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This is CBSI and the World. I'm visiting with Andrew Collier, the author in 2022 of China's Technology War,

why Beijing took down its tech giants.

It's important to note that Andrew wrote this with incomplete information yet at 22 during the time of the pandemic

about what the taking down of the IPO for Ant could mean.

We see it completely today.

Well, more completely than ever, let's put it that way.

What was Ant, Andrew, and how shocking was it that they withdrew the IPO?

What did that signal?

Ed was basically an online bank.

We have a couple of those in the United States, my bank, and there's a few others that basically

take savings deposits and distribute money and checking and so forth.

So I actually visited Ant before they were a bank.

I happened to be in the city where Jack Ma came from in around 2008, and I had set up a meeting with some random person who I sat down with them, and I said, what do you do? And he says, well, I lend money. And I said, aren't you like Amazon, don't you distribute goods? I mean, what are you doing? He says, well, we have money and we know all these customers. And so we thought we'd lend the money to help with their business.

And so they were, even when they were a fledgling bank, I was introduced to some of their

people. So Ant became quite large because they were very efficient and they were lower,

they were offering higher rates of savings of returns to than the state-on banks. And so they grew by leaps and bounds.

And over time, the regulators, the central bank and others in Beijing started to say, oh, gee,

they're very risky.

...