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The CCP doesn't allow non-Chinese citizens to own part of Chinese businesses in many sectors (tech is a big one). In order to circumvent those laws, people have set up VIEs - essentially shell companies in the Caymans and elsewhere - which listed on US stock exchanges, and whose only "assets" are some contracts which give those shell companies rights to share in the profits of the Chinese company.

So when you buy Alibaba "stock" as a US investor, all you're really getting is shares of a Cayman Islands holding company which doesn't really own any part of the real Alibaba company in China.

The problem is that those contracts are unenforceable under Chinese law, so if the CCP were to declare them null and void - I don't know, perhaps as a response to US regulators demanding that they comply with GAAP for instance - then good luck trying to collect anything as an investor.

The CCP have looked the other way on the VIE structure for so long because it provided a way to attract Western capital without giving up much of anything in return - no real ownership of the Chinese company, no voting rights, no GAAP compliance. But now that looks to be changing, and they don't seem so accommodating anymore.