Comment by Animats
4 days ago
Huh. Had not thought about that. It's important.
China has a chance to take over social media outside China, but the censorship is getting in the way. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
This parallels another big issue in China - external usage of the yuan. China still has capital outflow controls and exchange limitations. So few outside China want to hold yuan if they don't have a use for it inside China. Yet China's leadership wants to make it the world currency, replacing the dollar. That requires more convertibility, and exposes China's internal economy to external market forces. That's been an internal debate for a decade.
exactly, taking this chance requires allowing free market rules to apply.
china is the only country on earth managing 1.5 billion people efficiently (not perfect, not fair, but more efficient than anything seen in history)
and they won't take chances to allow free market to reign. even with iron fist, it's been hard to keep the lid on unrest, laying-flat philosophy, unemployment on young people and real estate bubbles. and remember they print their currency twice as fast than the US, either applying inflation to their whole population or representing new value created in the country, I don't know.
> Taking this chance requires allowing free market rules to apply.
On the yuan side, yes. On the TikTok side, it requires allowing free speech rules to apply. That scares China's current leadership.