Alec Hogg: Complicated world for rational South Africans

First off, if you're considering diversifying your portfolio into a high yielding hard currency investment, join me at noon today for details on the latest project on offer from our business partners, US medical property specialist OrbVest. I'll be hosting the US-based CEO and local director in a webinar..I've got a feeling the webinar will be rather popular. Over the past few weeks, the world has become even more complicated for rational South Africans. At home, political opportunists are hard at work revising the nation's view of last month's anarchism. And in China, Beijing has temporarily fooled Mr Market into believing its now well-exposed agenda is, well, not actually its agenda..On the first topic, we have compiled a special edition of the BizNews Digest focusing on last month's looting in KZN and Gauteng. The interactive PDF summarises our coverage with links to the full stories, video and audio. It kicks off my summary written specifically for the Special Report. Download it here: https://bit.ly/3rRHnRz..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Onto China, please have a read of the excellent article republished below from our partners at The Wall Street Journal. It explains a lot about Beijing's seemingly irrational behaviour of late, which slashed hundreds of billions off the market value of Chinese online companies. Including, of course, Tencent, whose success transformed the value of early stage investor Naspers – rescuing many South African retirement funds from the woeful local economy..Having lived under a quarter century of similar ideology in SA, it's easy for us to see how hard boiled communists like China's President Xi (and ideological bedfellows in Pretoria) are rooted to a worldview that factories making "real" things should be promoted by the state. In our Constitutional Democracy, citizens who take their freedom to question for granted find it hard to relate to realities of China. And that includes investors..In the Middle Kingdom, stepping out of line can attract swift and brutal retribution, no matter how high your profile. Piet Viljoen pointing us to this excellent piece in Forbes which asks what really happened to AliBaba's founder Jack Ma. More high quality insights on what's going down in China from the IRR's new head John Edres via our interview yesterday (above). Click here for the story on BizNews – with the text highlights and links to the full interview on either video and audio..Finally today, you will need a subscription to access Justice Malala's brilliant column in the FM on Cadre Deployment. But it's worth signing up to Business Live if you haven't yet done so. Future historians will look back on articles like this and wonder how South Africans willingly handed power to those who promoting such idiocy..NB FOR YOUR WALL STREET JOURNAL ACCESS….As a Premium subscriber you are entitled to full membership of wsj.com (normal price $29 a month). Be sure to action your access through the Premium link on the BizNews website. Because of The Wall Street Journal's credential requirements, be sure to create a password which has at least 8 characters and includes at least one letter and one number – NB it MAY NOT contain any special characters (ie #, !, @ etc). To maintain access to WSJ.com, you MUST enter our partner's website via BizNews Premium at least once a month. A final PS, if you had previously signed up for WSJ you'll need to clear the cookies from your device. Our help desk can assist – support@biznews.com.

Alec Hogg: Complicated world for rational South Africans

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