
Jack Ma Confirmed as Chinese Communist Party Member - doener
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-27/jack-ma-communist-and-the-tricky-balance-for-china-s-capitalists
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baybal2
I've been hearing repeatedly that the party is building up a "human shield" in
case the West will start going after party members individually.

There are no benefits for an average person in China to join the party aside
from your member card doubling as a free public transit ticket.

First, you can't meaningfully participate in the political process in any
capacity, without already "being somebody" in the party.

Second, only 1 in 1000 of party members will ever see any chance to work in
any meaningful position. Yes, the actual amount of people who do politics in
China is no more than ~70-80 thousand extremely privileged people, picked
among the _most fanatical_ candidates.

Third, even if you already "is somebody," and passed the impossible odds, and
be picked out from the most fanatical party members, your remit will be no
more than to blindly execute edicts passed from above.

Fourth, if you survived for over 2 decades in a position of low ranked
official, your brains will not. Anybody who spent so much time mentally
tortured by routine work and doing meaningless, brain dead "ideological
research" will have their spark extinguished, no matter how talented they
were.

Fifth, when you turn a grey haired party veteran who can recite all Marx works
from memory, and have a genuine chance getting to provincial or national
level, you are a useless husk of a person, who can't do anything but
mechanically follow the politburo.

Sixth, if you survived even that, and surpassed everybody else at doing that
ritual, you end up becoming a man in ranks of Xi Jinpings.

Jiang Zemin, was the only man ever known to "hack" that system, and he is
universally hated by party for that.

~~~
shabda
China has done remarkably well in last 6 years, lifting half a billion people
out of crippling poverty.

If their political system is as incompetent as you describe, I wonder how they
manage to do so well.

~~~
samspenc
I believe that's due to the entrepreneurship and hard work of the individuals
in the country, and not of the political system itself.

Congratulating the CCP for lifting the country out of poverty would be like
thanking the US political parties for making the USA the largest economy in
the world (as opposed to the hard-working entrepreneurs and workers who built
this country into what it is today.)

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paraditedc
To illustrate how ridiculous that this is considered a piece of news to
Westerners, consider if Chinese media reports "Taylor Swift confirmed to have
voted in the election."

I don't think the term "confirmed" is the right choice here since it is
confusing the action and the state. I highly doubt that the media would use
the word "confirmed" if he actually just joined the party. That would be news.

~~~
wyuenho
He did, that's what confirmed means.

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tanilama
So? There are almost 100 million party members in China. And higher the
education you are, the party will be more persuasive in having you join them.

And it is in China, come on. Being a Communist member isn't a SIN. And Ma
openly said he is a fan of Mao and would not hesitate to hand over Alipay to
the 'country', had the government asked for it. So make no mistake, he joining
the party is like a win-win for, both parties(no pun intended).

~~~
Waterluvian
I think applied collectivism might be particularly difficult for Westerners to
reconcile with our world view, especially those part of entrepreneurship
communities.

~~~
davidivadavid
Do you really think that's _the_ sticking point Westerners have with communism
in China?

~~~
Waterluvian
I think it's one of many facets of a very interesting topic.

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baylearn
How is this news? Most people in China who is a somebody is a party member.

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starbeast
>Most people in China who is a somebody

Most people who is a somebody? So then, would that not be a description of the
upper classes and the bourgeoisie?

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hohohmm
Is Bloomberg trying to sound absurdly stupid to cover up their previous really
stupid story on Chinese spy chip?

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yters
What does it mean exactly for him to be a party member? Does this mean the
party has control over his company?

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dagw
_Does this mean the party has control over his company?_

No more than it would have if he wasn't a member.

~~~
yters
Why is Jack Ma in the party? What benefit does it convey, and what constraints
does it induce?

~~~
simonblack
Spin those questions around to ones that are more familiar to Westerners.

"Why has Jack Ma joined the Freemasons? What benefit does it convey, and what
constraints does it induce?"

The reasons are very likely in both situations that having an 'in' with some
particular powerful group is very good for your cash-flow.

