(CNN) – Jack Ma’s multimillionaire is a common figure in China: a charismatic learner who knows what he thinks and overcomes the limits.
It’s free action hizo that the cofounder of Alibaba will make famous inside and will of his country of origin. But he also seems to be giving up his imperial empire, and the same Ma, in a huge risk.
The problem started with October fines when I criticized China’s regulators at a conference in Shanghai. While the financial technology company of Ma, Ant Group, is preparing for the largest public offer (OPI) of the world, accuses the authorities of refocusing innovation and criticism on the banks of the country to train a mentality of «house of empeño ».
Beijing’s reprisals were swift. In case of slides, the regulators cancel the OPI, but do not hesitate to call the executives of Ma y Ant to a meeting. In the transcendental semesters of entones, regulators regulate Ant that restructures large sectors of the business. Including the extension of his alibaba escruction, which is now the subject of an antitrust investigation.
Mientras tanto, has not appeared to Ma in public since pronouncing his speech in Shanghai, a public opmerklik for a man who normally has no problems with the center of attention and cuyas emprasas now before his mayor amenaza in years.
“I believe that there is a general message that the party is actually inviting, and that technological entrepreneurs can be the most glamorous and most favorable public that China is showing worldwide,” said Rana Mitter, China’s professor of modern history and politics. at the University of Oxford. “But there is not a single individual, no one does much more than the Chinese Communist Party.”
Many Chinese observers are very likely to believe that the authorities are subordinate to the pressure on their negotiators, having been caught trying to steal.
However, Beijing’s tampon differs from a strong casting of prominent Chinese figures who shocked the interests of the Communist Party.
The superstar actress Fan Bingbing, for example, abruptly disappears from the public eye in 2018 before repeating another year of being discredited by a tax evasion scandal. Ren Zhiqiang’s real estate magnate disappears during several months, but has since been criticized by President Xi Jinping for the coronavirus pandemic. Finally, it was collected over 18 years by corruption charges.
A huge celebrity
Ma, ex-master of English with humiliating origins, has been personifying for a long time the economic prosperity and imperial value of China. Convert Alibaba into a US $ 500,000 million technology empire and amass a US $ 50,000 million personal fortune, according to Bloomberg’s Multibillionaire Index.
Although it creates jobs, it converts to China’s high economic growth rate. He was reunited with state jefes (he met with President Barack Obama and took selfies with the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron) and this year included donors to contain the covid-19 in all world.
The style of Ma as an executive at Alibaba was also extravagantly descriptive: a vowel, sang the classic of the 1950s “Unchained Melody” in the screenplay at a company conference, a discussion and appearance at events with celebrities like Beckham and Nicole Kidman.
Jack Ma actu in the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Alibaba in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China in 2019.
On one level, the Chinese authorities like that I represent a glamorous and powerful version of China “because one of the things that the Chinese Communist Party has found impossible to do is create a mixed power in the world”, affirmed Mitter, the Professor of Oxford.
The governing body has been targeting the rise of its local technology giants, including Alibaba, Ant Group, Tencent and Baidu, as long as it has gone ahead with its major rivals. All of them are indispensable in China for social interaction, entertainment, commerce and more.
But China’s authorities are already having a huge impact as a risk to the political and economic stability of the country. Ant Group, for example, can cover commissions on loans from the restricted regulations that are levied on commercial banks.
“The application of the renowned technological emperors is part of this process’s most amplified part of the party to regain control and actually rewrite the narrative of how the technological innovation of China is alive and well with all the parties.
In the last months, the government’s steps to control this sector have become more obvious. The Communist Party published a series of unusually frank directors in September, for example, asking its members to “educate private employers to arm themselves with the ideology of socialism” [de Xi]».
And Proposition Xi signaled a technological offensive last month at an economic conference, calling for peace on the part of the anti-monopoly efforts against the online platforms and avoiding a “disorderly expansion” of capital.
In the previous weeks, these tornillas were completed. In addition to regulatory inquiries from Ant Group and Alibaba’s investigation, authorities announced other technology representatives against the creation of monopolies and the abuse of finer-priced consumer data.
The ultimate in its species
Ma, member of the Communist Party, will continue to visit. Its social media pages have been inactive since October, including the final of a program of talented African employers. (Alibaba says the event will be postponed to a “programming conflict”).
If Beijing has not had time to count on the inclusion of critical executives with the governor, Ren, the real estate magnate who was imprisoned last year, he wrote a post that referred indirectly to Xi as a “payer” of power, the technology industry and the governing body observers that may be voluntarily driven by the center of attention, at least for now.
The Chinese government believes that its narrative about the OPI of Ant Group dominates the public conversation, dijo Duncan Clark, author of “Alibaba: The house that Jack Ma built” as founder of the BDA China investment firm. Aggregate that the company is likely to separate that no “diversity of opinion” on the topic will be avoided.
“It’s certainly notable … the silence is algae disorderly,” said Clark, adding that he hopes to finally sell publicly with a written statement on the contribution to Chinese reform.
“I received the signal that ‘I have been fired, so I have problems, so I need to call it’ ‘, said Angela Zhang, associate professor at the University of Hong Kong who studied the application of the antimonopoly laws in China.
Perdida de ‘poder blando’
One thing, at least, seems clear: while the Chinese Communist Party is accumulating pressure on the technological titans of the country, it seems likely that the sector will have another figure like Ma. Alibaba’s executive director, Daniel Zhang, who took over as President in 2019, adopted a conciliation agreement on regulation and in November he described the governor’s efforts to reverse the restrictions on Internet companies such as ‘opportunities and necessities’.
Sondeverbod, the loss of this type of vote will have consequences for Beijing, said Mitter. Many countries, particularly in the West, have come to China and their negotiations as existential arrangements worthy of sanctions and scrutiny, tensions that stem from the fact that all Chinese corporations operate in the institutions of the Communist Party. Repress the criticisms of these technological leaflets in the country, which will make it more difficult to influence the outside world.
“The ability of a character like Jack Ma to be more difficult to deal with, and to create an additional problem for China’s desire to generate mixed power,” Mitter said. “Nadie really does not take seriously the numbers of any country that the world simply calls the government line”.