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Comment by Leary | Hacker News Reader

Funny people think entrepreneurs in China will no longer create companies because of this when in fact startups all hate Alibaba.

Can't wait for a similar fine on Tencent.

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Yes, everyone hates the big boys in China. Alibaba tencent are the worst bully one can imagine worldwide in the corporate worlds. They were enjoying great monoply from bullying competitors and supply chain.

For instance, Tecent had 94% winning rate in its local court, while only around 50% in Beijing. [1] (unfortunately that's in Chinese)

Tencent is also well known for copying small competitors products. In fact, almost all major products from tencent are copies. And a lot of the original firms that pioneered those products were forced out of the market because of Tencent's strong hold through Qq and we chat [2]

[1] https://finance.sina.cn/2021-02-23/detail-ikftssap8206412.d....

[2] https://www.bilibili.com/read/mobile/1181581

Sounds like this is a world wide problem and the idea of a company that does 'good' is nothing more than a CSR/PR play. Everything you have described can also be said for Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Depends on the incentives, doesn't it? Most companies are for-profit, they don't have any incentive to do good beyond what PR requires. If you set a company up as a cooperative, you'd likely see different results. It's pretty common for housing in Germany, I'm a member of one and am living in one of their apartments. I pay below market rate, they take great care of the project, are super responsive to issues and they usually pay 4% dividend to all members.

I don't know of many cooperatives that do "normal" business, but I don't see a reason why e.g. a cellular provider couldn't run on the same model, being perfectly aligned with their customers' interests, because the customers are also the owners. Mondragon Corporation in Spain comes to mind, but I have no idea whether they're friendly to smaller competitors.

Why would a company do "good"? A company's job is to make money, with some using whatever it takes while others being more gentle, but it's what a company is for. If you are looking for good, you'll have to check for non-profits.

No, it can't. Google and Facebook are not really famous for copying the products of smaller companies. They tend to buy those companies instead.

Amazon is also not really famous for "bullying" its supply chain. We have heard such stories about Walmart and to some extent Apple, though you can argue that hard bargaining is not bullying and shouldn't be described that way. But Amazon has famously thin margins in retail. If they were really exploiting their suppliers so badly we'd expect to see fatter margins.

As for companies doing good, they do good every time they sell someone a useful product or service. More abstract conceptions of good are all problematic and often very biased.

I wonder why do they tolerate big boys like CCP then and state sanctioned genocide under its nose.

Edit to the parent (non longer editable):

Everyone meant to refer to everyone inside mainland China.

Some replies below mentioned other corps like Amazon fb Google etc. Which are not considered in my parent post.

Western discussion about China is not nuanced. It assumes complete adherence to Beijing and completely effective coercion due to incestual ownership of all private enterprise.

There is alot of discontent, and alot of flying under the radar, not different than leading western economies.

The difference is that discontent is necessarily under the radar in China while it is not under the radar at all in leading western countries. That extra transparency makes things a bit more predictable in the west, while in China you really have to pay attention to rumors.

It’s also not hard to notice.

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