the alibaba/ant crackdown involves both politics and very legitimate regulatory and anti-monopoly actions. $Baba has been a bad actor in some areas for a while, and anti-monopoly investigations in any country have a political element. But in Xi’s prc politics are in command 1/

And so you can’t look at what is happening to alibaba/ant without both political and regulatory lenses. $Baba and ant’s issues were known for years so why now, and especially for ant why just days before its ipo? Ant’s financial arbitrage was creating not reducing risk, and 2/

Hurt traditional financial institutions, so the crackdown on it makes sense. But again, why now, why not earlier in the campaign to fight and prevent risk? Events over the summer may provide some insight. To start, remember that every big campaign needs a high-profile example 3/

The summer events r the Opinion on Strengthening the United Front Work of the Private Economy in the New Era 关于加强新时代民营经济统战工作的意见, National Private Economy United Front Work Conference 全国民营经济统战工作会议 & Xi’s instructions to it https://sinocism.com/p/sinocism-weekly-discussion-credit/comments 4/

Here is a screenshot from a November sinocism on these events, and xi’s November comments about patriotic entrepreneur Zhang Jian in jiangsu, and more comments from September on the United front work https://sinocism.com/p/xi-weighs-in-on-united-front-work

In any country, but especially in the PRC, when hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake there are no major regulatory actions that do not have a political element to them. For jack ma a key question is whether these moves are solely related to the regulatory issues and 6/

The push “to better focus the wisdom and strengthen the private businesspeople on the goal and mission to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”, or whether he personally has political issues as well. On that last point there has been lots of speculation over 7/

The years, & there is certainly speculation now, among very sophisticated actors in the prc and not just outside the country, but we just don’t know at this point. But whatever is going in, it is not simply normal course of business regulatory work, but alibaba/ant’s size & 8/

Bad and in some cases egregious behaviors over the years make them very logical and legitimate targets. End/

Hard to do a sum of parts valuation of alibaba $baba when it is not clear what the parts will look like after the regulators are done and how some of the parts may get restructured/redistributed. But at some point the stock may be a bargain, just not sure last week was it endend/