China Decode: Why China Got Locked Out of SpaceX and America’s Biggest IPOs (ft. Ed Elson)

Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in history after SpaceX raised $86 billion in the largest IPO ever, pricing at $135 per share before climbing roughly 30% in its first week. But Chinese investors were locked out of buying the stock. That exclusion, as Ed Elson and Alice Hand explain, is not simply a U.S. restriction—it reflects a mutual decoupling in which both Washington and Beijing are tightening cross-border capital flows, with major implications for the tech war, the IPO pipeline, and the future of AI regulation.

The Mutual Separation of Capital Markets

The SpaceX IPO exclusion of Chinese and Hong Kong investors was not solely a U.S. decision. While SpaceX cited concerns about U.S. restrictions on critical technology exports, China's own securities regulator (CSRC) has been cracking down on offshore brokerages that facilitate cross-border security operations, targeting firms like Tiger Brokers and Futu Holdings. The Beijing government does not want more mainland Chinese capital flowing into U.S. tech companies. As Ed Elson explains, "the modus operandi and the trend for Beijing is to crack down on cross border flows going into US listed stocks because ultimately they see the capital conflict as being really important for the broader tech conflict." The result is a mutual separation: both sides are making it harder for Chinese money to reach American markets, an