Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, spends a lot of time contemplating what he deems the China “riddle.”
“How is it that a communist country can be so capitalist that they have the second largest capital market in the world, produce billionaires, and simultaneously be Marxist?” he asks from his Connecticut home, where The Wire reached him by Zoom. “If you don’t know how to answer that riddle, then you must not understand China.”
Dalio, 72, believes he understands China better than most. Since first visiting the country in 1984, on an invitation from China CITIC Bank, he has cultivated a rolodex that extends to the highest echelons of China’s political and corporate classes, giving him insight, he says, into “how China works, who to trust and who not to trust.”
His firm, Bridgewater Associates, has been investing billions from Chinese clients outside of the country for years, but in 2018, it launched its first onshore Chi
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When China announced it was ending quarantine requirements for incoming travelers, Chinese people collectively picked up their phones to search popular travel apps like Ctrip and Qunar. Owned by travel giant Trip.com, these apps helped Chinese travelers explore the world pre-pandemic and facilitated the human-to-human interactions that drove China's rise. But many of today's travelers seem to be sticking closer to home, and their hesitation to get back to the jetsetting habits of the past 20 years has far-reaching implications — especially for Trip.com.
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