Buhlmann's Corner
Karl Marx and descendents
A belated ‘chapeau!’ to Karl Marx, and a capitalism that thrives in the humus of state monopoly?
The year when the German taxpayer is having to foot the bill for the last payments due for cooperation ventures in China, no prizes for guessing who has elbowed Germany off the podium as the world champion in exports. As a stock market flotation, Alibaba’s was the biggest in history, just as its company structure was one of the least transparent ever seen on the capital market. In the process, founder Jack Ma saw his personal wealth rise – on paper at least – by over 20 thousand million Dollars (or even Euros for all the difference it makes).
Shortly after the split of Chinese railway monopolies into South (CSR) and North (CNR) in the quest for efficiency, the two have been reunited under the banner of CRRC in an attempt to create the biggest concern on the world market and stand comparison with the combined competition in the field from Bombardier (Canada), Alstom (France), Siemens (Germany), GE General Electric (US) and Kawasaki Heavy (Japan).
While we continue bickering about gender equality in top-management (those who raise their voices want it and those who don’t could live without it) and speaking equally about “diversity”, or even about having a transparent, efficient and fair remuneration framework, the authentically rich like Elon Musk pay their former wives a divorce settlement salary fit for a top manager of 9 figures that don’t quite ring true.
One founded Testla (and more), running in hot pursuit of market success, others (Lei Jun) establish a company they call Xiaomi on the overused cell-phone market; their turnover of 10 thousand million earned them a market assessment of 45 thousand million. If the same factor were applied to Siemens or BASF, quotations would be sky high. Unsettled weather for investors or demise of the liberal market economy? Do we have to cast corporate governance anew in the image of centralised state entrepreneurship guided by party hacks with feet of clay. Or should we start moving towards a more far-sighted type of economy that instead creates a countervailing power without conflicts of interest in a giant compliance budget?
China will soon qualify as worthy successors to the homeland of Warren Buffet and pick up its mantle as the world’s most powerful nation in terms of GDP despite the corruption it will have to deal with and the excessive depletion it is committing on its own natural resources.
Deprived by the Cultural Revolution 50 years ago, the Chinese succeeded in eclipsing the First World and its two-hundred year-long rebirth in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. They prioritized the worlds of finance and the real economy hurling themselves wholeheartedly into them just as they did thousands of years ago during the Xia, Shang and the Zhou dynasties before Germany and the USA became nations.
What is to be done? A good start might be to give our CEOs shorter names before we find ourselves saddled with others whose names are single syllable.