> I’m not sure how you arrived at this conclusion. My take away was the Chinese government fears tech companies that might take power away from the Chinese government. This is more about the Chinese government maintaining its own power and full control, and less about the value add or anti trust stance for keeping a competitive market.
I keep the claim that the explanation is even more simpler: whomever becomes a big man in a country like China eventually goes down, and that's the whole story.
There can only be one "big man" in such system, and he tolerates no competition.
This consistently held true through the whole 40 years of modern China: whomever attains too much of the social, political, economical, cultural, moral, or even genealogical prominence consistently gets taken down. This is why most mainland Chinese have that fear of publicity, and standing out almost bordering on panic disorder. And this is why people attaining any level of prominence there keep leaving the country for the West.
There are other areas where the Chinese government is cracking down on improductive activity that is harmful to the economy without challenging the CCP's power, like real estate, bitcoin miners or most recently EdTech.
"Activity that is harmful to the economy?" I think they get much more glaring issues to care about if it comes to this.
What about their wrong simply being "getting too rich, and successful," and causing somebody a burst of jealousy?
Becoming richer than a partyman in some small village is very much a challenge to the party. What changed now is that the entire China has become that village.
I keep the claim that the explanation is even more simpler: whomever becomes a big man in a country like China eventually goes down, and that's the whole story.
There can only be one "big man" in such system, and he tolerates no competition.
This consistently held true through the whole 40 years of modern China: whomever attains too much of the social, political, economical, cultural, moral, or even genealogical prominence consistently gets taken down. This is why most mainland Chinese have that fear of publicity, and standing out almost bordering on panic disorder. And this is why people attaining any level of prominence there keep leaving the country for the West.