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qbig
It's outright trying to sensationalized something completely common or just
completely ignorance.. Either way..

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yesforwhat
"Step down, join the party. You won't get another offer."

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Arnt
How many members of the party are there just to boost their careers, and how
many for _any_ other reason?

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tanilama
Most of them. For a party of that is bigger the size of most nations in the
world, it is almost impossible to unite those members diverse interests under
a single ideal. It is more like an assumed loyalty test for CCP, or vanity
number, think it more like the Prime membership, except you don't really get
too many benefits from it. LoL

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majewsky
> except you don't really get too many benefits from it

Being able to do big business doesn't count?

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tanilama
well, you better have the luck to own a big business first. Once you do,
becoming a party member, had you wished it isn't a hard thing. No difference
than rich people like Trump gets into politics eventually.

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vermontdevil
Surprised to learn there’s only 89 million members in a country of over 1.4
billion.

Guess it’s very selective for a reason.

~~~
ksec
Why do you consider this number is small? Assuming you won't being sarcastic.

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inawarminister
USSR: 19 million (1986) out of population of 286,730,819

3rd Reich: 1945 the party reached its peak of 8 million with 63% being male
and 37% being female (about 10% of the German population of 80 million).

North Korea (1988) 3 million out of 19.56 million

So it seems that most one party regimes only have less than 10% of it's
population officially registered, hmm. If I am more knowledgeable, I'd make a
comparison to medieval nobles and clergies tbh

(The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had 10% of it's population counted as
nobles as well in 1750 or so IIRC)

~~~
quicklime
Interestingly, it looks like about 32.5 million Americans are registered
Republicans, out of a population of 325 million

[http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/regist...](http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/registering-
by-party-where-the-democrats-and-republicans-are-ahead/)

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mrobot
Is it me or does there seem to be a significant increase in both communist and
china posts hitting front page on HN and in media in general?

~~~
AsyncAwait
It seems to have started with the Bloomberg story, which is still to be
proven, and has escalated since. There was the Huawei story, the social credit
system story etc.

I suspect it has something to do with the media being fed stories to boost
U.S. position in the trade war. They're probably gushing themselves over
getting such 'exclusive' pieces, while it's all per-planned.

It's not even far fetched, as that's exactly what happened prior to the
invasion of Iraq, but if it indeed is the case, it would be a huge irony,
given that we often, (correctly), point out how much control the CCP has over
the press.

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wyuenho
After reading all the comments below, I'm quite disappointed that there are
still many that equate joining the CCP as joining the Freemasons or the
Republican party.

Do any of these other parties have their own secret services and armies and
nukes? Do any of these parties blend completely into the state apparatus such
that they are indistinguishable? Have any of the parties killed literally
dozens of millions of people?

Check your moral compasses people. The Communist Party of China is communist
in name only, but it's actually the Nazi party now. Wake the fuck up and learn
your foreign policies and history.

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volkisch
To the surprise of no one. It would be silly to believe that you don't have to
be a party member to play ball. I could find it rare if Jack Ma had his
origins in HK, TW or other place with a delicate relationship with Mainland
but this is not the case.

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nl
To the complete surprise of no one...

With the possible exceptions of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong.

~~~
s_dev
>Jack Ma, co-founder of China’s most valuable company, was officially
confirmed as a member of the Communist Party

There is an oddness in reading that sentence though.

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nl
Yeah.

Apparently the downvoters don't get the irony.

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starbeast
The word 'communist' is becoming more than slightly stretched by this point.

Perhaps they should rename it to something slightly more accurate.

'Billionaires Drinking Club', perhaps.

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geofft
More red scare fearmongering from Bloomberg. Have they retracted their FUD
about Supermicro yet?

"The lines between business and politics have become increasingly hazy in
China as President Xi Jinping has led a campaign to ensure the Communist Party
plays a leading role across all aspects of society." As opposed to America,
where we certainly don't have any businesspeople in politics or politicians in
business?

