nationalize property. Fascists nationalize people. Communists nationalize both.

              And Chinese system is distinctly Communist, as it nationalizes both people and property. Most people forget that there is no actual ownership of land or

              • They have currency, which is distinctly not communist, and a class system, which is distinctly not communist.

                Therefore, China is distinctly not communist.

                They are simply Fascist.

                • by RevDisk ( 740008 )
                  Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy.

                  To be fair, there is no true communism. But there is no true capitalism, socialism or fascism. Reality never meets the tidy textbook definitions. China is indeed communist, because they are ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. You can say they don't live up to textbook ideals. They however are the real life version of Chinese communist. Cuba, Loas, North Korean, Vietnam and China are the last remaining communist countries. They are all individual countries and unique. Bu
                • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  Communism does not remove the need for determination of value of things. So you use money to differentiate value of objects and you use class for determination of the value of people. That's the basis for a state where both people and property are nationalized. As in such a nation, you need tools to accurately determine value of each person and each object for The Party, which itself is inseparable from The People and The State.

                  Source: Communist literature from Soviet Union and People's Republic of China.

            • by Anonymous Coward

              And the US is becoming more and more a corporatist state. Apparently EVERYONE is moving towards a fascist state. It's simply the general trend of the world.

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Marxism isn't state ownership, it's worker ownership. There is a big difference. Many successful companies in Europe operate on an employee ownership basis, where employees own part of the company and have things like voting rights similar to shareholders, as well as dividends when there is a profit. Those companies are not owned by the government.

              In fact my own employer is moving to this model, and soon I will have a stake in the company I work for.

              Breaking up monopolies or companies where two business are

              • "It's worker ownership"

                Riiight... and who decides for the workers hmm? Marxism will ALWAYS devolve to state ownership because while Marx was busy drinking and discussing with the pink elephants his grandiose theory he managed to ignore the most important currency of all, time. Making business decisions requires time and analysis, and the more people with input into those decisions the longer it takes making actual worker ownership impossible as the scale of any endeavor increases.

              • The US did it with AT&T, and it's happened numerous times in Europe. It's perhaps less common now because our governments tend to anticipate it and block mergers that would lead to such a situation.

                You seriously believe that? I won't speak to Europe, but in the states nearly every corporate merger, buyout or takeover gets rubber stamp approval immediately by the government because in nearly every case it will result in more lobbying money being funneled directly into the rubber stamper's pockets. There are no checks and balances when it comes to corporate sprawl. The US is a plutocracy with a shiny façade of 'republic with democratic underpinnings', and keeping big business big is a massive pa

                • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  Well for example Disney was not legally able to own both ABC and Fox because of the FCC's "dual network rule".

                  • Lol. Like they won't end-run that eventually. Disney being what it is, it essentially owns such a large percentage of media, that's a token effort at best. And I'm quite certain they can leverage their ability to lobby into "fixing" that problem within a few years.

            • China isn't nationalizing the companies

              And yet the position of the Chinese government is that these companies are an extension of the State?

              Seems you're using some silly definitions.

          • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @08:46AM (#61795159)

            Given a rather short period of time, An educated idea that that Karl Marx published, got became popular, popularity created followers, followers worship the publisher, which creates a cult, Cults can be swayed by often a Charismatic leader, where the idea and concept, become ideology, ideology is adapted to changing conditions...

            Communism, while touts Marxism statements, is not what Karl Marx wanted, and is actually more of the same that he was warning about.
            The same way, some people who call Christians, think that because someone was rich and successful that they got there because of God's graces. Which was the opposite of Jesus's/Christian Teaching. It is just a corruption of the idea, where people will start to pick and choose what parts they like and don't like, to make their own version, which is often less thought out.

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Imagine being so utterly brainwashed as to compare a man who chose to suffer horribly and die for sins of people he never met with an angry, utterly unsuccessful and envious propagandist who spent his life parasitising off Engels' family money who built an entire cult just to explain to himself why his life's constant failures weren't his fault but of the people who funded his lifestyle until they no longer could afford it.

              And come off with a conclusion that those are similar.

        • China is fully fascist, which means that it is ultimately not pro-capitalist. Fascism subdues capitalism to the power of the state.

          Republicans are also fascists and act the same way. This is why Texas is trying to meddle with social media. The fascist state government demands company policy support the entrenched political establishment.

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        And here, when Alipay tried to take on state banking monopolies to fill the desperate need of citizenry for small scale loans, state destroyed the competitor to protect the monopolies.

