Alibaba founder Jack Ma speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 23, 2019.
New indications suggest that the Jack Ma incident may be a more serious corporate consolidation issue than seen in the outside world, perhaps with a high-level Chinese Communist Party political backdrop. The Financial Times of London revealed that the Chinese Communist Party issued guidelines to the media late last year on reporting on Jack Ma, ordering them to abide by the official line and not to comment or quote foreign media reports without permission.
The Financial Times reported Friday (Jan. 8) that Beijing’s heavy-handed handling of Ma’s case was unusual and a politically sensitive matter.
Ma has been missing since he spoke at the Bund Financial Summit in Shanghai last October, criticizing Chinese regulators. The planned IPO of Ant Financial Services, which he founded, was called off by regulators at the last minute. Core Ant Group figures were interviewed en masse by regulators, and an anti-monopoly investigation and overhaul of Ma’s business quickly began.
At that meeting in Shanghai, Jack Ma complained that Chinese bank regulators lacked vision and were concerned that they were using “the same approach to managing airports as they do to train stations”.
Ma also contradicted the assessment of senior officials, including Wang Qishan, that there was systemic risk in China. He argued that China’s financial and banking systems are still developing and have not yet formed a system, so where is the systemic risk?
Ma’s words are believed to have angered the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party, particularly Xi Jinping, the Communist Party’s general secretary. A number of sources say that Xi personally led the overhaul of Ma’s business and the handling of Ma himself.
The Financial Times said that at the end of December last year, the Chinese government’s propaganda department issued instructions to the media that all media outlets should strictly adhere to the official tone in their coverage of the Jack Ma affair, framing the Jack Ma issue in the context of an anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba, rather than making unauthorized changes or over-analyzing the situation.
“If any company makes statements that contradict the official caliber, they must not be published, retweeted or quoted in foreign media,” the report said, according to a person who saw the media guidance.
The People’s Daily, an organ of the Communist Party of China, criticized China’s technology industry for pursuing “greater market concentration,” noting that stronger market regulation is important to the economy’s healthy development.
Xiao Qiang, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information Studies, described the CCP’s reporting guidelines as “harshly worded and unusual.
“The wording (of the guide) is very similar to the guidelines for reporting on ‘very important political events’ such as the Bo Xilai trial,” Xiao said. Bo Xilai is a former member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and former secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for “corruption.
Ma’s investments are directly linked to China’s most powerful political families,” Xiao Qiang said. This incident may have a strong political background, and not just because his speech may have struck a nerve with Xi Jinping or other party executives.”
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