Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, who has been suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party, has recently emerged after disappearing for three months. Observers believe that under the Chinese Communist Party system, Ma may have submitted and helped the Chinese Communist Party to control consumers at Home and abroad through digital hegemony.
On the morning of January 20, Ma, who had disappeared for more than three months, appeared at the “rural Teacher Award” ceremony organized by the “Ma Yun Charity Foundation”.
The departure of Yin Ming, vice president and general manager of the group’s insurance affairs department, sparked a lot of public debate. Some people said that Yin Ming saw that Ant was in a bad situation and jumped ship urgently; others said that there might be big changes in Ant Group afterwards.
On January 22, Voice of America reported that Ma was immediately under suspicion of being purged by the Chinese Communist Party after regulators halted Ant Group’s IPO in early November and launched an anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba Group in December.
After more than two months of turmoil, Chen Yulu, deputy governor of the central bank of the Communist Party of China, announced on the 15th that, under the guidance of the financial authorities, Ant Group has set up a working group to rectify the situation and is working on a timetable for rectification, while maintaining the continuity of business and normal operation of the company.
In this regard, the market interpreted that the Chinese Communist Party has released a signal to let Ma and his business go.
Some observers believe that what the CCP wants most from Jack Ma is “digital hegemony,” which is a triple stream under the party-state system: Gold stream, information stream and content stream. Ma has no way to resist, so he can only meekly cooperate and help the CCP to engage in digital authoritarianism.
A data security expert, who wished to remain anonymous, explained to VOA that the content stream allows the CCP to control people’s minds. As for the control of information, it allows the CCP to centralize its power and achieve complete totalitarian control over the people.
The expert said that if, with Ma’s cooperation, the CCP controls the money flow of nearly 900 million Chinese people, it can achieve its goals of comprehensive tax collection, combating money laundering and Party corruption, and solving the serious problem of tax evasion.
According to the CCP’s national intelligence law, the expert deduced that Ma may have already turned over data to the central government, but the data he provided may not be comprehensive, may be hidden, or may be impossible to distinguish from the truth, thus triggering the CCP’s intention to gain access to Ali’s data base through Ma’s ownership.
While digital hegemony would help the CCP fight financial crime, he said, it would be a “very scary regime” because it would also be an easier tool for the CCP to suppress dissidents and violate human rights. He cited the example of the CCP’s efforts to trace the whereabouts of believers and the flow of their donations by tracing the flow of money from online scripture purchases.
He said that in addition to the money flow, the content and information flow provided by the platform could allow the CCP to further censor speech and control people’s minds, or to further expand its power, leading China to a totalitarian system of total surveillance of the people.
The expert also revealed that nearly 90 percent of the world’s card readers are made in China, and it is not impossible for those involved to collect personal information, including passport numbers, of overseas people through the “back door” left by these hardware devices, as long as the Chinese Communist Party gives the order.
He said that as China’s Internet platforms and software services expand abroad, such as Ali’s cloud services, which already has one of the top market shares in the world, the Communist Party is likely to further expand its digital hegemony overseas through China’s major technology companies.
The expert also believes that as technology advances, a country with digital hegemony will likely dominate global economic development and the flow of gold, information and content in the future. This is also the long-term national goal of the Chinese Communist Party.
Ding Shu-fan, professor emeritus at the Institute of East Asian Studies at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, also told VOA that if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were to take control of big data under the authoritarian system, it would further strengthen the CCP’s emphasis on digital totalitarianism in the political system.
Hong Kong economist Eric Lo said it would not be easy for Beijing to extend its digital hegemony beyond China’s borders. Hong Kong is the first society to be affected. But many Hong Kong people have already chosen to emigrate or open offshore accounts to avoid such Communist control of their wealth.
Recent Comments