Where's Jack Ma? The Alibaba founder is likely to have lost it with the wrong people.
It has become suspiciously quiet about the richest man in China, Jack Ma. The 56-year-old founder of the online mail order company Alibaba was actually considered a figurehead of the regime. However, since the end of October he has disappeared from the public, reports the German newspaper Bild .
His Twitter channel – as if shut down. Even on his own founder show, “Africa's Business Heroes”, Ma was suddenly replaced without warning. A few days earlier, he had tweeted how much he was looking forward to meeting the finalists.
Congrats to the top 20 Africa's Business Heroes finalists! Selected from 22k + applications across all 54 African countries, these entrepreneurs are from 14 countries & 11 industries, and more than 50% are women. I can't wait to meet them! https://t.co/0eUze6TUOJ @africa_heroes pic.twitter.com/5C3HmwjWRJ
– Jack Ma (@JackMa) August 19, 2020
Is the billion dollar tech manager just taking a break? Possible. It is much more realistic, however, that the Chinese regime around President Xi Jinping Ma has at least silenced.
Largest IPO abruptly called off
The background: Ma criticized the regime in autumn. “The Chinese financial system has no system,” he said at a financial forum in Shanghai. Too strict financial regulations in China would prevent technical and economic progress. “Good innovation is not afraid of regulation, but it is afraid of outdated regulations,” Ma was quoted as saying. The future should not be regulated “with yesterday's methods”.
Then President Xi intervened personally and prevented the upcoming IPO of Ma's financial company Ant. The planned stock debut of $ 34.5 billion could have exceeded Saudi Aramco's largest ever IPO of $ 29 billion.
Scary parallels
There are suspicious parallels with the case of “Ren Zhiqiang” in March 2020. The entrepreneur called Xi a “clown” because of his handling of the corona crisis. In September he was sentenced to 18 years in prison after he suddenly and allegedly “voluntarily” confessed to several corruption crimes.
Could Ma make a similar confession anytime soon? A senior Chinese official reportedly told the Wall Street Journal regarding Ma, “Xi doesn't care whether you made it on one of those rich lists or not. What interests him is what you do after you get rich.” and whether you reconcile your interests with the interests of the state. “
When it comes to freedom of expression, China is known to be the land of very limited options. The honey-loving fictional bear Winnie the Pooh is banned because students compared him to Xi Jinping because of the shape of his face. The US comic series South Park took up this detail in autumn 2019 – and has also been on the Chinese blacklist since then. Among other things, scenes that allude to homosexuality are filtered from Hollywood films.
