Chinese technical billionaire Jack Ma VANISHES from his own reality show when Beijing investigates his ‘monopoly’
- Chinese tech billionaire Jack Ma has disappeared from his own TV show
- This is because Alibaba Group is at the center of a monopolistic investigation
- The market regulator said it was examining Alibaba’s policy of ‘choosing one of two’
Mystery is the place where China’s richest man found himself after criticizing the regime.
Jack Ma has disappeared from his own TV talent show and there has been no sign of him since the end of October.
The 56-year-old allegedly earned about £ 35 billion from creating Alibaba, the Asian version of Amazon, and was a poster boy for the communist regime.
Chinese technology billionaire Jack Ma disappeared from his own TV show when Beijing launched an investigation into his alleged monopoly. Mom above in a file image
But China’s rulers appear to be turning against him after criticizing regulators and state banks at a conference on financial technology in October.
His profile comes from the judging website of Africa’s Business Heroes – a Dragons’ Den-style TV show for budding entrepreneurs. The final took place without him and he is also not in promotional videos.
Weeks before the final in November, Mr. Mom tweeted that he ‘couldn’t wait’ to meet the participants. There has since been no activity on the father-in-law of the father of three, one who regularly saw a few tweets a day.
Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, pictured above, is China’s richest entrepreneur and one of the country’s most famous figures.
Despite being one of China’s most successful businessmen, Mr. Mom increasingly clashed with the regime over its preferences for more of an open and market-driven economy. There is so far no suggestion that he was harmed.
Until recently, he was a leading light of China’s unique approach to wealth generation by unleashing market forces within a strictly controlled communist framework.
The English teacher commanded the business magnate as a rock star status and even played an invincible kung fu master in a 2017 star-studded film.
And even though tensions between the US and China were worsening, Mr. Mom expands an olive branch by donating 2,000 fans with his right hand Joe Tsai to New York, which Donald Trump asked for.
But the stock market launch of Mr. Mom’s payment company Ant was provoked by regulators in what many saw as retaliation for his explosive speech in Shanghai in October.
Since then, regulators have met with Ant executives and ordered him to improve his corporate governance, his compliance with regulations and his habit of using their size to push competitors out of the market.
In the process, Mr. Mom, who is married to Cathy Zhang (55), disappears completely from the public eye – a sudden change all the more remarkable given his previously large public profile.
Authorities have also announced an anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba.
Beijing has a history of ruthless action against internal critics and in March a real estate magnate disappeared after calling President Xi Jinping a ‘clown’ for dealing with the coronavirus crisis.
Friends of Ren Zhiqiang said they could not contact him and six months later he was sentenced to 18 years in prison after “voluntarily and honestly” admitting various corruption crimes.
Xian Jianhua, a billionaire financier, was snatched from a hotel in Hong Kong in 2017 and taken to the mainland.
He is said to be under house arrest more than three years later, without being officially found.