They nearly never over or underreact, it's a calculated reaction based on what they're preparing to do.The whole thing is an overreaction especially by the Chinese government. As you said yourself, not everything is under the purview of the Chinese government. If a private company wants to sell, then why shouldn’t it? (if assets are not inside China) A company is trying to reduce its exposure to risk. Hutchinson already lost a contract in Israel in 2020 thanks to US shenanigans.
In your later scenario, if Blackrock blocked Chinese ships, no country would allow this. Conversely if Hutchinson blocked American ships, do you think this would work out well?
Killing his whole family? wtf is this? Just ridiculous. Did they kill Jack Ma’s family when he made the comments with regards to Ant IPO? He probably created a worse situation than this at least in terms of media exposure. Just subject his company to more regulation, this is not bandit country India…
Let me offer a more mundane example. SharkNinja was separated from the Chinese parent company and IPO’ed basically to limit the risk exposure. Now the CEO says they will try to source from outside China. Does the chairman (Wang Xuning) need to be murdered? Would you merely cut his ear off if the goods are assembled in VN and Thailand of Chinese parts?
But yes obviously no one will die. And you correctly surmise it is a fairly routine investment switch. The real question is why the government choose to stir up the regulators in the last minute like that, they clearly smelled blood for whatever reason.
I think I see what's up, because Blackrock is Democrat aligned, it's not in the in-group of Trump oligarchs (that's also why Trump hasn't taken to the streets celebrating any "win" whereas he usually grasps at the tiniest hint of something that looks good). Which means they don't have protections anymore.