China hamstrings its Big Tech
“National champions” are neither.
The Chinese state is continuing its crackdown on its Big Tech giants, banning the use of machine learning to set per-customer prices, control search results, or filter content. As Will Knight and Jennifer Conrad write for Wired, the regulation covers “ride-hailing, ecommerce, streaming, and social media.”
https://www.wired.com/story/china-regulate-ai-world-watching/
This is just the latest salvo in the Chinese state’s war on its biggest businesses. From the start of the pandemic, Chinese regulators kept the Chinese finance sector on a tight leash, freezing debt payments and blocking penalties, foreclosures and seizures of assets used to secure commercial debt:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#debt
Likewise, the Chinese state has created sweeping regulations for its runaway property development market:
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/explainer-whats-going-on-in-chinas-property-market/
And the predatory practices of the private tutoring market, which created an arms race among parents and deprived kids of their childhood:
