This Year Sees Over 290 New Cases, Shanghai Stock Market Mergers and Acquisitions Highlight 'Toward Excellence and Innovation' Trend
As the year-end approaches and we tally up the data on mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations, a report stands out with the phrase: "Demonstrating the keen insight of enterprises in seizing the cycle." Every time I see such words, a familiar wave of bitter acidity rises in my stomach—is this genuine business judgment, or yet another round of meticulously polished performance promotion, pursuing "scale" for the sake of scale?
Analysis
Over 290 deals, 130 billion in value. The numbers are dazzling, but numbers never lie, nor do they ever tell the truth. What we truly need to ask is: among these 290-plus deals, how many were driven by industry downturns—acts of "huddling together for warmth" to avoid being eliminated? And how many genuinely targeted bottleneck technologies, aiming to integrate upstream and downstream segments to form a closed loop for "strategic positioning"? When "resource-based enterprises continuously 'reinforce' their control over the industrial chain" is presented as a positive example, the underlying message I hear is that more independent market players are losing bargaining power, being absorbed into the discourse systems of a few gigantic conglomerates. This is not industrial upgrading; this is a narrowing of ecological niches.
The phrase "large-scale and continuous consolidation in the securities industry" is especially worth pondering. Financial licenses themselves do not create technological value. The merger of securities firms, beyond producing a few larger, more homogeneous financial giants and crafting more impressive revenue figures in financial reports, what does it truly mean for the real economy and for those hungry, eager tech startups? Does it broaden financing channels, or make internal approval processes more complex? Does it make risk pricing more accurate, or increase internal compliance costs, making businesses more hesitant to pursue innovative ventures? I suspect that, in many cases, the primary purpose of such consolidation is "not falling behind," "securing one's position"—an instinctive organizational anxiety rather than a well-considered strategic vision.
We are too obsessed with "bigness." Mergers and acquisitions, as tools, are not inherently sinful; they are commonplace even in mature markets. However, when we promote "deal counts" and "transaction values" as the primary, or even sole, measure of success, we have already strayed off course. This is like evaluating a chef's skill solely by how many pounds of ingredients they use in a meal or how many expensive condiments they buy, while completely disregarding whether the dishes served are novel, delicious, or truly meet the diners' needs.
The "keen insight" of the market often has its cruel counterpart. This wave of large-scale mergers is accompanied by a further squeeze on the survival space of small and medium-sized innovators. When giants use mergers and acquisitions to "sketch out tools for transformation and upgrading," they may simultaneously be "sketching out" technological path dependence and the "compradorization" of innovation. Conducting their own R&D is so exhausting, slow, and uncertain; why not spot promising up-and-comers in the market and simply buy them out? For shareholders, this may be a short-term positive, but what about the long-term ecosystem of technological iteration? When all promising destinations point toward "being acquired," how much soil remains for original, from-zero-to-one, possibly failure-laden but profoundly significant ventures to survive?
Market participants' words are always smooth as jade, "supporting the transformation and upgrading of the real economy." But the real economy is a vast, complex entity composed of countless specific individuals, machines, orders, and profits. A few capital operations worth hundreds of billions are like throwing a giant stone into a lake—the ripple effects are deep and unpredictable. It may consolidate production capacity, but it may also eliminate redundant positions; it may concentrate R&D resources, but it may also stifle the vitality brought by internal competition.
So, the next time you see another "report card of mergers and acquisitions," I suggest we all be a bit more skeptical. Don't just look at the broad, sweeping praise; dig into the details of specific cases: after integration, did the company's R&D expenditure ratio increase or decrease? What is the attrition rate of core technical staff? How has the market reacted to new products? More importantly, for the "target company" that was acquired, is that initial spirit of striving, that proud sense of being "different," still there? Has it become a quiet screw in a vast machine, or has it truly gained a broader arena to run in?
Numbers are cold, narratives are warm. What we need is not another report constructed with grand numbers and polished rhetoric, but the courage to use cold data to question the truth behind those warm narratives. Otherwise, what is called "seizing the cycle" may ultimately amount to seizing just another cycle of capital's self-perpetuation. As for ordinary people and innovation itself, they are often merely sand grains swept along by the tide in this cycle.
Disclaimer: The above content is generated by AI and is for reference only.