Soon after, it all imploded. Worse, as the FT notes in a new piece, between the pandemic, the bursting of a real estate bubble, tensions between the U.S. and China and, most of all, a sweeping government crackdown on tech companies, China may never fully rebound, even as the government claims to be done with its alleged clean-up efforts. It’s just not worth it to entrepreneurs to rebuild what they’ve lost.
Entrepreneurs believe that “their money is the country’s money,” says one former mogul to the FT about the state of China today. As for the VCs and PE execs who fueled the earlier boom, another source tells the outlet: “Now they’re depressed. You don’t see them anymore.”