To understand what China is today and how it makes decisions, you need to know its recent past.
The ruling party resents the way the modern world is constructed. It simmers as the Qing dynasty was fragmented and dissolved after years of occupation. And of how after World War II the scarred sovereign, to paraphrase Dean Acheson, was “absent” from the founding and played little role in founding institutions like the UN and IMF.
Put simply, nobody in the People’s Republic, from the aristocratic street sweeper to the elite of Beijing’s political caste, likes to be told what to do by an outside power – ever.
That’s what makes his August 26 decision to agree to allow US regulators to scrutinize Chinese companies listed in New York so curious.
This story begins in 2013, when Beijing had the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) — a nonprofit organization that oversees all U.S.-listed companies — investigate the auditing activities of four mainland companies, all of which were under investigation at the time.
Two years later, there was a reversal.
Beijing has been reluctant to open the books on big tech companies like Alibaba and Baidu, with their treasure troves of personal data, to its geopolitical rival.
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