There are new signs that Mr. Ma’s case may be more serious than the corporate clean-up seen, perhaps with a political background at the top of the Communist Party. According to the Financial Times in London, the Communist Party issued guidelines late last year to the media on Jack Ma, ordering them to abide by the official line and not to comment without permission or quote from foreign media.
The Financial Times reported on Friday that it was unusual for Beijing to deal so heavily with Ma’s case and that it had become a politically sensitive one.
Ma has not been seen since last October, when he criticized Chinese regulators at a financial summit on the Bund in Shanghai. The IPO of Ant Financial, the company he founded, was blocked by regulators at the last minute. Ant Group’s key figures were collectively interviewed by regulators, and an anti-monopoly investigation and crackdown on Ma’s business began quickly.
At the Shanghai conference, Mr Ma complained that China’s banking regulators lacked a vision of The Times, worrying that they were “managing airports the way they manage train stations”.
Mr Ma also pushed back against assessments by senior officials such as Mr Wang that China was a systemic risk. He believes that China’s financial and banking systems are still under development and have not yet formed a system. Where is the systemic risk?
Mr. Ma’s comments are believed to have angered the upper echelons of the Communist Party, particularly Xi Jinping, the party’s general secretary. Many sources say that Xi personally led the reorganization of Ma’s businesses and the treatment of Ma himself.
Said the financial times, at the end of December, the propaganda department of the Chinese government instructions to the media, requires that all media reported on ma events to strictly abide by the official caliber and aimed at the problem of jack ma of alibaba on the tone of an antitrust investigation, and don’t change without permission or excessive analysis.
‘If any company makes remarks that are contrary to the official line, they are not allowed to publish, retweet, or quote foreign media,’ the report said, according to a person who saw the media guidance.
The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist party, criticised China’s tech industry for pursuing a “higher degree of market concentration”, saying that stronger market regulation was important for the healthy development of the economy.
Xiao Qiang, a research fellow at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, called the reporting guidelines “unusually harsh.”
“The wording is very similar to the reporting guidelines for trials of ‘very important political events’ such as Bo Xilai,” Mr Xiao said. Bo Xilai is a former member of the Communist Party’s Politburo and former Communist Party chief of Chongqing. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption.
“Jack Ma’s company’s investments are directly linked to the most powerful political family in China,” Xiao said. “There may be a strong political background to Ma’s incident, not just because his speech may have touched a nerve with Xi or other party executives.”
Recent Comments