The collapse of Shanghai stocks in the summer of 2015 was the first genuine crisis of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s presidency.

Wall Street equities began to suffer from the market’s 30 percent drop in just a few weeks. Xi’s squad went into full-on emergency mode as a result of this. It pulled out all the stops, lowering interest rates, easing leverage limits, reducing reserve requirements, halting initial public offerings, shutting down trading in thousands of publicly traded companies, allowing investors to use their homes as collateral to buy shares, and urging ordinary Chinese to invest in the market out of patriotism.

It also worked. The market skyrocketed in the years that followed. As Beijing opened more channels for international investors to bet on China Inc., Shanghai shares were included in the MSCI index in 2018.

Why is Beijing pushing the market back to the brink, given the instability of 2015 and China’s success in overcoming it?

This is an accurate portrayal of recent events in China. Beijing’s unexpected role as market wrecker began in November when the country’s regulators cancelled what would have been the largest initial public offering in history.

Pulling the rug out from under the $37 billion IPO Jack Ma’s Ant Group had planned left investors surprised and confused. China’s officials said at the time that they had put Ant on hold out of prudence. To lower systemic risk to the financial system, they needed to get the regulation mix just right.

That’s all right. However, Ma’s IPO was cancelled 10 days after he delivered a speech in which he chastised Beijing. Ma also complained that China’s regulators don’t understand the internet and that state-owned banks have a “pawnshop” mindset.

In the weeks and months that followed, Xi’s administration tightened its grip on China’s Big Tech. The idea that China’s officials don’t want the country to be ruled by internet monopolies the way the United States is, for better or worse, is written between the lines in strong type.

However, Bejing’s approach has a toss-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater feel to it. Consider the recent Didi Global debacle.

Didi, China’s counterpart to Uber, raised $4.4 billion in a New York IPO on June 30, giving it a market value of $68 billion. Regulators swooped in a few days later to remind investors who were in charge. They forced app shops to delete Didi and intensified a cybersecurity investigation into Didi’s data usage.

China’s government went after China’s $120 billion private tutoring business, insisting that it become non-profit, just as investors were putting that state interference to the test. The unexpected move wiped billions of dollars from the value of a slew of publicly traded Chinese companies.

Tencent was compelled to abandon its exclusive music label rights, causing technology stocks to fall along with the education industry. Regulators claimed they only recently learned the computer giant may be breaking antitrust laws, as it says.

Since February, the cumulative effect of recent market changes has resulted in more than $1 trillion in losses in only IT and education companies. The Hang Seng Tech Index in Hong Kong is also reeling as a result of this.

Beijing’s haphazard approach to slamming some of the economy’s most thriving sectors risks alienating foreign investors, whom the Chinese government claims to be pursuing. As investors lose faith in Xiconomics, the result might be an exodus of foreign capital. Who would put their money on a huge Chinese IPO in the coming months?

It’s difficult not to believe that Xi has determined that capitalism isn’t for China. The country’s leaders are effectively nationalizing—or moving in that direction—certain thriving industries and mandating what can be done with revenues. When Xi’s staff is telling Alibaba Group and Tencent how to reinvest their riches, Adam Smith has left the building. Alternatively, forcing Meituan, the world’s largest meal delivery company, to raise pay.

Taxes and other incentives would be used in a capitalist society to encourage businesses to improve their behaviour. In Xi’s China, it appears that removing billionaires who have accumulated too much power and influence is more of an official caprice than a strategy to enhance the country’s corporate game.

As his net widens to include the internet, real estate, food delivery, and education, investors are more concerned about whatever industry will be hit next, rather than focused on China’s tremendous growth. Is healthcare the next target for Beijing?

The claimed explanation for what’s going on keeps changing. It was all about reducing risk at first. Then there was the issue of China avoiding a future in which internet behemoths wield economic power in the same manner that Facebook and Google do in the United States. The new spin is that China’s Big Tech takeover is motivated by the country’s massive wealth disparity.

That’s all right. However, the more billionaire entrepreneurs who are innovating and creating new good-paying employment are removed from China, the more difficult it will be for a state-led economy to close the rich-poor divide on its own. If Xi does have a plan here, he should let foreign investors know about it.