Ray Dalio is wrong about China’s tech crackdown, economist says

China expert George Magnus disagrees with Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio on Beijing’s tech crackdown. In a LinkedIn post this month, Dalio said investors were misconstruing a clampdown by China on sectors including fintech, online tutoring and food delivery as “anti-capitalist.”

“The trend over the last 40 years has clearly been so strongly toward developing a market economy with capital markets, with entepreneurs and capitalists becoming rich,” the billionaire hedge fund manager said. “As a result, they’ve missed out on what’s going on in China and probably will continue to miss out,” Dalio added.

Magnus thinks Dalio is mistaken. The economist, who is an associate at the University of Oxford’s China Centre, told CNBC on Wednesday that Beijing’s crackdown was all about the Communist Party’s pursuit of political “control.” “I think Dalio is wrong,” Magnus told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe.” “Obviously he’s got a big business in China, so he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

Dalio has made a number of bullish comments on China over the past year. In October, he warned investors not to ignore China’s rise as an economic superpower. Meanwhile, Bridgewater Associates has been ramping up investments into China’s stock market lately.

Ray Dalio is wrong about China’s tech crackdown, economist says, CNBC, Aug 26