        So the exact opposite.

        Chinese bots are really in full swing trying to throw black paint over white issue.

        • And here, when Alipay tried to take on state banking monopolies to fill the desperate need of citizenry for small scale loans, state destroyed the competitor to protect the monopolies.

          Do you mean when he tried to do banking without being subject to banking regulations?
          Tell us how well that works in non Communist countries too.

          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            No. He tried to do it within regulations. China being a Communist state however, there are secret regulations in addition to public regulations, and both can change in secret as needed.

            This doesn't work in liberal nations, because in those, there's both separation of powers and generally open legislative process for regulatory matters. In China, there's no separation of powers and plenty of secret legislation for regulatory matters.

            In case you need an example for this, google "requirements for getting Beiji

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 )

      The west hasnt had the balls to do this since Ted Roosevelt reminded a whole bunch of shitty monoopolist robber barrons whos the boss. And we really ought get back into the habit of it.

      That said I cant help but wonder if the chinese govt intends to slip a little of their orewllian social credit nonsense in there. We can probably not do THAT part.

      • by teg ( 97890 )

        The west hasnt had the balls to do this since Ted Roosevelt reminded a whole bunch of shitty monoopolist robber barrons whos the boss. And we really ought get back into the habit of it.

        That said I cant help but wonder if the chinese govt intends to slip a little of their orewllian social credit nonsense in there. We can probably not do THAT part.

        Well, they did use it in 1982 as well - on AT&T [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately, it's been rather quiet since then with the exception of the Microsoft case.

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @07:20AM (#61794993)

        Ma isn't a monopolist robber baron. He's the diametric opposite. He tried to take on state banking monopoly failing to meet the needs for loans of citizenry.

        And in Communist societies, you can be a robber baron. You just have to be in good graces of Communist Party leadership. Ma wasn't, and he was taking on robber barons that were.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The CCP's policy is to have private companies provide financial services like loans. They just expect them to operate in a way that benefits the people of China, rather than for maximum profit.

          It's not communism in the sense we mean it, they saw what happened in the USSR and learned from it. It's also not capitalism like the US has, where they also saw what happened and learned from it. The 2008 financial crash should have been a wake-up call for us to properly regulate those markets. China has had similar

          • in fact just recently a number of tower blocks were demolished because nobody bought them.

            Nope, that's not a thing that ever happened. A number of tower blocks were demolished because they wanted to create more make-work. If they wanted to fill those buildings they could have, and it would have been more efficient. Instead they went for the broken window theory of economics. That's the kind of shit that is destroying the biosphere.

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              It was pointed out that there were probably enough homeless people, or people struggling to buy homes, who would have taken them up... If there had been the accompanying jobs and other infrastructure.

              The issue seems to be that they were built in the expectation that there would be large numbers of jobs created nearby, but when that failed to happen the tower blocks became basically useless as homes.

          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            "Real Communism Has Never Been Tried", AmiMoJo's n+1st attempt at explaining how utopian ideals of Communism that exist in his head are the real Communism, and Communism being implemented in real life is just... not.

            Where "n" is the number that must be in the thousands at this point.

            Honestly, at this point there's no point in arguing. This is a mind in an iron grip of cult mentality.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Luckyo likes to not tell the whole story despite knowing more. This is what Christians consider as deceiving.

          He tried to meet the needs for loans of citizenry by taking out huge loans from the state banks, and then reloaning these loans to the citizenry UNREGULATED.

          Any idiot knows how that story will end. It's NOT that long ago since the global financial crisis occurred due to practically the same issue. Yet stupid idiots like Luckyo like to deceive.

        • There are two ways to conquer/enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt --John G. Adams (b. 1826)

          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            There are two kinds of people. Those that understand that nations and individuals are nothing like one another, and those that don't.

    • Beijing seems to be quite indiscriminate in it's recent crusade against everything. Sure, big names like Ant group get special attention, but they are pissing on small timers like all the private tutoring businesses just the same.
  • This is what happens to businesses when they become too large and their leaders too influencial in China. The CCP, specifically Xi fears any influence that is not his own. Beware of the CCP, they are not forgiving.

  • The crack down on big companies is just a political move to try to prevent social unrest, as 1.3bil people lose their savings and blame the rich. https://www.google.com/finance... [google.com] Will it work? Probably... The citizens of China are pretty well brain washed. There will be fallout from all of the foreign investment from Western companies and investors though. It could be very painful for EU and US markets.

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