Is Beijing’s clampdown on private industry easing?

Editor’s Note: This piece by Benny Avni features quotes from CSP Senior Fellow Grant Newsham.

China is open for business, or at least that is what its Communist leaders want American business leaders to believe. Should anyone trust Beijing?

The Communist Country’s most famous entrepreneur, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, just returned to China after a yearlong absence. On Monday he visited a school at Hangzhou that he had founded after his career at the helm of the tech company ended. His departure from Alibaba was widely perceived as forced retirement, orchestrated by Chairman Xi’s administration.

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Yet, to believe that Beijing has once again changed direction “you’d have to be Charlie Brown thinking that this time Lucy is going to hold the football and let you kick it,” a retired Marine who has worked in Japan as risk assessor for Morgan Stanley, Grant Newsham, tells the Sun.

“The CCP has promised a ‘greater opening up’ every quarter for the last four decades,” Mr. Newsham, the author of “When China Attacks, A Warning To America,” says. “At some point, even American and Western businessmen ought to figure out the market is rigged against them. A foreign company will only be as successful in China and for as long as the CCP allows it to be. And that applies to Chinese businessmen as well.”

Whether Beijing’s latest whim is more economic freedom or more control, one does business in China at Mr. Xi’s pleasure.

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