Jack Ma, pictured in November 2019. – NEW CHINA / SIPA
It is an unusual disappearance. Jack Ma, Chinese billionaire and founder of the Alibaba site, has not been seen in public since the end of October, as reported the Financial Times . He had just delivered a speech at the end of October in Shanghai in which he seemed to accuse regulators of restraining fintech innovation. He also boasted of the stock market record that his company Ant – online payment giant – was preparing to beat, after Alibaba’s on Wall Street in 190 (24 billions of dollars).
State media, unmanned by power Chinese , did not fail to criticize this statement. Several events then followed: the Ant group saw its IPO blocked in November, which caused a fall in Alibaba (listed on Wall Street) shares. At the end of December, Chinese stock market regulators even asked Ant Group to drastically change its business model to refocus on its original online payment business. According to the New China News Agency, Ant Group, a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has been “strictly prohibited from unfair competition” and is called upon to reform its “illegal” financial activities. Alibaba was also the subject of an investigation in the same period.
A takeover of the party
Especially, on January 3, Jack Ma was absent from the show he had created, titled Africa’s Business Heroes . He was replaced by a collaborator. The official excuse? A “timing problem”. But as France reports 23, “Jack Ma’s name has also been deleted from Africa’s Business Heroes , and the promotional clip for this reality show no longer makes any reference to the founder of Alibaba. ”
This disappearance – for now temporary – clearly looks to a desire of the Chinese authorities to tighten the screws vis-à-vis those who are too critical of the regime. It would not be a first: in 2015 , Arte had devoted a report to those wealthy Chinese businessmen who suddenly disappeared from the radar. “The Chinese Communist Party wanted to create rich people to develop the country. But now, he is afraid of us, afraid of the power that money can give, so he makes us disappear ”testified at the time a Chinese billionaire exiled in the United States.