Where is Jack Ma? The Chinese billionaire has not been seen in at least two months, which coincides with Ma coming under increased pressure from Chinese regulators over the dealings of Alibaba and affiliate, Ant Group. In December 2020, news broke that Ma-founded Alibaba was being investigated for alleged “monopolistic conduct”—with regulators calling for Ant Group to return to its roots as a digital payment provider.
Meanwhile, the group’s planned IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai was torpedoed by China’s regulators just 36 hours before the listing was supposed to open. Then, Ma failed to make an appearance on an African reality TV show that he founded, and his picture was removed from the programme’s gallery of judges. According to Time, Alibaba has “declined to comment” when asked about Jack Ma’s whereabouts.
Did this happen because of the Bund Summit?
In October 2020, Ma gave a strongly-worded speech at the Bund Summit—which supposedly provides an “open, pragmatic and internationally influential financial high-end communication platform, which aims at facilitating idea exchange and cooperation”. The idea behind the summit is basically to promote China’s financial “opening-up”, as well as their economic development on a global scale.
In his speech (translated via HK Apple Daily), the Alibaba founder called for several reforms of the financial system in China during his address, explaining:
“Banks today are still a continuation of the pawnshop mentality. A pawnshop is about pledges and collaterals. In the old days, a pawnshop was an advanced idea. Had it not been for innovations such as pledges and collaterals, there would be no financial institutions today, and the Chinese economy would not have developed over the past 40 years to such a point now.”
He described one of the issues facing China and its entrepreneurs as a “pawnshop mentality”, particularly in cases where entrepreneurs have to pledge all of their assets to get a business loan approved. Ma said that it is “impossible” for this system to support the demands of the global financial market over the next couple of decades; instead, he scalled for a big data-driven approach as a replacement.
“Today’s financial system must be reformed. If we fail to do so, not only will we lose opportunities, but the world could also be plunged into even more chaos. It is normal for innovation to be ahead of regulations. However, when innovation is very much ahead of regulations and when the richness and depth of innovation are far beyond the imagination of regulations, the situation is abnormal, and society and the world will be in chaos.”
Fast-forward to November 2020, and Chinese authorities—possibly in response to Ma’s speech—called him in for questioning. Then, Ant Group’s IPO was cancelled, shaving off around USD 10 billion (~RM40.5 billion) off the founder’s personal wealth (Jack Ma is no longer China’s richest individual). Amid this, Chinese regulators began to investigate Alibaba for “monopolistic conduct”, while ordering Ant Group to downsize its range of services.
Then, Ma disappeared from his own reality TV show.
For now, no one has issued an official statement on Ma’s disappearance, and we can only refer to the timeline of events above to speculate on where the Chinese billionaire is, and why he has not made a public appearance in months.
“A new financial system will be the way to go. It will arise no matter whether we are happy about it or not. It will be built no matter whether we build it or not. In the future, I believe reform will come with sacrifices. It will come at a cost. Our generation must undertake such reform. Perhaps the results will only be seen by the next generation.”
– Jack Ma
If you’re interested, you can read Jack Ma’s full translated speech here, courtesy of HK Apple Daily.
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