Alibaba, the symbol of China’s digital economic success, has been targeted by the Chinese Communist regime for “alleged monopolistic practices”. China’s State Administration of Market Supervision announced today, December 24, an investigation into Alibaba Group, founded by Jack Ma, causing the online trading champion’s stock price to plunge.
China’s State Administration of Market Supervision announced today, December 24, that it had launched an investigation into Alibaba Group, which was founded by Jack Ma. As a result, shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba fell more than 8 percent at noon today on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The Chinese authorities provided few details about what Alibaba is accused of, other than an unspecified “exclusivity agreement”.
The e-commerce giant, which is considered too big to fail, “promised to actively cooperate with the regulator’s investigation.” AFP reported Dec. 24 that e-commerce giant Jack Ma, 56, is China’s most famous businessman and a symbol of “self-reliant entrepreneurship” in the eyes of his compatriots. Alibaba, which he founded in 1999, is the largest group in Asia after rival Tencent. With today’s announcement of an anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba in Beijing, authorities seem determined to chop off his wings.
Ma, a former English teacher who officially retired from Alibaba last year, has been frustrated since the fall, when he hasn’t made a public appearance since early November and the initial public offering (IPO) of Ant Group, the global online payments leader in which he is the biggest shareholder, was canceled in extreme fashion.
Xi’s regime appears determined to combat the monopolistic tendencies of private groups like Alibaba, whose online sales platform is used by hundreds of millions of Chinese.
AFP quoted Dong Ximiao, an analyst at the Zhongguancun Institute of Internet Finance, as saying for Bloomberg that it is clear that the authorities are escalating their efforts to block the new “too big to fail” entity that is Ma’s empire.
The fiasco will likely cost Ma the title of China’s richest man, even though his capital is still valued at $58 billion.
A few days before Ant Group’s public offering, Ma had publicly criticized the actions of his country’s financial regulator at a seminar in Shanghai, and Ma’s criticism is thought to have offended the Communist regime. Ma’s comments got him summoned by authorities, and he has not appeared in public since then. Ant Group’s public offering, which was scheduled for early November, was called off. The offering had been expected to set a world record with net proceeds of $34.4 billion.
Recent Comments