Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio has become the latest financial industry heavyweight to be in the spotlight over comments about China, this time with regards to the country’s human rights record.
Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio has landed himself in hot water after he made comments last week about China with regards to growing concerns about high profile figures disappearing from public view such as billionaire Jack Ma or, more recently, tennis star Peng Shuai.
«You want to get into the policy of disappearing people, I’ll give a little bit of a perspective [on] that,» Dalio said in a «CNBC» interview.
«What [China has] is an autocratic system. One of the leaders described it – he said: the United States is a country of individuals and individualism. And that’s what it’s about. He said in China, it’s an extension of the family. If you look at the word country in China, it consists of two characters: state, family. And that has to do with [Confucianism].»
«Strict Parent»
In the interview, Dalio described China’s approach to dealing with dissidents as similar to that of a «strict parent» – a comment that drew the ire of viewers who saw the hedge fund investor as indifferent to human rights.
«As a top-down country, what [China’s] doing — it's kind of like a strict parent. They behave like a strict parent and they go through that,» he said.
«That is their approach. We have our approach.»
Damage Control
By the weekend, Dalio was found making clarifications on his stance on social media, admitting that he had «sloppily answered a question about China» from CNBC journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin.
«I assure you that I didn’t mean to convey that human rights aren’t important because I certainly believe they are and I didn’t mean to convey that the U.S. and China deal with these issues similarly because they certainly don’t. I am an American who has lived my whole life in the U.S., experiencing the American Dream, and I believe in our system,» Dalio said on his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.
«At the same time, I have spent more than half my life in contact with China which has helped me understand their system as well. In trying to answer [Sorkin’s] questions […] my overriding objective is to help understanding. Understanding and agreeing are two different things, and that’s what was lost in the interview. I'm sorry my answer lacked that nuance and caused confusion.»
China: PR Risk
Dalio joins J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon as the latest financial executive to experience backlash from public comments about China.
While Dalio was under fire for his initial perceived appeasement to China, Dimon faced pressure for the opposite reason of upsetting Chinese authorities after joking that the American bank would outlive the nation’s Communist Party which celebrated its 100th anniversary this year.
