Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, has not been seen in public since his comments last October attacking China’s financial regulatory system. Leland Miller, executive director of the China Beige Book, a leading U.S. market research firm, said Ma is feared to have been taken down by the Chinese Communist Party and is being held in a dark room.
Jack Ma criticized China’s financial regulatory system in a speech at the Bund Financial Summit in Shanghai in late October 2020. After that, Alibaba’s Ant Group’s estimated $37 billion (NT$130 billion) initial public offering (IPO) was halted, and Chinese Communist Party officials launched an anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba Group. Rumors of Jack Ma’s “disappearance” are rife.
In an interview with Barron’s, Miller said that Ma and his company are in a lot of trouble, and that it is possible that Ma is “wisely keeping a low profile” but also that he is being held by the Chinese Communist Party for “not paying homage to the Party.
Miller noted that Alibaba Group’s financial business has long been able to lend money more freely than the heavily regulated Chinese banking sector, with all the money pouring out of the state system, angering the Chinese banking industry, which believes Ma stole their deposits and made a fortune off of them, leaving the Chinese banking industry, which has seen its deposits dwindle, to complain about the Communist Party authorities.
Ma’s bizarre case, the report said, illustrates the unique risks of investing in China, where Communist authorities can quickly change the rules without prior warning. And with Alibaba’s sudden restructuring and its Ant Group under the control of Communist authorities, Ma could reappear in weeks or months.
Separately, the Financial Times also reported that Chinese Communist authorities issued guidelines to the media late last year regarding Ma’s coverage, requiring that they follow a strict official caliber and not comment on or quote foreign media without permission. Some scholars have pointed out that the language of this guideline is harsh and unusual, and that the incident may have a political background.
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