Jack Ma criticized the Bank of China’s “pawnshop” idea, which has disappeared for several months now.
After China opened an investigation into Alibaba’s alleged monopolistic practices, Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma has not appeared publicly in recent months, making outsiders curious about his whereabouts. In response, Nikkei Shimbun columnist William Pesek warned that if the world continues to pay attention to Ma’s disappearance, it could become a stumbling block for Communist Party leader Xi Jinping in pushing China into the world, seriously affecting China’s credibility in the global market.
Ma has disappeared for months after being investigated by China’s anti-monopoly authorities, leaving the world to debate “where the hell is Ma? Pisek pointed out that Ma’s whereabouts are not only of global concern, but even Chinese entrepreneurs are quite concerned, because since 2017, Zhou Chengjian, founder of the clothing company “Metersbonwe”, Ren Zhiqiang, a Beijing real estate tycoon, and Xiao Jianhua of the corporate group “Tomorrow System” have been targeted by Chinese Communist Party officials one after another, and “no entrepreneur is a greater threat to state capitalism than Ma.
In response to the Chinese government’s announcement of an anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba, Pisek believes that few believe that the Chinese government’s move is intended to prevent financial risks, with many speculating that the official approach is related to Jack Ma’s criticism of the “pawnshop mentality” of China’s banking sector. Pisek’s analysis suggests that the gradual reduction in the influence of domestic capitalists, which will also cause China’s influence as a capitalist powerhouse to quickly disappear, is the biggest problem for the Communist Party.
Jack Ma publicly attacked China’s banking industry at the end of October last year for still maintaining a “pawnshop mentality,” which puts some companies under great pressure to collateralize their assets for financing, and called on China’s banking industry to replace the pawnshop mentality with a credit system. But after that, he has not appeared in public again, and his Ant Group, which was to be listed last year, has shelved its stock offering, and China’s State Administration of Market Supervision has opened an investigation into suspected monopolistic practices.
Many people have recently come forward to comment on Ma’s whereabouts. Kyle Bass, the founder of Hayman Capital, a U.S. hedge fund mogul, has pointed out that Ma is likely to be sentenced to prison within 18 months, while Leland Miller, a China Brown Book organization that specializes in tracking the Chinese market, has said that Ma is likely to be in jail because he is not loyal to the Communist Party, but he may also be keeping a low profile.
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