Where in the world is Jack Ma? Alibaba tycoon not seen since October after slamming Chinese government
- Reference: 1609822993
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/05/jack_ma_missing/
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Speculation soared after Ma did not appear as a judge on the November 14 finale of his own reality TV show Africa’s Business Heroes as expected, despite being quoted on October 12 [1]saying : "I look forward to meeting these 10 extraordinary businesswomen and businessmen at the finale." He also hasn't made any comment on Weibo since mid-October.
Things all went downhill for Ma after he gave a speech at the Bund Summit in Shanghai at the end of October. The tech billionaire urged China to loosen up and reform its hard-line financial regulatory system because it was stifling innovation of new-fangled digital payments systems like Ant Group’s popular Alipay service.
Big Panda China squishes Ant Group: Beijing suspends world's largest-ever IPO in fintech regulatory brouhaha [2]READ MORE
Weeks later in November, the Chinese government [3]axed Ant Group’s IPO , which at an eye-popping $35bn would have been the world’s largest-ever stock-market debut. The biz, which was backed by Ma, said in a statement that the billionaire was pulled into a meeting with officials, and told: “Due to the material matters reported, your company may no longer meet the conditions for offering and listing, or the requirements for information disclosure.”
A month later, Alibaba was hit with an antitrust probe after China's market watchdogs said they wanted to determine whether or not the online bazaar was abusing its e-commerce monopoly to prevent online stores from touting their wares on other platforms.
All the while, Ma has stayed oddly silent. The high-profile tech tycoon and philanthropist has not uttered a peep or shown his face at a public event throughout the whole kerfuffle.
Some believe Ma is simply lying low to avoid inflaming the Chinese government any further while others reckon he may even be in jail as punishment for not toeing the party line. It wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing has happened: property mogul Ren Zhiqiang dropped off the radar in March after criticizing China's President Xi Jinping, and then [4]was sentenced to 18 years behind bars in September after confessing to corruption charges.
Spokespeople for Alibaba and Ant Group were not immediately available for comment. Alibaba stock price has dropped from $317 in October to just $228 at close of trading. ®
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[1] https://www.alizila.com/africas-business-heroes-finalists-2020/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/04/china_ant_ipo/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/04/china_ant_ipo/
[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54245327
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: And we still do business with China ?
"along that we lose thousands of skilled, well paid jobs replacing them with minimum wage warehouse grunts"
The harsh reality is that if skilled, well paid jobs can be replaced by minimum wage grunts and/or AI, then sooner or later they will be; if not now by Amazon, then later by somebody else.
As with every industrial revolution, meatsacks need to be able to differentiate themselves in value in order to be retained and compensated. 'Twas ever thus.
Re: And we still do business with China ?
we still do business with China?
You need to add
Saudi Arabia (unless oil and weapon sales are more important, and murdering critics is fair game), Israel (unless it is "just" Arab civilian "collateral", not civilian casualties).
Ooh and the United States too. (slavery, international bullying, citizen and ally spying, political interference, enviromental destruction, climate change, low animal welfare and human welfare standards, far right supporting government that seems to organising a coup)
China frankly is not the worst in the list. For now. Today US is the bully and the EU is a countering force. An argument is if China or US will be the worse bully in the future. Are two bullies better than one?
>>we lose thousands of skilled, well paid jobs replacing them with minimum wage warehouse grunts
Surely for that substitution to be tenable and practical - either they are not using the skills, or people do not value those skills.
Amazon is about scale and efficiency (including tax efficiency). Ideally a competitor should have come in to counter them, but for whatever reason that does not happen.
I'd certainly prefer more efficient and large scale service providers, but that does not mean there should be none by your logic.
All brick and mortar stores today are becoming about the immediacy of delivery of goods/services and/or the interaction with those goods/services (VR is eating into this in time).
If there isn't wide demand for both or either of the above, Amazon will gobble that business in time. What we need is more companies to chase scale and efficiency, why isn't that happening?
