Arthur Kroeber

So that was – they still did okay.

They're still very big companies.

I think their share prices fell way more than was justified by the actual loss in revenue.

That's starting to correct.

Yeah.

Alibaba, Tencent, they're still great companies.

They're figuring it out.

But they were severely constrained.

They were much, much more tightly regulated.

You look at the financial sector generally, it was significantly deregulated from about 2008 to about 2017 with some bad consequences, increased financial risk, shadow banking, lots of bad stuff, but also lots of good stuff.

Private companies, which were essentially shut out of

loan finance got the ability to finance themselves through debt in the way that they had not been able to previously.

You had a lot of new financial services going to households.

Basically, the government said, no, this is a little bit too dangerous, so we're going to re-regulate it.

Now, most financial activity in China has been constricted back into a small number of basically state-owned banks.

It was severe re-regulation of the financial sector.

There was a lot of talk about healthcare sector, opening that up to much more to private entrepreneurship.

That, again, has been reined in.

So you can go down the list, and there has been a massive re-regulation of the service sector, which limits the opportunities for profitable expansion by companies, limits the opportunities for entrepreneurship, and limits the opportunities for employment.

It's a political choice.