Tightly tied to China
Naspers’s precarious China fortunes
Naspers’s link to a Chinese Internet giant is playing a disproportionate role in the JSE’s fortunes — and increasing risk
In hindsight, the decision by one SA daily newspaper to give over its entire front page to China’s President Xi Jinping’s address to the Chinese Communist Party congress in October might not have been quite as bizarre as it seemed on the day. The scary reality is Xi has more influence over the wealth of millions of South Africans than almost any SA politician apart from Jacob Zuma. While Zuma is steadily chipping away at the country’s wealth through one disastrous deal after another, Xi just has to pull the switch on one contrived financial structure to wipe out a significant chunk of the value of millions of SA investors. Fortunately, the chances are he won’t do so. One lead analyst says there is an infinitesimal chance he will — something like a black swan event. But the fact is he could, and there’s almost nothing South Africans could do to prevent it. It is cause for nerve-racking concern. Xi’s power relates to a subject that has dominated JSE-related discussion for the past fou...
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