Re: And we still do business with China ?
> China frankly is not the worst in the list.
China is guilty of every item you listed other nations guilty of combined. How does that not make them the worst in the list?
> Amazon is about scale and efficiency (including tax efficiency). Ideally a competitor should have come in to counter them, but for whatever reason that does not happen.
> What we need is more companies to chase scale and efficiency, why isn't that happening?
Because, like any market in or approaching a monopoly state, as soon as someone threatens one of Amazon's businesses, that smaller competition is either bought up or shut out (and thereby shut down) by Amazon. Their only effective competition can be from other large corporations which also can control their entire supply chains, or subsidise that competition using revenues from a monopoly in another market.
If you truly want competition and all the benefits that brings, you need to push for less efficiency, because the most efficient system has a single centrally-managed supply chain from source to product.
At least...
Rich people are treated in China as the poor ones when they dare to speak against Big Brother. It's an equality of treatment unknown in the western world.
Ruthlessness applies to everyone.
Re: At least...
@Potemkine!
Power is privatised in the west, it is not in the hands of politicians. In China power is with the party.
It is the western polician that suffers if they speak against the private moguls, who bankroll their elections and frame their media posture.
So whomever has *power* applies ruthlessness to everyone, even in the west.
There are a lot of financial questions which need answers.
The Register's earlier article, as well as various other reports have raised real concerns about Ma's Ant Financial subsidiary, which is acting more like an unregulated bank than as a tech company.
What Ma is criticising the government about is the government stepping in and telling him that if he wants to operate a bank then he needs to apply for a banking license and operate under bank regulations, including meeting capital adequacy requirements.
There is genuine concern that if the authorities in China don't do something serious about the fin-tech industry in China, the end result may be a banking system implosion that makes the 2008 financial crisis look like a minor blip. I'm really not looking forward to "global financial crisis 2.0" in 2021 after what we've gone through in 2020.
Most or all of the big tech companies in China are also under investigation by the competition authorities for abuse of their position with respect to carving up the market between them by forcing small merchants to sign exclusive contracts.
I don't know where Jack Ma is at the moment, but from what I've read he has a lot of questions to answer about Ant's finances.
Looks like Ma thought his money made him powerful, and lost
I guess he was influenced by western moguls and thought he could get away with doing whatever he wanted.
He forgot that he lives in a totalitarian state under a rather inhuman philosophy (Ouighurs, anyone ?).
So he mouthed off and got slapped down. Methinks he should have known better.
On the other hand, maybe he was genuinely trying to use his position to improve his country and its government. In which case he sacrificed himself for the greater good, but to little effect.
So, either his ego made him think he was above the fray, or his lack of vision made him make a dreadful mistake.
In any case, the message is clear : you do not criticize the Chinese Government when you live in China.
Re: Looks like Ma thought his money made him powerful, and lost
Nor criticise the Kremlin, when you live in UK city with famous cathedral tourist spot.
Hey, I can be an anonymous coward and have an icon? Wow! Oh, not if I want to submit the post.
Chinese Democracy is just a song
You think you got it all locked up inside
And if you beat them enough they'll die
It's like a walk in a park from the cell
Now you're keeping your own kind in hell
When your Great Wall rocks blame yourself
When their arms reach out for your help
And you're out of time
And we still do business with China ?
The richer that China gets the more confident that it will be and believe that it can get away with this sort of thing. This case is internal to China, but it is exerting its might beyond its borders.
We are so incredibly short sighted. We think that we are saving pennies but are unaware that we selling our futures. Eg [1]Amazon is entering pharmacy , it will kill much of retail pharmacy in the UK, along that we lose thousands of skilled, well paid jobs replacing them with minimum wage warehouse grunts; Amazon will put our prescriptions into its marketing database and use this to try to sell us more stuff and destroy more other businesses.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55228999