Power play: China gives tech tycoons a short leash

An exclusive preview from the latest issue of The Week magazine If you have trouble viewing this email, [read the online version](. NEWS In this issue of The Week --------------------------------------------------------------- Dear newsletter reader, We thought you'd appreciate this special preview from the latest issue of The Week magazine, where you'll find everything you need to know about the most important stories in news, business, technology, and culture. Today's preview comes from the Talking Points section. If you like what you read you can [try 6 Risk-Free issues of The Week](. Power play: China gives tech tycoons a short leash "China's crackdown on Big Tech just keeps growing," said Laura He at CNN. Last week, just days after Didi, China's version of Uber, raised $4.4 billion in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, the Chinese government banned the company's flagship ride-hailing app from Chinese app stores. Soon after, it followed up by banning 25 more Didi apps and proposing that "any company with data on more than 1 million users" must seek government approval before listing its shares overseas. China's regulators say they want tech companies to "move from the stage of 'barbaric growth' to one of 'orderly development under the rule of law,'" said Keith Zhai and Frances Yoon at The Wall Street Journal. To ensure that orderly development, they're asserting mastery over every part of the tech industry. Ant Group, a financial giant, and ByteDance, owner of the social media sensation TikTok, have shelved IPO plans under government pressure. China is making a very public display of power, openly advertising the prospect of further action as a "Sword of Damocles dangling over the heads of China's tech giants." "Imagine the reaction of Washington's China hawks if the likes of Twitter and Amazon were only listed in Shanghai," said Tom Mitchell at the Financial Times. That's essentially what Didi was doing when it spurned Hong Kong to list in New York "on the eve of celebrations marking the centennial of the Chinese Communist Party's founding." In some ways, China's actions "aren't radically different from equally aggressive measures contemplated by" lawmakers in the U.S. and European Union, said Zachary Karabell at Time. This is part of a power struggle "between powerful tech companies and established governments that are not prepared to cede control to private actors that often arrogantly claim they serve a higher calling." The difference is that unlike their Chinese counterparts, Western authorities "can't exactly detain Mark Zuckerberg for vague, sweeping, and largely unspecified violations." Actually, this is very different from what's happening in the West, said The Economist. It's a "systemic attack on tech" by the Communist Party. "China's tech industry has been one of the most dynamic areas of the global economy in the past decade," led by Didi, Alibaba, Tencent, and other makers of China's "super apps." Their rise has been made possible by foreign capital, Western-educated talent, and "a flow of ideas across borders." But China's "paranoid rulers" are signaling that powerful tech firms' free rein is over and they "must defer to the Communist Party." One question about China has always been whether "it can combine thuggish, autocratic politics with the predictable rules and property rights that entrepreneurs and capital markets need to survive." The war on China's tech industry suggests not. [Try 6 Risk-Free issues of The Week]( [The week Logo] Copyright © 2021 The Week Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.. You’re receiving this because you subscribe to or signed up to receive emails from The Week. To unsubscribe from these emails, click [here](. The Week Publications, Inc. Registered address: 155 E 44th St Fl 22, New York, NY, 10017-4100. Further information about how we use your data can be found in our [Privacy Policy](.