← Back to context

Comment by throw03172019

15 hours ago

Dealt with is the founders / team / investors losing out of the $2B. That’s the punishment from China.

65 comments

throw03172019

Reply
giwook  15 hours ago

Somehow I think there is a real possibility more will happen.

Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.

I don't claim to know what's going on outside of what's being reported, but I'm reminded of other individuals who have "stepped out of line" (as determined by Beijing) and were also either barred from the country or mysteriously disappeared for weeks or months at a time only to randomly reappear at some point singing a different tune.

  • observationist  13 hours ago

    >>> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.

    This is standard operating procedure for the CCP. They are a truly ruthless, sinister group who have no scruples about ensuring compliance and using leverage on behalf of Chinese interests. Just look at what happened to Jack Ma.

    • xtracto  13 hours ago

      Gemini, Give me examples of people that the US has retained passports pending investigations

      It's standard procedure in every country for some investigations.

      13 replies →

    • codedokode  4 hours ago

      Oh come on. Look what happened to Russian enterpreneur, Pavel Durov in France, and what happened to Julian Assange and to Edward Snowden. It's the same thing just wrapped in different colored package. You don't cooperate with the government, you have some suffering.

  • cineticdaffodil  14 hours ago

    Usually they just threaten the family that stayed in china to enforce compliance. As in visit by police and do a video call. Good old socialist playbook. Guess the CEOs were to workaholic ti be threatened with the mafia methods.

  • guywithahat  14 hours ago

    > Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes

    I don't think it's actually that uncommon in China, especially with high profile people. To China's credit, we often bar people from leaving the country if they're charged with a crime but not convicted of anything. While it's certainly scary and authoritarian, I think it's par for the course in China. Most companies have some amount of CCP representation in them, either on the board or some level of management.

    • dublinstats  14 hours ago

      Shouldn't every country be barring people from leaving the country if they've been charged with a crime? At least if there's a good chance they will flee justice.

      This seems like a side issue from the question of whether the charges are legitimate.

      15 replies →

  • ahmadyan  14 hours ago

    > Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.

    Pure speculation on my part, but i would be surprised if China didn't have our equivalent of export control laws, not difficult to fabricate a crime and pin it on founders.

    • ericmay  14 hours ago

      They do have export control laws and such, but based on current and past behavior China’s Communist Party doesn’t need those laws to disappear people or create crimes and then make people guilty of said crimes.

      Worth mentioning though that this is not how America functions, nor our rule of law.

      8 replies →

    • refulgentis  14 hours ago

      Yr parent is new to standard China legal mechanisms and you pivoted off of that to invent a chain of stuff that isn’t real. Are they unfamiliar to us? Yes. But it’s worth speaking to whether the speculation is rational.