Edited by tumpanglalu74 at 2-1-2021 09:16 PM
Chinese tech billionaire Jack Ma VANISHES from his own reality show as Beijing launches probe into his 'monopoly'
- Chinese tech billionaire Jack Ma has vanished from his own reality TV show
- It comes as Alibaba Group is at the centre of an anti-monopoly investigation
- Market regulator said it was looking into Alibaba's policy of 'choose one of two'
Published: 14:04 GMT, 1 January 2021 | Updated: 01:04 GMT, 2 January 2021
Mystery surrounds the whereabouts of China’s richest man after he criticised the regime.
Jack Ma has vanished from his own TV talent show and there has been no sign of him since late October.
The 56-year-old is said to have made around ￡35billion from creating Alibaba, the Asian version of Amazon, and was a poster boy for the communist regime.
But China’s rulers seemed to turn against him after he criticised regulators and state-owned banks at a financial technology conference in October.
His profile has gone from the judging webpage of Africa’s Business Heroes – a Dragons’ Den-style TV programme for budding entrepreneurs. The final took place without him and he is also absent from promotional videos.
Weeks before the final in November, Mr Ma had tweeted that he ‘couldn’t wait’ to meet the contestants. There has been no activity since then on the father-of-three’s Twitter account, one that had regularly seen several tweets a day.
Despite being one of China’s most successful businessmen, Mr Ma has increasingly clashed with the regime over his preferences for more of an open and market-driven economy. There is no suggestion so far that he has come to physical harm.
Until recently he had been a leading light of China’s unique approach to generating wealth by unleashing market forces within a tightly-controlled communist framework.
The English teacher turned business magnate commanded near rock star status and even played an unconquerable kung fu master in a star-studded 2017 film.
And even while tensions between the US and China were deepening, Mr Ma was able to extend an olive branch by donating 2,000 ventilators to New York with his right-hand man Joe Tsai, prompting a thank you from Donald Trump.
But the stock market launch of Mr Ma’s payments firm Ant was scuppered by regulators in what many saw as a retaliatory move for his explosive speech in Shanghai in October.
Since then, regulators have met with executives from Ant and ordered it to improve its corporate governance, its compliance with regulation and its habit of using its size to push competitors out of the market.
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Post time 2-1-2021 02:51 PM
变色卡
Post time 2-1-2021 09:30 PM
